Essentially handmade bikes cost 2-5x more than $1500 now. $150 will buy you a Wallmart piece of junk. A utility bike suitable for bombing around a city is going to cost somewhere around $1000. I own three that each have a > $2K replacement cost, even with me building the wheels and installing everything but the bottom bracket. Yep you can easily spend more than $1500 for a single speed bare bones bike, and the people that build them have waiting lists years long.