Mapping homes you can buy from the US government for <$100k

You still go back to the complete map when you navigate back out of a listing, so it doesn't really help much. The state-level zoom helps a little but it's not enough to distinguish markers in the same city, for example.

Also please don't break the back button

Also, IME, places with no employers tend to be populated primarily by addicts, disability fraudsters, and other criminals.

The clawing back of remote jobs is pretty astounding. More places are 3 days a week I guess. But the idea of living out in the country with no one around, but with your remote job is nearly fantasy. You have to be very sure that if push comes to shove, you won't ever be laid off, fired, company closes, etc.

It's not even just wanting jobs for family; it's wanting to be around services that I think people don't always consider. Sure, you could plan on doing everything yourself if that's truly your hobby, but most remote workers will want to be able to call a plumber or an electrician when something goes wrong, and even finding tradesmen in those locations can sometimes be challenging.

If there are no good doctors, dentists, schools, stores, and so in within reasonable distance then life kind of sucks even if you aren't concerned about money/other jobs.

If those things are within a reasonable distance, then so are jobs (well, as about as much as "normal" at least).

> Not simply "don't want to live here", usually also "can't, there are no opportunities for income here".

also likely very underdeveloped infra

I think something important to consider as well is quality of basic services. I've been permanently remote since 2015, and I've moved three times since then. But as a remote worker, I spend most my time in my home and that means it needs high quality water, high quality air, high quality internet, and high quality electrical services. If I cannot get all of these, it's a non-starter. I have absolutely zero faith in getting all of these services of sufficiently high quality for the majority of homes listed on this site, and in many cases I would expect /none/ of these services to be sufficiently high quality. Most of these houses are located in places I would never live, they are essentially negative value locations (in very real terms, not just monetarily).

All that said, I live in one of the lowest cost of living major metros in the US, and I bought a house in an acceptably decent neighborhood w/ high quality water, electrical, and air, and 5 gigabit symmetric fiber service for under $300k. You don't need to spend millions to find an acceptable place to live when you work remotely, but that doesn't mean you want to live in a HUD foreclosure in some of the worst most blighted neighborhoods in the country where you can't rely on even basic services and are going to be immediately a target of violent crime.

I feel like any statement with "surely all they have to do" is going to miss some nuance.

In this particular case the apartment is owned by the coop (that's how coops work) and the mortgage is for the shares in the coop. So maybe more complex than a basic foreclosure where it might possibly work more like you'd think.

I think the broader point is if real estate is selling well below what is you would expect, there's a reason for that.

Then you watch Downton Abbey and learn that upkeep on a hundreds years old castle on that estate will bury you.

The real truth is that "cream-top" or non-homogenized milk is way, way better and may not be as harmful to our health, and cream-top milk is perfectly legitimate, legal, and sold by ordinary farmer's markets in my area.

Pasteurization is a very necessary process if any community expects to transport and distribute milk past a radius where a teenage girl could carry a pail, basically. I see nothing wrong with pasteurized milk and I also avoid "raw milk" because it's a red herring of a fad, and those who defiantly purchase and consume raw milk are reckless and ignorant people.

But if you've never sampled cream-top milk, then you've not lived. It is absolutely a revelation. I love opening up a glass bottle of milk from Straus Family Creamery and then using a fork to dislodge the thick cap of cream in the neck of the bottle. You can dredge it all out and then use it in your coffee or tea later. I just enjoy when it melts in my mouth.

Of course, cream-top milk is rather "chunky" and can be unsightly: homogenization was developed partly to mollify housewives and make milk more conveniently pourable from a bottle. In fact, the homogenization processes today remove all the milkfat and then that cream can either be used in creamery products, or the cream can be added back in later to satisfy a target percentage, like 1% or 2% as milk is most commonly sold.

Fat in milk and other foods contributes to the satiety factor: you can eat rice-cakes or soybeans all day and not feel full, until you put some butter or oil on them, and then you feel satisfied. If I drink skim milk then I've got some hydration, but I don't enjoy it. If I drink/chew on a glass of cream-top milk, then I've been transported very near to Cowherds Heaven, and I feel extremely satisfied with the investment.

The USDA and FDA and powers that be told us that milkfat is bad for us because they were commercially motivated to say so. Milkfat is the most lovely part of milk but also the most versatile, and can be used in many nutritious ways, and that's why dairy farmers want rank-and-file consumers to demand less milkfat and drink 1% milk, so that the more lucrative milkfats and cream can be siphoned off for use in more profitable products.

An HOA is, by definition, your ordinary neighbors. And by the principles of “small government” and subsidiarity, the HOA is tasked with establishing rules and guidelines that help make good neighbors live in harmony, such as uniform aesthetics, prohibited activities, and so forth. These rules are otherwise handled by landlords or municipal codes.

It is really about conformity and keeping the peace, so that the Clark Griswolds and Gladys Kravitzes of the world cannot run roughshod over the others.

Mixed-use zoning is perfectly cromulent, but I am not referring to mixed-usedl zoning. These are large SFH residences with ample lots in suburban developments.

This sort of entrepreneurship is fine if you’re a web designer, or traveling electrician, but many times they instead flout all kinds of boundaries such as carrying the proper business licenses, parking/disabled accessibility, insurance, signage etc.

Americans in suburban and residential areas have a certain expectation that their neighborhoods should be free of obvious commercial enterprises, because that is why we invented strip malls!

Yes, that doesn’t mean it isn’t clickbait.

The prices shown are worthless, you’d have to check what debt any property actually has to determine what you need to put down. That $3k flint house, you will pay $200k+ when all is said and done.

The low prices are nothing more than an interesting hook.

I do not feel pain for builders anymore. Most of these projects are just AI prompted outputs. We can criticize much more sharply, as the effort spent is lower.