The simpson house is ~2,000 sq ft, 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom. Generally in poor condition, with lead paint. Homer defaults on this house in 2009, when it is repurchased for $100,001.
Doesn't sound unrealistic to me for a guy making ~$35k presuming he got it even cheaper back in the day.
My childhood home is a nice brick 5 bed/3 bath, more than 3000 sf. Five years ago it went for $140k. It is located in a quiet small town 30 minutes from a real city. Built in the 1960s and still in good condition.
Another childhood home, 3 bed/2 bath and 1900 sf, is worth $55k currently. Also a brick home in relatively good condition, built in the 1920s, though considerably further from a real city.
These are places I actually lived. People seriously underestimate how cheap housing is in the US once you leave the big city.
If you go to a national park and live in a tent, that's even cheaper. The point of being in proximity to a big city is the opportunity it affords - better jobs and better mate prospects.
Absolute price of a property only matters in a vacuum, e.g. if you're already independently wealthy and can live off of remote investments and not need a day job. In fact, in most cases, without markets distorted by things like Prop 13, the price of real estate is a pretty good proxy for the opportunities afforded by living there: Jobs/Mates/Schools.
The commute to a city job from those places was 30 minutes. People that live in places like the Bay Area often spend more time commuting within the city to a job than people that live in one of these outlying areas and smaller cities. A forgettable "small city" in the US often has the same population as a second-tier city in Europe.
These places are not that desirable if you are looking for a cosmopolitan life, but we're talking about Homer Simpson here. Most people are much closer to Homer Simpson than a mega-city globetrotter.
Homer Simpson visited all 7 continents, along with two trips to outer space. So I guess the lesson is that unskilled labourers in the 1990s had a much easier time affording frequent international travel than people today, if you take the Simpsons as some sort of documentary. And apparently the type of writer who gets published in the Atlantic these days does just that.
Any place in the US with a house worth $140k or $55k must not be anywhere near numerous opportunities to earn income. When income sources become more volatile, you need to value being in an area where there are numerous people interested in buying your labor.
Power plants are not located inside expensive metro areas. Not everyone can work at a power plant like Homer, but that was also true when The Simpsons first started.
I guess it depends on where the house is located. Springfield seems like it is sort of supposed to be far from major cities like "Capital City", so maybe it makes sense for the house to be cheap, as it is in a low cost of living area.
Homer's job, as depicted, would pay a lot more than 25k. The article is based off a single frame of the show like 25 years ago. The writers/animators likely didn't mean to establish his cannon salary.
No way that sort of union job would pay under 50k no matter where you lived.
...in the NE and west coasts. This isn't out of the ordinary in large cities like Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, etc.
If you limit your search to Top 10 MSAs by population, you'll see that roughly half are expensive and the other half are not. More people live in Atlanta metro than SF, Seattle, or Boston metros but housing costs are fractional vs those places. (Salaries are not equivalent to SF, but IIRC most SF companies pay ~80%+ of SF pay. 80% of SF pay is "mansion money" in most US cities.)
I have a relative who bought a good condition (eg, not fixer-upper) in a nicer/older Ohio suburb for $100k. 4 bedrooms, full basement. It's huge; 2400sqft excluding the basement.
A 2 story w/basement 4 bed 2 bath is not going for $100k in 2010. Doesn't matter how shitty. That was the writers trying to pull a fast one. That is easily 150k-200k. If it's a good neighborhood (meaning safe, homogenous cultural understanding), 200k is more spot on.
In my midwest town, unless that was built 100 years ago, no way it's being less than that. Doesn't even matter if it was lead paint or vinyl siding. That home homer lived in was the exception, by far the rule.
In the context of the discussion, Springfield was portrayed as being near the ocean, mountains, museums, aquariums, and many other amenities that you won't find in places with sub $100k houses.
Doesn't sound unrealistic to me for a guy making ~$35k presuming he got it even cheaper back in the day.