There's a townhouse right up the street from me here for $350k, and you'll be locked into a great school district. Sadly, we rent ours and have little desire to buy and tie ourselves to property, we used to live in the midwest in a major metro area and paid $150k for a nice house out there, easily worth $500k or more in some areas here, and we still took a 10% loss when we sold in 2012.