Pardon Me? You Want What for Wha...?

Greetings fellow house hunters of the inner west, I have returned after spending some time overseas and seeing how much more reasonable property prices are when you're not here. Cry, sob, facepalm, headwall. I was really taken with the old Arts and Crafts character houses of the Pacific Northwest, and in the Glebe equivalent of Seattle, a nice little neighbourhood called Wallingford, 3/4 bedroom houses of this type on a good bit of land I saw were going for about $US450,000!

Oh well, I thought, the situation in the inner west is bad but surely can't get much worse. There's only so much griping you can do about Sydney property prices. Oh how wrong I was. How very, very wrong. Prices seem to have got ever more ridiculous while I was away, and now it seems people are expecting to pay over mid 6s for 2 bedroom houses, standard, in lands far, far away from the city, though granted many of these may have studies or extra storage convertible to a 3 bedroom, or are on largish (over 250sqm) blocks.

But then I saw a posting today that truly incensed me.

Check this out: 18 Philpott St

The first thing is, um, nice deck? Which is probably why they went with that as their star photo. The place seems renovated, but nothing amazing from the photos. It's on 117sqm (tiny), it's a terrace, not free-standing, and it's in Marrickville (nice, but a bit far out from the city), quite a walk away from the train station. And they're asking OVER $650,000. When I think of the other places we have seen in Marrickville, that were free-standing Victorian houses, also 2 bedroom but much more nicely renovated on double or almost triple the land size going for just over $650,000 just a couple of months ago I am just flabbergasted. Words fail me. At this point you'd be overpaying for the air space inside the place. Ridunkulous!