Anybody else extremely depressed over real estate?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yes. The prices of homes in this area are unrealistic. It's not like we have silicon Valley wages.

Home prices in this area are still reasonable. And they are not even close to the Bay Area. Median household income in DC area is 117, compared to 128 in SF metro.

Compare regional home price increase to inflation over the last three years. Then get back to me at how out of line things are.

+1
we just bought a large older townhome in a walkable safe area, with great schools and close to metro for less than 1mil. we overstretched but the value is such that it is going to go up. it's not that expensive. we are nowhere close to bay area prices.

LOL. No, home prices in this area are ridiculous and homes in this area are generally garbage. But please, pretend the entire rest of the country outside DC and the Bay area doesn’t exist.

DC sucks, sorry.

Except DC home prices are comparable to many similarly second tier large metro areas that have far lower income levels. We're lucky here.

What other second tier large metro areas? Mildly curious.

According to this, DC is in the top 10 most expensive cities in the US. #10 to be exact, but the list also includes Brooklyn separate from Manhattan and all of Orange County along with LA, SF and San Jose. Only Boston and Seattle (no surprise!) are the real other non-California mainland US cities more expensive than DC. Which makes sense.

https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/605051/most-expensive-cities-in-the-us

Cities that are cheaper than DC: just about all cities in the US outside Boston, Seattle and the California cities.

Second tier cities like Denver, Miami, Portland, etc., outside the premier five or six metro areas like LA, SF, NY, Boston, etc. DC compares excellently against the premier metros though, for which DC is very affordable.

https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/metro-home-prices-q4-2023-ranked-median-single-family-2024-02-08.pdf

I don't care how they rank specific and somewhat arbitrary sub-components like DC proper or Brooklyn, this is about metro areas, but even then DC has a high income for its cost of living.

That Newark and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach is more expensive than DC on your list makes me suspect and that it's a case of rigging municipal boundaries to distort the picture.

But even your list accepts that DC is more expensive than the vast majority of cities and municipalities in this country. Just about every city more expensive than DC is still a California/NYC/Boston area municipality or a fancy resort town. Which means most Americans live in cheaper markets than DC. So you are not "fortunate."

70 million+ people in the US live in metros with comparable or high housing costs than DC. DC isn't so special. And it compares very favorably with its peers for affordability... with very high incomes.

Which means 250 million Americans live in cheaper metro areas, no?

Honey, you are digging your own grave pretending DC isn't an expensive market.

it's not expensive for a major city. ("no, no it's not a major city, it's just a city where presidents live")

Just because a president lives in a city doesn't mean it is a major city.
You want DC to be more special than it is.

it's pretty special TBH. i am an immigrant and when i tell people (foreigners) i live in DC, they are impressed. they consider it a real, important city, not that different in importance/glamour from NYC.

Lol

But, hey, no shade. I’m sure to someone out there Phoenix AZ is a special city not unlike NYC

[Anonymous]

Yes. I daydream about renting a two bedroom condo somewhere more affordable and spending thousands I save per month traveling instead. Oh, what I could do with this crazy mortgage payment money instead.