The cheapest place to live, would be a house built by mid 90's Mercedes bean counters.
It would look nice on the outside, have solid concrete walls, and sturdy 2x4's.
The wiring however would loose its insulation after about 8-10 years, and at first cause your applicances to mysteriously stop working, and start up again for no reason. One day all of your appliances would suddenly quit, or you might even have a small fire in the corner of the basement.
Out of the blue, you notice that your doors would start clicking whenever you would shut them, you would ignore this, not knowing what to make of it, until one day your doors would simply cease to function, and you would have to replace all of your doors. The pressure tank on your hotwater tank would one day start to leak. Your aerial antenna would one day snap in half - this was sort of half expected because you noticed that compared to other aerials, your appeared to an inferior build. And the blower motor would start to slow down slowly over a period of six months. Turns out that once you replace the blower, the speed control broke at the same time. The replacement control, natuarally will only function properly for about a year, and then start to degrade.
You will pretty much be plagued by little electronic gadgets going bad after the first 10 years...a sensor here, a meter there. One day you will find that your gas bill has doubled for no reason at all.
A few weeks later, you secretly start to wish that arsonists would burn your house down.
So, yes, the cheapest house, would be built by mid 90's MB bean counters, because while they were busy saving a few Deutsche Mark here and there, they pissed on the company's integrity and values, and let the trickle down effect hit the buyer square in the face, and his wallet.
Maybe one day, I will post how I really feel.
Oh, I almost forgot. My neighbors house listed for $225k - it should've listed for $275k, but they were in a hurry to sell. 3/2/2, about 1800sq ft. Built in the 80's I think. New roof, updated kitchen.