We’ve already belabored this point, but here goes: Many people say they want to buy a home, but it’s too expensive. Many people say many things. The truth is usually something different. What they’re really saying is that they’re incredibly fussy about where they want to live, and how they want to live, and how elaborate and expensive the house they want should be. And no matter how elaborate and expensive it is, it’s gotta be cheap.

So I get it, I do. You’d like to live in a $149,000, newly constructed split level ranch on the beachfront in Maui, with a 1.5% seventy-year mortgage. You’ve decided to wait out the market to get it. I wish you well.

Relying on statistics about affordability are only going to get us so far if I’m going to talk you out of this mindset. You’re going to need some common sense. Since you want a $50,000 master bathroom with a giant plastic soaking tub placed in front of a wide expanse of plate glass windows, I guess I’ll have to supply the common sense. Here goes: The houses you want are not going to plunge in price. The market will bifurcate, same as it did fifteen years ago. Regular houses will continue to sell to regular people for regular (high) prices. Everything else will be plunged into the pay cash or else market of un-mortgageable houses. I’ve offered several examples of this phenomenon here already.

So if you really want a house, I can help you. Not fake want. Really want. I’ll show you another house you can buy for way under $100,000 that most anyone could afford and turn into a decent place to live. One that’s ultimately worth way more than you paid for it. Today’s example is in Readfield, Maine:

Readfield isn’t the sort of place that’s in the headlines every day. It’s out where the trolleys don’t run. That’s a good thing. It’s safe and quiet. And unlike most of the examples I’ve offered, people continue to want to live in Readfield, although few people currently do. There’s only 2,600 people in Readfield, but the population has been rising steadily, if slowly, every census from 1940 on. That’s more than most of Maine can claim. Large areas of Maine are becoming more or less abandoned. Readfield is not.

Readfield isn’t to-hell-and-gone Maine, either. It’s only about fifteen or twenty minutes drive from the state capital, Ogguster. You could make it to Lewiston/Auburn, the second-largest commercial area in the state, in about 40 minutes. You wouldn’t have to become a lumberjack or a potato farmer to live in Readfield, although I suppose you could. There are worse things to be. I live in Augusta, maybe twenty minutes away, and I don’t mind it here. Take that as a recommendation, or a warning, to taste.

Back to the house itself. It’s hard to tell right off, but the house is very old. Someone who hates me, themselves, and humanity has covered it inexpertly with vinyl siding, but there’s an 1810-vintage big-ol’ Cape Cod house inside that plastic carapace. I much prefer old houses over anything built after WW II. Even if you don’t, you could put up with this place. A Cape Cod house is a sensible design for New England.

As if to illustrate the point I’ve been making, the house was originally listed for $110,000. Less than a month later, they dropped the price to $85,000. It will grind ever lower until they unload it. It’s entered the bifurcated market I outlined above. Straight cash, homie, for the homey.

What can we tell just by looking at the exterior picture? It sits on a little ha-ha, so the drainage is probably pretty good. The roof is at least new-ish, if not brand new. There’s a roof jack still on display on the back roof, for instance. The roofline is straighter than I’d expect on a new spec house down the street. It’s a solid structure, at least for its age.

If you’re “from away,” as Mainers call everyone who’s from anywhere else, the ladder lying on the roof might be a mystery. It’s quite common in Maine. You see, no one in Maine has any idea how to season (dry) firewood. They all believe a million wive’s tales about how to handle firewood, and then they set themselves and their homes on fire trying to burn their unseasoned wood. They get so used to chimney fires from creosote buildup that they leave a ladder on the roof to climb up and try to smother it from the top down. It’s funny, this place has a chimney in good shape, and it looks like it’s lined properly, so the two woodburning stoves inside should be pretty safe. But in their heart, the last denizens knew that no matter what they told the other guys down at the VFW about their logpile, they knew they’d set the place on fire with dreary regularity.

The dormers are bit of a mess because the roofers had to strip off some siding to run the flashing up the sidewalls, and no one on earth knows how to fix vinyl siding, only how to install it. You could pull it all off and patch up the clapboards and paint the place. But that would make it more valuable and attractive. No one alive wants that anymore. They want to “update” it.

We’ve seen enough out here. What’s inside?

This is the most orderly area of the interior. The owner must have had what my wife and I call a “suddenly,” and everything, like golf, will have to be played as it lies. But I can tell things right off. The house is a literal dump, but it’s amazingly free of remuddling disasters. Those are wide-plank pumpkin pine floors, aching to be refinished. The original woodwork is there, and unencumbered with generations of bad paint jobs. Even the wallpaper isn’t painted over, making it a relative breeze to remove and start over. And there are beer mugs on the mantel to drink out of while you work. Er, I’d wash them a lot first.

Here’s the kitchen:

The average homeowner (female variety) has completely lost their mind over what a kitchen is. If you watch Better Homes than Yours on teevee, you’ll see what I mean. The kitchen is just a target rich environment for spending money like an oil sheik on acres of semi-plastic countertops and appliances that will never get much use. Look at this kitchen. Fix the ceiling, fix the floor, bring in three new, inexpensive appliances, replace the counters with new laminate (or granite if you can find a convenience store in Readfield to rob), clean the (solid knotty pine) cabinets and spray some fresh clear finish on them, and cook food in there.

I’m pretty sure the peanut oil conveys with the house. There’s more savings for you.

Here’s what looks like a public room downstairs. I also spy with my little eye a toilet in the far beyond, so there’s a working bathroom.

The whole house is filled with junk like this. There’s a fancy ductwork contraption in one of the upstairs dormers that might partially explain how you could be stoned enough to leave the house this way. Dude, did you pay the rent? I think we forgot to pay the rent. Dude?

To sum up, the house sits on almost two acres, but in one of the photos you can see a neighbor’s house, so it’s not out in the landscape enough to give off Clutter family vibes. If you dropped a 30-yard dumpster in the front yard and tossed everything but the peanut oil in it, the house wouldn’t look so bad inside or out. Taxes are a pittance. There’s a well and a septic system, which would require some checking, but then again, no water and sewer bill, either. You could commute to any number of semi-urban centers if you needed a job. You could, more or less, live in it while you fixed the place permanently. I’ve lived in worse. And right across town, they’re building $650,00 single family monstrosities by the dozen. If you really put this house to rights, instead of vinyl siding it some more and laying down vinyl flooring and painting everything gray, I bet the place would sell for half a mil eventually.

So what’s stopping you? You told me you want a house. You just have to roll up your sleeves. Readfield is right over there. It’s only a matter of going.