Genz and millennials don't want your small starter homes want forever homes now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My parent's "starter home" in Leesburg just sold for $990k. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/220-Queen-St-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/12408796_zpid/

They bought it in the 90s for around $140k. They sold it in 2005 after I graduated HS and built a house outside of Richmond.

I live in Leesburg with my own family and noticed the house had a Coming Soon sign when I went to drop off my kid at her friend's house nearby. I looked up the house and couldn't believe it was now going for almost $1mil. A lot of improvements have been made since I lived there as a kid, but still...the house seemed SO small growing up (fam of 5) and it is old (built in the 20s).

As a comparison, an empty lot 1 street over was purchased and had 2 new homes built on it. Each of those homes just sold for just slightly over $1mil. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/210-Catoctin-Cir-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/338416888_zpid/ and https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/208-Catoctin-Cir-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/12408332_zpid/.

If I was on the market, I would not pay almost $1mil for a 1920s house when I could get a new build for ~$50k more.

Starter homes are now condos, really. The pipeline now seems to go apartment (single) > condo (married, no kids) > townhome (married w/ kid) > home (forever home). I know so many people who bought a condo or townhome and lived in them for years before they were able to buy a home, and they have stayed in those homes rather than using them as "starter homes."

Same. My parents’ “starter home” purchased in the late 70s on an associate professor’s single income now is worth $1.5 mil. lol. The starter home is dead.

This! My husband and I bought our “starter home” in 2020 for $1.3M or $1.58M in today’s dollars and it’s now worth $1.96M. It is 4 beds/3 baths and 1950 sqft, if you include the small finished basement, and there is also a detached garage. The location is great: a 15 minute walk to the train, grocery store, restaurants, pharmacy, post office, playground, tennis courts, and ball fields; a 15 minute bike ride to the beach; and a 5 minute walk to the library and park with a pond. When we bought we were early 30s with one kid and our HHI had just leapt to $387K (at the time the avg HHI in our small part of town was $800K). Now we are mid-30s with $900K HHI and three kids. We would love to move to a larger home, but are prioritizing making upgrades to the space that will make it better for us and hopefully deliver a solid ROI, investing and saving, and paying for a nanny and sending our kids to a great private school. Ideally, we’ll move in 2029 and be able to roll well over a million in equity into another house. And if the market is bad, we like our house and location enough that we can wait it out or stay where we are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are millennials and bought a forever home

I'm a Millennial married to an Xer and we knew a decade ago not to buy a starter home. Why in this market would I want to pay realtor fees on upgrading when I could save that money for my kids' college tuitions? Why would I take on another mortgage when I paid off the one I have?

We stayed in our starter house and saved. Easier solution.

I mean our "forever home" is a 4 br, 3 ba, 1600 sq foot home we shove our five person family into. It fits us, but it's tight.

starter homes dont have four bedrooms and three baths. My house I grew up a family of six was a starter home had three bedrooms and one bath. 1,200 sf on a 40x100 plot.

Your house in that neighborhood would be called an Executive home My neighbors next block who were rich lawyers and doctors had the 1,600 sf models.

It goes to show how much home sizes have increased over last 50-80 years

This sounds horrific and I grew up in the city. What happened if anyone had stomach flu? How did you get ready in the morning? Even a simple shower takes at least 10 minutes, then also add flossing, shaving etc.

Are you for real? This is how many, many people grew up. You do your hair and makeup in the bedroom. You don’t take a 10 minute shower. I have my own bathroom today and I don’t take a 10 minute shower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are these smaller starter homes?

I live in 22181-Vienna- and the original mid1950s “starter” homes in 22180 are disappearing monthly - all being razed with enormous homes replacing.

Even a vintage Vienna Woods house is selling for 850k+

There are plenty of starter homes in places that you are not willing to live. https://redf.in/uUlxmm
This house is near the VRE. It has an easy commute to DC and Alexandria.

Way to miss the point. That’s not a “starter home” for a family with two working parents with DC jobs that want to send their kids to decent schools. That’s a non-starter home.

Starter homes aren't for families. They're for single people or DINKS to buy. And maybe you'll stay in your starter home for your first kid, but you buy a forever home by the time all your kids are born. It's 10000x easier to save without kids.

Look, I don’t think it ever made financial sense to buy a house and assume it would appreciate enough to sell in 5 years. And it makes even less sense now.

Moving and buying a home is such a hassle and so expensive I hope to never, ever do it again. Husband and I managed to save up and buy a house at 32 and I love it. I don't care if I can afford a bigger house.

Bought our first in 98, we could certainly afford more now but our friends are here, house is paid off. We will be here till we downsize for sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rather than climb the ladder we will wait for the forever big home. Sorry please tear down those little homes and ensure you provide recently renovated or new larger homes

https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-millennials-dont-want-buy-starter-homes-2069778

Please stop complaining how housing is unaffordable. Is this the answer you are looking for?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rather than climb the ladder we will wait for the forever big home. Sorry please tear down those little homes and ensure you provide recently renovated or new larger homes

https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-millennials-dont-want-buy-starter-homes-2069778

Please stop complaining how housing is unaffordable. Is this the answer you are looking for?

Yes, just the typical entitled biker bro spiel about how there is a housing “crisis” because they cannot afford to buy a 4,000 sq ft new build “starter home” that is walkable to the metro with good schools.

[Anonymous]

This has a lot to do I believe with simply buying property later in life. I had nothing then a 3K square foot house, and I was just single, and I wanted nothing less.

Also, I hate moving and losing all the special things I've done to make my house and garden my own. I don't want someone else's mediocre crap. I'll be keeping my house forever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This has a lot to do I believe with simply buying property later in life. I had nothing then a 3K square foot house, and I was just single, and I wanted nothing less.

Also, I hate moving and losing all the special things I've done to make my house and garden my own. I don't want someone else's mediocre crap. I'll be keeping my house forever.

Are you my 80 year old FIL?

Great that you’ve made your house of 40 years your Forever Home, but now it seems you are leaving a literal mess (read: hoard) for the rest of us. Can we talk about your (packed to the rafters) garage? Your unfinished basement you’ve talked about organizing “soon” - for almost 3 decades?

You just shredded tuition checks from your DD who graduated in 1989! Bravo! Now sell a car or two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t they care about the earth? The environment? Where is their eco-conscience?

+1 They should want smaller homes. Less materials. Less energy. Less systems. Less furniture. Etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an elder millennial stuck in our starter home we bought a decade ago because housing values have risen much faster than wages. I really wish we could go back in time and just stretched and bought a slightly bigger house a decade ago. Those houses that were $100-$200 above our budget a decade ago are now entirely out of reach.

This is us, too. Our now slightly-too-small 3br condo was huge for two people (pre-kids). Now I'd like a 4br house with a small yard, which I could have had for another 100-200k back then. But we can't afford to upgrade to a 4br now at the current prices and mortgage rates. We'd be paying at least 2x as much monthly for a few hundred more sq. feet. Heck, I'm not sure I could afford to buy my condo at today's rates.

I completely see the appeal of wanting to just buy a house you love and be done with it. Moving is expensive: transactional costs (thanks to real estate agents and transfer/recordation taxes) eat up minimum 7-8% of the value when you sell, to say nothing of having to pack up your whole life.

Yes, this is probablem. The math doesn’t work out for starter condos (or condos in general) because they tend to lose value after inflation. It’s normal for the inflation adjusted value of condos to depreciate by 1-2% a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My parent's "starter home" in Leesburg just sold for $990k. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/220-Queen-St-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/12408796_zpid/

They bought it in the 90s for around $140k. They sold it in 2005 after I graduated HS and built a house outside of Richmond.

I live in Leesburg with my own family and noticed the house had a Coming Soon sign when I went to drop off my kid at her friend's house nearby. I looked up the house and couldn't believe it was now going for almost $1mil. A lot of improvements have been made since I lived there as a kid, but still...the house seemed SO small growing up (fam of 5) and it is old (built in the 20s).

As a comparison, an empty lot 1 street over was purchased and had 2 new homes built on it. Each of those homes just sold for just slightly over $1mil. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/210-Catoctin-Cir-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/338416888_zpid/ and https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/208-Catoctin-Cir-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/12408332_zpid/.

If I was on the market, I would not pay almost $1mil for a 1920s house when I could get a new build for ~$50k more.

Starter homes are now condos, really. The pipeline now seems to go apartment (single) > condo (married, no kids) > townhome (married w/ kid) > home (forever home). I know so many people who bought a condo or townhome and lived in them for years before they were able to buy a home, and they have stayed in those homes rather than using them as "starter homes."

Same. My parents’ “starter home” purchased in the late 70s on an associate professor’s single income now is worth $1.5 mil. lol. The starter home is dead.

This! My husband and I bought our “starter home” in 2020 for $1.3M or $1.58M in today’s dollars and it’s now worth $1.96M. It is 4 beds/3 baths and 1950 sqft, if you include the small finished basement, and there is also a detached garage. The location is great: a 15 minute walk to the train, grocery store, restaurants, pharmacy, post office, playground, tennis courts, and ball fields; a 15 minute bike ride to the beach; and a 5 minute walk to the library and park with a pond. When we bought we were early 30s with one kid and our HHI had just leapt to $387K (at the time the avg HHI in our small part of town was $800K). Now we are mid-30s with $900K HHI and three kids. We would love to move to a larger home, but are prioritizing making upgrades to the space that will make it better for us and hopefully deliver a solid ROI, investing and saving, and paying for a nanny and sending our kids to a great private school. Ideally, we’ll move in 2029 and be able to roll well over a million in equity into another house. And if the market is bad, we like our house and location enough that we can wait it out or stay where we are.

That's not a real starter home and sounds pretty big.

Ours is a starter home. We paid under $400K, now worth about $600K, 900 square feet fixer upper. 3 bedrooms/1 bath

[Anonymous]

Our second house was a 5000sf 7br home in falls Church then we didn't like the schools and went to Langley high zone to a 8000sf we are under 42

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t they care about the earth? The environment? Where is their eco-conscience?

No boomer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t they care about the earth? The environment? Where is their eco-conscience?

+1 They should want smaller homes. Less materials. Less energy. Less systems. Less furniture. Etc.

If you watch tiktok it's all about private planes and big homes we won't settle for less

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don’t they care about the earth? The environment? Where is their eco-conscience?

+1 They should want smaller homes. Less materials. Less energy. Less systems. Less furniture. Etc.

If you watch tiktok it's all about private planes and big homes we won't settle for less

This person was being sarcastic. Most reasonable people are not going to willingly decrease the standard of living for the “environment”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are millennials and bought a forever home

I'm a Millennial married to an Xer and we knew a decade ago not to buy a starter home. Why in this market would I want to pay realtor fees on upgrading when I could save that money for my kids' college tuitions? Why would I take on another mortgage when I paid off the one I have?

We stayed in our starter house and saved. Easier solution.

I mean our "forever home" is a 4 br, 3 ba, 1600 sq foot home we shove our five person family into. It fits us, but it's tight.

starter homes dont have four bedrooms and three baths. My house I grew up a family of six was a starter home had three bedrooms and one bath. 1,200 sf on a 40x100 plot.

Your house in that neighborhood would be called an Executive home My neighbors next block who were rich lawyers and doctors had the 1,600 sf models.

It goes to show how much home sizes have increased over last 50-80 years

This sounds horrific and I grew up in the city. What happened if anyone had stomach flu? How did you get ready in the morning? Even a simple shower takes at least 10 minutes, then also add flossing, shaving etc.

Are you for real? This is how many, many people grew up. You do your hair and makeup in the bedroom. You don’t take a 10 minute shower. I have my own bathroom today and I don’t take a 10 minute shower.

Yes. What a nightmare.