Good Enough Homes & Destinations: What You Get For $525,000

The Gray Lady takes us on a dreamy tour of New Hampshire, California, and Arizona today as she shows us what “you” get for $1,500,000. This week’s selection could be subtitled “A trout stream runs through it”:

Built in 1773, the three-story house retains original pumpkin pine floors, horsehair plaster walls, hardware, wainscoting and six fireplaces. … Through the front door are an entry hall and staircase with recessed paneling, a newel post and rounded balusters. Both the formal living and dining rooms have fireplaces with 10-foot mantels and beehive ovens, as well as three sets of original, nine-over-six windows. Also on the first floor is an office, and a library with a Rumford fireplace and an original corner cabinet. Lower, plaster-and-lathe ceilings open up in the kitchen, where ceilings are vaulted and accented by skylights.

Also there’s room for oxen.

Vocab words include: horsehair plaster, wainscoting, balusters, newel post, nine-over-six windows, Rumford fireplace, plaster-and-lathe ceilings. I did pretty well on my SATs and SAT IIs back in the day, but if the verbal section had been Real Estate focused I realize now I would have flunked.

Let’s fire up the Good Enough Homes generator and see what you get for the more reasonable price of $525,000! Sesquipedalianisms not included.

Six bedroom, six bath, 4500+ square foot French chateau-style brick house for $524,000 in Des Moines, IA, via Trulia. OK, so, maybe the whole point of living in Des Moines is that you don’t have to be rich, but where else can you get a whimsical, sprawling, fairy-tale-type manor on 2+ acres in the woods for half a million dollars? Beamed ceilings, window seats, and a kitchen as big as a roller rink.

Four bedroom, two and a half bath, 4000+ square foot Tudor for $514,900 in Greenville, SC, via Trulia. Look at those windows! Are those leaded glass? Solid wood everythings, lots of built ins, fireplaces, an attic. Kitchen needs some updating, unless you like appliances from 1989. His-and-hers master bath is the perfect setting for a ghost story.

Five bedroom, three and a half bath, 4000 square foot frame and stucco contemporary in Las Vegas, NV, for $500,000, via Movoto. Pool included. Look at those trees! Those are rich people trees. Inside, there are high ceilings and fans everywhere. It’s all very Beverly Hills, only cheaper.

RELATED: Please enjoy this hardened New Yorker’s advice on how to raise kids in the city on a regular-people income:

One bedrooms are much, much cheaper than two or three bedrooms. Use this to your advantage! A pressure wall and a fold-out couch can turn your tiny one-bedroom apartment into a microscopic three bedroom (you sleep in the living room, and each kid sleeps in half the bedroom you just split. It’s probably illegal but with two bunk beds you can get 4 kids set up this way!). I have lived happily like this for years, and the children seem acceptably well-adjusted. I do sometimes come home to my wife crying because we’re 37 and sleeping on a couch, but it’s still better than Ardsley. And really, who are you anyway, Mr. Too-Good-for-a-Couch? Your grandparents were living ten to a room on Stanton Street just 100 years ago! … If you ever find yourself doubting your decision to live and die in New York, I recommend reading The Ice Storm by Rick Moody, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, and Cheever’s The Swimmer. That’ll scare your ass straight.

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