Starter homes are now pre-fab Tiny homes: consider moving

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Abolish zoning and the free market will take care of the issue.

Everyone can check out Houston for a living example of zero zoning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Family of 4 living in a 1200 sq ft house built in 1929. We've raised our kids here. They're teens now.

Plenty of non-Americans live in small apartments (small by American standards), even middle class Europeans and Asians.

How much is your home worth now?

The house is worthless. The land is worth 1M+, because it's close to downtown Bethesda. As soon as we sell, the house will be torn down for some gaudy monstrosity.

So your home, which is actually the perfect starter home, cannot be considered a starter home because it is too expensive.

[Anonymous]

This is such a weird post.

Give me a starter home in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, but not at a price that I've arbitrarily decided is too much money. But also, my starter home needs to have a play room and an office.

What?!

[Anonymous]

A lot of these starter homes often don't come with a "starter" price tag. The people boasting about their ability to live in smaller spaces certainly won't be selling their home at a starter home price. They'll sell to a developer who will then plop down a 1 Million+ dollar home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most people delay kids until their 30s, so this gives you a good time to buy and live in your starter home, built equity and then move into a 3 bedroom + after.

I bought a 2 bedroom townhouse in the DC area at 23, then lived in it until we moved to our forever home before having kids at 30. But even still, you can live in a starter home until you have 2 kids at least.

The median sold price for a townhouse in MoCo in 2024 is $453k according to Redfin. What did you pay for your townhouse back in the day?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Abolish zoning and the free market will take care of the issue.

Everyone can check out Houston for a living example of zero zoning.

+1 particularly the town near Houston where the fertilizer factory right next to the elementary school exploded. No thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is such a weird post.

Give me a starter home in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, but not at a price that I've arbitrarily decided is too much money. But also, my starter home needs to have a play room and an office.

What?!

If a starter home is for a young family, an area for kids play things seems reasonable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such a weird post.

Give me a starter home in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, but not at a price that I've arbitrarily decided is too much money. But also, my starter home needs to have a play room and an office.

What?!

If a starter home is for a young family, an area for kids play things seems reasonable.

It's really not. I didn't know a single person growing up with a "play room." They were called living rooms and bedrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such a weird post.

Give me a starter home in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country, but not at a price that I've arbitrarily decided is too much money. But also, my starter home needs to have a play room and an office.

What?!

If a starter home is for a young family, an area for kids play things seems reasonable.

It's really not. I didn't know a single person growing up with a "play room." They were called living rooms and bedrooms.

Do you know what reasonable means? It doesn’t mean mandatory and it doesn’t mean your anecdotal experience is the gospel.

[Anonymous]

If you think it's reasonable to complain about not finding a starter home with a play room, then I will reasonably pull out my tiny violin orchestra for you.

[Anonymous]

The housing crisis IS real and I sympathize with people who are feeling left out of the housing market. We (dual income early 40s) just bought our first house in 2022 when rates were beginning to shoot up. We likely overpaid but were desperate.

That said, I do wonder what exactly it is that people are defining as a "starter home." You're just not going to get a 3br 2ba for $250,000 here. You're just not. If that's what you are looking for, you need to move. Should you be able to find that for $500k? Yes, and you can. Fully 1/3 of the homes for sale in my GS6 DMV area code fit that description.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The housing crisis IS real and I sympathize with people who are feeling left out of the housing market. We (dual income early 40s) just bought our first house in 2022 when rates were beginning to shoot up. We likely overpaid but were desperate.

That said, I do wonder what exactly it is that people are defining as a "starter home." You're just not going to get a 3br 2ba for $250,000 here. You're just not. If that's what you are looking for, you need to move. Should you be able to find that for $500k? Yes, and you can. Fully 1/3 of the homes for sale in my GS6 DMV area code fit that description.

Where do you live? The only areas in the DMV where you can reliably find SFHs for 500k or less at this point (and I'm including townhomes in this even though they aren't technically SFHs but I think people should look at townhomes for starter home opportunities) is the eastern suburbs in Maryland. Places like Boie, Woodmore, Oxon Hill. And even in these places, I'm not sure if "fully 1/3" of homes coming on the market will be in that price range -- you still see plenty of 3/2 houses in those areas (many with dated kitchens and baths) for well over 500k.

If you want a home in the DMV for 500k or less, you are looking at:

- condo, which is fine (I live in a condo) but will not appreciate well and has other costs in the form of condo fees. Condos are also significantly less family friendly, due to both size and the fact that American-style condos/apartments are largely built with young professionals or retirees in mind (other countries where apartment-living is more standard and acceptable build family-friendly apartments, but we don't do that as much here)
- houses with something seriously wrong with them (whether it's structural issues, location on a dangerous road, layout so jacked as to be almost unlivable, etc.)
- townhouses in a handful of neighborhoods that tend to have abysmal (like not even mediocre, just actually bad) schools and frequently high crime

You can go further out and that's valid, but if you work in person at all (which the vast majority of people do -- the percent of the population that is full-time remote is still very small) living 45 minutes or more away from your job is not only a big quality of life issue, it can also be totally impossible if you have kids.

We are leaving the DMV in the next few years due to this issue -- we work in fields where we've pretty much topped out our income and we're never going to be able to buy a 700-800k home, and even if we could just scrimp and save to get to a big enough down payment where we could afford a house that price, by then those houses will all cost 900k-1 million. So we'll stick it out in our condo until we can figure out a lower COL area with our jobs.

But I get tired of people gaslighting me that the problem is that my standards are too high or that I want a 5 bedroom, fully updated house in the best school district with a playroom and a 3 car garage (I don't, it would never even occur to me to look for that). I want a 3 bedroom house (we would be willing to live with 1 bathroom if the price was right) in a reasonably safe neighborhood with a workable school situation and either access to public transportation or a driving commute of under 45 minutes each way (we will accept longer commutes if by metro or bus because it would save us money in not needing two cars). We've been looking for this for 5 years, every time we think we might be getting close, prices go up (or, more recently, rates go up while prices stay the same). It's just not going to happen.

I truly do not know where middle class workers are going to live in this area moving forward. If you're a teacher, better go marry a lawyer or consultant or hope you inherit a house from your parents or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Family of 4 living in a 1200 sq ft house built in 1929. We've raised our kids here. They're teens now.

Plenty of non-Americans live in small apartments (small by American standards), even middle class Europeans and Asians.

non-Americans can fit into tiny spaces more comfortably bc they take up less space.

Americans have too much stuff. European waistlines are expanding too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The housing crisis IS real and I sympathize with people who are feeling left out of the housing market. We (dual income early 40s) just bought our first house in 2022 when rates were beginning to shoot up. We likely overpaid but were desperate.

That said, I do wonder what exactly it is that people are defining as a "starter home." You're just not going to get a 3br 2ba for $250,000 here. You're just not. If that's what you are looking for, you need to move. Should you be able to find that for $500k? Yes, and you can. Fully 1/3 of the homes for sale in my GS6 DMV area code fit that description.

Where do you live? The only areas in the DMV where you can reliably find SFHs for 500k or less at this point (and I'm including townhomes in this even though they aren't technically SFHs but I think people should look at townhomes for starter home opportunities) is the eastern suburbs in Maryland. Places like Boie, Woodmore, Oxon Hill. And even in these places, I'm not sure if "fully 1/3" of homes coming on the market will be in that price range -- you still see plenty of 3/2 houses in those areas (many with dated kitchens and baths) for well over 500k.

If you want a home in the DMV for 500k or less, you are looking at:

- condo, which is fine (I live in a condo) but will not appreciate well and has other costs in the form of condo fees. Condos are also significantly less family friendly, due to both size and the fact that American-style condos/apartments are largely built with young professionals or retirees in mind (other countries where apartment-living is more standard and acceptable build family-friendly apartments, but we don't do that as much here)
- houses with something seriously wrong with them (whether it's structural issues, location on a dangerous road, layout so jacked as to be almost unlivable, etc.)
- townhouses in a handful of neighborhoods that tend to have abysmal (like not even mediocre, just actually bad) schools and frequently high crime

You can go further out and that's valid, but if you work in person at all (which the vast majority of people do -- the percent of the population that is full-time remote is still very small) living 45 minutes or more away from your job is not only a big quality of life issue, it can also be totally impossible if you have kids.

We are leaving the DMV in the next few years due to this issue -- we work in fields where we've pretty much topped out our income and we're never going to be able to buy a 700-800k home, and even if we could just scrimp and save to get to a big enough down payment where we could afford a house that price, by then those houses will all cost 900k-1 million. So we'll stick it out in our condo until we can figure out a lower COL area with our jobs.

But I get tired of people gaslighting me that the problem is that my standards are too high or that I want a 5 bedroom, fully updated house in the best school district with a playroom and a 3 car garage (I don't, it would never even occur to me to look for that). I want a 3 bedroom house (we would be willing to live with 1 bathroom if the price was right) in a reasonably safe neighborhood with a workable school situation and either access to public transportation or a driving commute of under 45 minutes each way (we will accept longer commutes if by metro or bus because it would save us money in not needing two cars). We've been looking for this for 5 years, every time we think we might be getting close, prices go up (or, more recently, rates go up while prices stay the same). It's just not going to happen.

I truly do not know where middle class workers are going to live in this area moving forward. If you're a teacher, better go marry a lawyer or consultant or hope you inherit a house from your parents or something.

Try 22150 or 22151. There are still SFHs (in addition to THs) in the mid-500s. Schools truly are fine, though not well-regarded by most of DCUM. Commute to DC is great.

[Anonymous]

We have a 1000 square foot house. We just paid it off so not moving to a bigger house as the financial freedom is great. Small homes have benefits and easier to keep track of kids and much closer as a family.