My wife bought the 2 bedroom one bath condo we live in now in 04. It appreciated by $60k by the time we got married, but we decided to stay at “fix it up” in hopes of having a nice investment to sell later when we decide to have kids. Now the place is beautiful, we are ready to move on, but we are even if we are lucky. The worst part is if we would like to move on to a larger home, we still need to pay a Realtor to sell our place. After they take their 5% we loose money. I refuse to sell the condo without getting at least my down payment back.
Back to your question…If you were looking to move to the greater NYC area (NJ/CT/NY) you are looking at spending at least 400K on a starter home. That being 3 bedroom 2 bath with a bit of property. If you want to go bigger than that you will go 500K and above. WE have been hit with the housing crash, but the homes still are quite high.
J