The Great Recession could not have come at a better time for Scott Marshall.

Just last week – as millions of Americans continued to struggle with unemployment and foreclosure – the 20-year-old Marshall moved into his first home: a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch on an Elk Grove cul-de-sac, which he bought for $115,000.

The financial nightmare of the past several years has turned into Marshall's American Dream.

"This is more than I could imagine," said a beaming Marshall, who bought his first house, dog and barbecue all in one week. "I thought I'd never be able to buy a home."

Marshall's experience highlights the reward at the end of a string of modern-day conditional clauses: If you have a job, if you aren't underwater on a home, if your credit isn't ruined and you have some cash, then you can find some ridiculous deals on property these days.

How much will $250,000 get you in this market? $500,000? What about $1 million?

The simple answer: A lot.

"The opportunities right now are amazing," said Nadia Zierke, a Coldwell Banker agent, who helped Marshall find his home.

Distressed properties – short sales and foreclosures – continue to dominate the market, driving down prices for everyone. That's bad news if you own a home and are watching it slowly slip under water. But for investors, first-time buyers and those with the ability to move up, the market couldn't be better.

Since the 2006 market peak, the median price per square foot for homes in Sacramento County has fallen by anywhere from a third in east Sacramento to nearly 77 percent near Cannon Industrial Park in North Sacramento, according to sales data from DataQuick Information Systems. Only three of 40 ZIP codes in the county had a higher median price per square foot last quarter than in the first quarter of 2003, the San Diego-based researcher found.

All of this means buyers can get more home for less.

If you want to live in the suburbs, three-quarters of the 1,500 Elk Grove homes now for sale are going for $250,000 or less, according to listings on MetroList. The median listing in that city is a 2,100-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bath home priced at $210,000 – $100 a square foot.

Or if the bustle of midtown Sacramento is more your thing – and if you can make it through the short sale process – $399,000 could get you a high-water bungalow at 14th and T Streets. That's 35 percent less than the property sold for at the peak. Over in east Sacramento, a four-bedroom Spanish-style home at 31st and H Streets could run you $449,000 – just five years after selling for $800,000.

For country living, you can get a four-bedroom house on 20 acres of land in Wilton for $649,000 – property worth more than $1.5 million at the peak. If you want to live along the Sacramento River, $715,000 will get you a 5,000-square-foot foreclosure that listing service Zillow estimates is worth nearly $1 million today.

'Trying to live through it'

The prices have fallen so much that Zierke, the Coldwell Banker agent, recently jumped in herself and snapped up a property.

"I just bought a home in January because I couldn't pass up this market," she said.

Zierke and her husband bought a 5-acre property in Wilton complete with an airplane hangar and space for horses for $400,000 through a short sale. The home had sold in 2004 for $880,000 and the owner had put in close to $900,000 in work, she said.

"Your money gets you a lot farther," Zierke said.

Some agents, like Chuck Klein of Real Living/Great West, are still dazed by what happened to the market but are trying to make the best of what was a devastating situation for many.

"It's astonishing what happened. We're just trying to live through it," Klein said.

One of his current listings, a 3,400-square-foot Elk Grove home, epitomizes everything that has happened over the past few years.

The monstrous, tri-level home is selling for $231,500 – less than $70 a square foot. The price, however, is about $150,000 less than the owners owe, meaning they had to go through the process of getting a short sale approved by their lender, Klein said.

Inside the cavernous house where the family once ran a day care business, it looks like someone left in a hurry. Mounds of clothes, children's toys and other mementos are strewn about.

"It's going to be a wonderful home for someone," Klein said.

'No one can believe it'

Scott Marshall never contemplated buying a home until about a year ago when a family friend suggested he consider taking advantage of the historic low prices.

He looked at the time but didn't have enough work history to qualify for a loan, Marshall said. So he put in another year at his job as a merchandiser at the Sacramento Coca-Cola facility and started looking again last month.

Almost immediately he found a home on the 8700 block of Crucero Drive that Wells Fargo was trying to unload. The bank had foreclosed after the owner defaulted on a $221,500 loan from 2007. In less than a month Marshall closed, putting only 3 percent down after qualifying for a 30-year FHA mortgage at 4.75 percent.

Marshall's monthly mortgage payments are going to be $853 – less than the $1,000-a-month rental apartments he was also looking at, he said.

While he can't yet legally have a beer to celebrate his new home, Marshall can grill up a steak on his new barbecue – one of those deluxe propane models with an extra burner and lots of chrome.

"No one can believe it," Marshall said. "It's never too early to be smart."

And he doesn't need to worry about feeling lonely after moving out of his parents' house, where he lived while saving his money for a down payment. In addition to buying a dog last week, he also has been named by his neighbors as the unofficial guardian of the neighborhood's stray cat and a chicken that wanders the streets.

On an afternoon last week, Marshall watched that chicken wander across his front lawn near the spot where he plans to put in a retaining wall and over the driveway he plans to repave.

"I lived in Wilton. I'm used to chickens. I feel at home," Marshall said.

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