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Be wary of sub-division houses built in the last 15 years (newer is worse). This depends on the area and contractor, but corner-cutting has increased and quality has decreased in general over this time frame. The combination of poor build quality and over-crowding make these homes a very poor investment. Taking a 30 year mortgage on a home that might not be standing in 30 years is a bad thing.
This isn't just true about "cheap" homes, many nice homes are being built the same way. Some of these homes are so bad that you can walk up to the house and cut your way into the home with a box cutter (as long as you can fit through an 18" wide hole).
We bought our home in 2000, and our house was build in 1980. We loked at quite a few homes built from 93 - 95 in the same price range and the all had worse locations, much smaller lawns,
and were in much worse shape ( leaking skylights, warped surfaces, cracked hollow doors, chipped paint, etc...)
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