
When construction or renovation costs exceed the resale value, a house literally is worth less than zero. In Coastal California, the sticks-and-bricks construction cost is only a small portion of a house's resale price. The rest is residual land value. In Coastal California it's common to see small houses in beach towns demolished and replaced with a large mansion. In the rest of the country, residual land values are usually too low to justify such activity. With far fewer restrictions on land use in most of the US, land values are much lower. The construction cost of a new house is generally about 80% of the final resale value of a home, leaving 20% for the cost of a finished…[READ MORE]