Genz and millennials don't want your small starter homes want forever homes now
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Anonymous
But people on here are saying my 1600 sq foot house is not a starter home either. Promise I don't have 6 bathrooms, 2 HVAC units, or 3 ovens. |
Anonymous
| More people should simply be grateful they have a roof over their heads. |
Anonymous
+1 this I do have friends that climbed the property ladder. They are college sweethearts that married in their mid twenties. They also started their careers out of college. DH and I married in our early thirties. Our careers were just getting started because we each spent our twenties trying out careers that ended up being dead ends/bad fits and then going to grad school, where we met. We didn't have a down payment until our late thirties after we had a kid. It was during the pandemic so we each wanted an office and wanted to have a workout space. With a kid and two full time jobs, we knew we didn't have bandwidth for a fixer upper. Plus, let's not forget that the "starter homes" of yesteryear are now 70+ year old homes, often with deferred maintenance issues, and aren't especially cheap either. |
Anonymous
Nothing wrong with this, as long as you are prepared to pay accordingly. You don’t get a big home at a starter home price just because you are older first time buyers. |
Anonymous
My sister who is older Gen X bought a starter TH in the late 80s. They tried to move up to a bigger house in the late 90s but everything in their school district was ridiculously expensive plus needed upgrades. So they got a storage unit to offload extra stuff and squeezed into their TH, eventually putting in a new kitchen, baths and over flooring. Their kids are grown and they are so glad they kept the TH. It looks beautiful with the upgrades and they saved so much money which they used for fabulous vacations. The only downside is the stairs due to aging in place issues over the next decade or two, so they are trying to decide when to sell and where to go when they do. |
Anonymous
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My in laws bought and lived in a huge house. When it came time for selling it even though all the kitchens and baths had been renovated within the last 5 years and they custom built it 25 years prior they had to keep cutting the price. It was in an excellent school district too.
The one house their owned before their 6000 square foot home was a 2500 square foot colonial in a walkable town about 15 minutes away. That home sold about the same time as my in laws second house. This colonial had not been updated since my in laws owners it and sold for more than my in laws second house! I live in what would be considered a starter home for many. I love it! I lived in Europe and other countries where you don’t have these huge houses and I would rather spend my money to invest and travel than on a big home and its maintenance and taxes. To each their own I guess. |
Anonymous
Okay? This is a market. As a seller, you need to recognize not everybody wants what you are selling, so stop whining about Gen Z and millennials because we don't want your 70+ year old home that was unfortunately not built to last. |
Anonymous
most people don't consider a townhome a real house. |
Anonymous
That's their problem. I don't care if idiots think my house where I live and raise my kids and host family and friends and nurture my marriage and cook meals and live my life is "not a real house." Sorry they are so limited and judgmental I guess. |
Anonymous
Except Big houses close in still hold value. I have a "small big house". Meaning No HOA, flat half acre. I have a finished basement I don't use so no cleaning other than vacuum every few weeks. My main floor we live in Kitchen and Big Den, upstairs in our large Master Bedroom suite. However, I do have four normal size bedrooms upstairs beside master, and I have two in basement. And a large Dining and Formal Living room only used when company comes over. Since I only use Den, Kitchen, MBR cleaning not much different my one bedroom Coop when first married. About to be a empty nestor, but my kids cleaned their own bedrooms and baths. With them gone soon those doors will only open when they visit. They are all single. So my house really comes to life at all the holidays or graduations. Some people have 4-5 kids, blended families, inlaws living with them, families from out of town who visit. My kid graduates HS later this month and I will have 11 people staying over all in a bed. I have beds for 13 people and 5 bathrooms. Only headache is keep track of shut off values and toliets as so many. I go to Ace or Home Depot every few month with a frozen shut off for toliet, running toliet, or sink faucet. I have 8 sinks and 5 toliets to kick track of. I fix them myself. But I can see it getting expensive it not handy |
Anonymous
In th same situation...wish we hadn't been so frugal when we bought ten years ago. Instead we feel stuck in a place that's too small and has some features we dislike but can't change. Moving someplace else would quadruple our monthly payment, so we're grudgingly staying put. |
Anonymous
Just stating the facts Man. Look I grew up in a starter home we never left a small block of small homes on 40x100 plots. We did not associate with the Condo, Coop, Apartment rental crowd. They were considered a step above a guy living in a tent under the highway. And the folks in the nice beautiful fancy large houses in richer part of town called our houses shacks and my favorite Shanties. Today it is even worse. People google your house before accepting and invite. |
Anonymous
All houses require maintenance. So many people try to buy a new home thinking that it won't need much maintenance only to discover issues with the build that require tons of work, from mis-installed plumbing to nail pops to bad drainage to terrible plant landscaping choices or no landscaping to stupid kitchen design to defective appliances. The new build next door to us had a builder install MDF as exterior trim. It swelled with rain the following summer and every bit of trim on the house had to be replaced. The builder was no where to be found. Another new build up the street was installed with terrible drainage and 3 months into owning the home they had a storm at 6' of water in their basement. It cost them $300k to install water mitigation. The new build across the street from us had all the landscaping die because it was improperly selected and planted so the house looks like poop and needs entirely new landscaping--not cheap. There's a lot to be said about a tastefully renovated older home. Ours is 84 years old and was in rough shape when we bought from deferred maintenance, but we've tastefully renovated and it's now really nice. I cringe when I walk through a McMansion new build and see crappy vinyl windows, ugly MDF trim, crooked tile backsplashes, and poorly thought out layouts. New builds in the DMV are full of bad build quality and poor design choices. |
Anonymous
Not quite a 1:1 but similar happened to my in laws, though because their previous home was in an area of huge appreciation they made a bunch on it and were able to pay cash for house #2 and then sell that and downsize with cash for house #3. The happiest they all were was the smallest (less than 2000 sq ft) house with a community and walk ability. I feel similarly about trading off the huge home for a walkable true community and flexibility is other areas. |
Anonymous
A brownstone is a townhome and if it's not a real house a whole lot of people in NYC are paying exorbitant amounts for a not real house (also insert DC row homes, London's Victoria terraced houses, etc...) |