Have you moved around the country or are you a New Jersey lifer?  I know both groups and I never hear the end of this housing conversation from both sides.  Yes, people around the country pay less than we do in Jersey.  I get it, but I'll always argue that New Jersey also offers more than most states and I stand by that.

Do we get a fair shake in New Jersey when it comes to real estate?  Maybe I should ask this in another way, are New Jersey housing prices as bad as they seem according to the rest of the country? I hope you are sitting down.

I can tell you straight out the gate that West Virginia offers the best price per square foot in the country.  The problem with that is you would have to live in West Virginia.  Make it as cheap as you want, it is a hard pass.

Mississippi comes in second place for having the least expensive housing and Arkansas third place.  This also makes perfect sense to me because those are awful places as well.  The truth is, different strokes for different folks and I'm sure those places are fine for many, just not this set-in-her-ways, yankee radio DJ.  In other words, don't mind me for being too opiniated, it's my job to have strong ones and you know what they say about opinions.

Los Feliz Realtors just released a study that analyzed the average prices of houses in all 50 states. The average price for a house in West Virginia is only $129,103 which comes out to $75 per square foot.   

The average price for a house in Mississippi is $157,828 dollars, which is about $84 per square foot. 

In Arkansas you’ll spend $169,867 on a house with the price per square foot at $95 dollars.   

I know, I feel like I’m going to faint too. 

The cost of the average home in New Jersey is about $490,000 and don’t even get us started on the taxes!  Our tax payments alone are more than someone's mortgage payment in West Virginia. 

The problem with New Jersey is that we love it here but can't afford to live here in retirement.  We spend our life defending a place that won't have us in old age.  However, there is always someone ready to move to NJ and when you sell your house for the big bucks, you will live high on the hog down south, also, you may literally own a hog.

While you still live in Jersey, watch out for our most dangerous cities:

The 25 Most Dangerous Cities in New Jersey

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

 

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