💰 $200,000 in One Town Is Not $200,000 in Another
Taxes and insurance vary by town too, and they are part of the payment. Before you set a budget by price alone, get the real monthly number. Free, no-pressure pre-qualification with Jarod Sanders, SIRE’s in-house lender.Jarod Sanders · CrossCountry Mortgage · NMLS #2337228
Two hundred thousand dollars is the number a lot of Southern Illinois buyers land on. It is roughly what a household on a decent local income can carry, and it is the number people say out loud when they call us.
So this week we asked a narrow question and answered it across all nine towns we track: what does $200,000 actually get you, town by town, right now?
The answer ranges from about 1,440 square feet to about 2,760. Same money. Nearly double the house.
The Nine Towns, Sorted by Price Per Foot
These are asking prices on houses listed right now — not closed sales. Land and other property types are excluded.
| Town | Median asking per sq ft | What $200,000 buys at that rate | Houses listed at $200K or under | Median year built |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marion | $139 | 1,440 sq ft | 31 of 98 (32%) | 1985 |
| Carterville | $127 | 1,570 sq ft | 11 of 40 (28%) | 1986 |
| Mount Vernon | $115 | 1,740 sq ft | 28 of 62 (45%) | 1975 |
| Benton | $103 | 1,930 sq ft | 18 of 28 (64%) | 1971 |
| Murphysboro | $100 | 2,000 sq ft | 26 of 43 (60%) | 1966 |
| Herrin | $94 | 2,130 sq ft | 25 of 33 (76%) | 1942 |
| Carbondale | $82 | 2,440 sq ft | 43 of 59 (73%) | 1958 |
| West Frankfort | $79 | 2,540 sq ft | 26 of 34 (76%) | 1960 |
| Du Quoin | $72 | 2,760 sq ft | 14 of 16 (88%) | 1921 |
The spread is 1.9 to 1 from the top of the list to the bottom. That is the whole story in one number: a dollar of housing budget goes almost twice as far in Du Quoin as it does in Marion.
The Second Column Nobody Thinks About
The per-foot number tells you what you get. The fourth column tells you whether you get to choose.
In Marion, 31 of the 98 listed houses are priced at $200,000 or under — about a third of the market. In Carterville it is 11 of 40, roughly a quarter. A $200,000 buyer in those two towns is shopping a minority of what is for sale, and competing with other buyers for it.
In Du Quoin, 14 of 16 listed houses are at or under $200,000. In Herrin and West Frankfort, better than three in four. Those buyers are shopping essentially the whole town.
That difference changes how you should behave. Where your budget covers a quarter of the market, being pre-qualified and ready to move matters enormously. Where it covers seven-eighths of it, you can afford to be picky — and you should be.
Now the Honest Part
⚠️ Cheaper Per Foot Usually Means Older
Look at the last column. The four most expensive towns per foot have a median year built between 1966 and 1986. The four cheapest run 1921 to 1960.
That is not a coincidence, and it is most of the explanation. You are not getting the same house for less money. You are getting a different house. Square footage is the easiest thing to count and the least useful thing to compare, because it says nothing about the roof, the wiring, the windows or the furnace.
We saw exactly this play out three days ago. In Carterville, houses listed under $200,000 had been sitting roughly twice as long as houses above it — a 143-day median against 72 — and the reason was age, not price. Older houses knock out loan programs, narrow the buyer pool, and sit.
So read the table as a map of trade-offs, not of bargains. Du Quoin at $72 a foot is a real number and a real opportunity for the right buyer. It is also, on average, a house built before the Second World War.
What This Means If You Are Selling
If your house is in Marion or Carterville and priced near $200,000, you are in the thinnest, most contested part of your town’s market — which is a good place to be a seller. If it is in a town where three-quarters of the inventory sits under $200,000, you are one of many, and the things that separate you are condition, photographs, access and price.
💬 Greg Holthaus Predicts
“The per-foot gap between Marion and the smaller towns has been widening for a while, and I do not think it closes soon. What I would watch instead is the under-$200K share in Marion and Carterville. If that share keeps shrinking, the buyers who need that price point get pushed out to Herrin, West Frankfort and Du Quoin — and that is how those towns get their next wave. It is already starting.”
🏠 What Does $200,000 Buy Where You Want to Live?
The table is a starting point, not an answer. Tell us the towns you are considering and roughly what you want to spend, and a SIRE broker will send you what is actually on the market in that range — including the part the per-foot number cannot tell you, which is what shape the houses are in.
The Short Version
- $200,000 buys about 1,440 sq ft in Marion and about 2,760 in Du Quoin — a 1,320 sq ft spread on identical money.
- It also buys access to a third of Marion’s market versus seven-eighths of Du Quoin’s.
- Cheaper per foot tracks with older. The four cheapest towns have a median build year of 1921–1960.
- Square feet are easy to count and a poor way to compare houses. Condition is the thing.
📱 Got a Question About This Market? Text Greg.
Buying? Selling? Not sure where to start? Text Greg Holthaus directly — just tell him you saw his blog. He'll help you think through your decision, match you with the best broker for your situation, and point you in the right direction. He's open to a text any time.
Text Greg · 618.925.8654
Who is Greg Holthaus?
Greg Holthaus is the Owner and Designated Managing Broker of Southern Illinois Realty Experts, with 25+ years in Southern Illinois real estate and more than 10,000 transactions closed. He leads a full-service operation — home sales, mortgage, title, and property management under one roof — with offices in Marion, Herrin, and Carbondale. Meet Greg ›
About the numbers: Figures are from a pull of active local MLS listing data for the nine ZIP codes on September 21, 2026, filtered to single-family houses; land, multifamily and other property types are excluded throughout. Counts by town (houses / total listings): Marion 98/161, Carbondale 59/109, Mount Vernon 62/131, Herrin 33/41, Carterville 40/68, Murphysboro 43/59, Du Quoin 16/35, West Frankfort 34/43, Benton 28/47. Every house in the sample published a square footage, so no listing was dropped from the per-foot medians. These are ASKING prices on homes currently for sale, not closed sales — they describe what sellers are seeking today, which is a different statistic from what buyers have paid, and the two do not have to agree. “What $200,000 buys” is arithmetic on each town’s median asking price per square foot, rounded to the nearest ten square feet; it is an illustration of the per-foot rate, not a listing that exists. Du Quoin’s 16 houses and Benton’s 28 are small samples and will move more than the larger towns from week to week — treat the ordering as sound and the precise figures as approximate. Median year built is calculated on the same active house listings. Price per square foot reflects age and condition, neither of which we can assess from listing data. The recording-batch anomalies we exclude from closed-sale reporting (Carbondale March–May 2026, Benton May 2025) do not apply here, because no closed-sale data is used in this post. Carterville time-on-market figures referenced are from our September 18 analysis of active listings in ZIP 62918. Listings are represented by various brokerages. Nothing here is an appraisal, a loan offer, or a rate quote. Southern Illinois Realty Experts is an Equal Housing Opportunity brokerage.