Are we the only family in the DMV who is priced out?
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Anonymous
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DH and I are early 40s, two kids, HHI 300k gross. We have a downpayment of 300k set aside but are only interested in single family homes that are not total teardowns. We are priced out and have stopped looking.
DH interviewed for a higher paying job this summer but didn't pass the second round. I'm earning the max I can earn with my qualifications. Kids in public school and we are renting right now. Are we the only ones in this situation? |
Anonymous
| We are in our 30s and bought last year but know multiple couples around the same income as you who have given up in recent months. |
Anonymous
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We are below your HHI ($255k) and have a similar downpayment ($325k-ish) to provide after selling our house. We will be looking at small SFHs out in the Fairfax/Annandale, Burke HS, Springfield HS areas, hoping for $800k or less, but the new mortgage rates mean we're probably screwed and won't save any money other than retirement for a few years. Hoping for something livable, but expect a kitchen with older cabinets, needing to replace floors and do some painting....
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Anonymous
| While not in your shoes I do keep a close eye on the market. That is a hefty down payment, and a respectable HHI. You can find plenty of homes that you could afford but you're not telling us where you're looking, or your price range. I think it's more about you not liking what's available to you, rather than there being nothing available to you. |
Anonymous
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There are plenty of homes I could buy in DMV with a 300k down payment and 300k HHI.
You aren't priced out, you are just looking for some unicorn. This isn't Texas, you have to be realistic. |
Anonymous
Priced out of what? You can comfortably afford a house but it's not what you want so stop complaining. You can buy a $600-700K house comfortably. |
Anonymous
What do you consider a tear down? |
Anonymous
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We are priced out but at a lower HHI and downpayment. The stuff we want to buy but can't afford (SFHs in Silver Spring IB for Blair or Einstein, for instance) you could afford. But you are probably looking elsewhere.
We always want what we can't have. You and I could both afford homes in PG county or EotR in DC, but we don't want them. It's all relative. |
Anonymous
That doesn’t buy you anything someone making $300,000 with two kids would want to live in here. |
Anonymous
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I was in the same boat, had to definitely recalibrate what I wanted versus what I could afford. We are thrilled about the town we landed in and are living in a house we are updating very slowly. It stinks, there’s no two ways about it. At least we are always super happy when we upgrade one thing! Everyone that comes over gets to look at our fancy 200amp electrical box, hah.
One thing my realtor told me was like, “if you had a $1m budget, you’d wish you could afford $1.25. If you could afford $1.25, you’d wish you could afford $1.5.” She told us to not look at anything we couldn’t afford, so it would be easier to fall in love with what we could afford. Ultimately, our town and non negotiable other things (no double yellow line, 0.25 acre lot) meant we comprised a bit on the house, but we gave ourselves a deadline to recalibrate and start looking into other towns if it didn’t work for us. |
Anonymous
| We had to increase our budget 30% to get something that wasn’t a fixer upper and didn’t increase work commutes. We’re house poor for the moment. All we do is live to pay our mortgage and our college kids’ rent. Living the American dream. |
Anonymous
| This is us too, OP. We have about 250k set aside, a 350k HHI, one car paid off, two kids in public, no debt, but we can’t find a 1800 sq ft 3br WOTP anywhere. I don’t need detached. I don’t need off street parking. There is simply no inventory in this range. We were striving to get something in the 950-1.1 range years back but now those crummy small houses are more like 1.3 and there are almost never any on the market. |
Anonymous
A house that requires more than 100k of rehab work after purchase or cannot be rehabbed without being torn down to the foundation. The realtor we looked at houses with showed us two of these. Then he told us to ask our parents for another 200k so he could put us into a house for 1.1. We have credit scores over 800. |
Anonymous
We make that amount and live in a $400K 1000 square foot house. It's not about where you want, it's what you can afford at the time of purchase. Time to grow up. |
Anonymous
You need to change your expectations. You make plenty. |