Lol, 100% true story. I purchased early in the building process when there were a ton of incentives. A neighbor just closed on an identical house a few doors down and paid 229k more. |
| Elder Millennial here that has an $9000 mortgage payment on a $3M home. Sunk a significant amount into down payment to get it "that low". We can swing it but its pretty painful to see that payment go out each month |
Well you don’t need a 3million dollar home. Life is about choices. |
| 1984 and 1983 millennial. We bought our large-ish sfh on a busy street for $880 in 2016. It required a new roof, lots of landscaping, and some repairs but was otherwise livable. Mortgage we refinanced twice down to $3900. We also added a bathroom to the basement. Getting below $4k felt good. Now we need a new kitchen (appliances and cabinets dying). We have enough room for each of our 3 kids to have a bedroom and two wfh offices. But, again, we live on a busy street. So tradeoff on growth of house value is real. My guess is we could sell for $1.1 easily now but that’s not that much growth given how much we’ve put in to renovate the house already. |
burying the lede a bit? I'm guessing you put down a quarter million to get that mortgage payment. |
| Mid/late 30s couple bought a DC townhouse for $850k in 2019. Can’t remember exact down payment but it was under 20%. Currently paying ab $3500 a month. |
| OP, we are millennials and we were in your boat, so to speak, with our first house. We bought a townhouse right out of college, on the advice of our parents. We paid $300K. We didn’t have a huge down payment so we paid PMI and we rented our basement. When that house appreciates to almost $600K we sold and bought a bigger house for $950K (8 years ago}. But, this time we had a $600K down payment from the sale of our house and savings. We also refinanced early in the pandemic for just over 2% at 15 years. Our mortgage is $3500 today. We were a little lucky with timing on the original purchase and we bought our newer home pre-pandemic. Buying right out of college was the best thing we ever did, even though it was a lot of money at the time. |
| We're millennials, bought in 2017, and our mortgage payment is around $2,100 counting taxes and insurance. The difference is that you bought a $850K house and we bought a $425K house (townhouse in Silver Spring, inside the beltway). We could never have afforded a $4,000 a month mortgage (that's over half our combined take home pay), so we had to spend less than you did. |
| I read that thread too OP, and had the exact same question as you. We are older millennials and bought in 2021. PITI is $4800. We had student loans at the time as well as daycare. It was extremely tight last year but everything has since changed (student loans paid off, HHI up another $100k, daycare almost done). It was tough to make the decision to buy in the higher end but we valued our family home more than some other things that folks around here spend money on (and yes, we are finding retirement and 529s). There’s no easy decision for our generation and if you have to pay upwards of $5k a month or more, then that’s what you have to do. |
Or most of the posters here live in a bubble and are completely unaware of or unwilling to consider any house outside of a few of the most highly desirable and sought after areas. The majority of people cannot afford a 4000 a month mortgage. Where do you think they live? There are neighborhoods in Montgomery county where SFH do not cost 850k. |
OP here. Are those people on DCUM, though? If you look at any of the threads citing HHI on this board our HHI of $250k sounds VERY middle of the road. |
| I’m 39 and bought my first house in 2010. With a refi in late 2020, out PITI is 1900/mo. We do have a combined HHi of 550k and we put another 100k into our refi so we count do a 15year and get a 2.5% rate. |
Maybe more DCUM posters making a "middle of the road" 250k (haha) should be looking in more affordable areas. I think a 650k mortgage on a 250k HHI is too much of a stretch. You did not need to buy a house that expensive. You wanted a house that expensive and are complaining that your mortgage is 4k/month and cannot fathom how people afford it without inheritances or having bought years ago or being liars. Some people choose to live farther out, buy something that needs updating, or buy something in not the most coveted schools in order to have a more affordable mortgage. |
Yup, we are here. We paid under $400K for our house. We could now probably afford that much but with kids headed to college, college is our priority. |
I'm not complaining, it's well within our budget and we save plenty. I was just surprised to see that everyone else seems to be paying so little. |