First time homebuyer: lower-price condo or stretch for rowhouse in DC?

[Anonymous]

Stretch for sure. Or move somewhere you can buy a house for your original budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stretch. We put $100k down on $850k in Alexandria (so not the same situation, we left DC be we wanted a SFH but similar price/income consideration) with $280k HHI and probably not a ton of income growth. Will likely top off at $300k/$320k. We have 2 young kids and because of the pandemic have our own nanny which is the priciest childcare and we still manage. We meet our savings goals every month. We don’t max out retirement but one of us is close and the other has generous employer contribution in addition to employee contribution. I will caveat this by saying we have no debt other than the mortgage. We will, of course end up paying for PreK, but when we left DC we got into our absolute last preK lottery option (Inbound school was IMPOSSIBLE to get into for preK. They even rejected siblings.) so we were going to do private preK anyways And then we just decided to move.

What DC neighborhood were you in?

We were in Hill East, zoned for Maury. We only managed to get into AT Oklahoma Avenue which was our last choice. Getting into PreK 3 most places in the city is not easy at this point and places that used to be sure bets aren't anymore (at least on the Hill. AT OK is the only sure bet). I'm less familiar with the areas OP is looking at in DC as I was a hill resident for 7 years. But OP, if you are banking on free preK for your future children I'd check out your in bounds school and schools located in the neighborhoods you are looking at to get a sense of how competitive it is to get into schools for preK 3. It was disheartening that we literally had not a snowball's chance in hell of getting into our in boundary school for preschool. We knew Maury was popular but were naive in what that meant.: https://public.tableau.com/profile/aaron2446#!/vizhome/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData/MSDCPublicDisplay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stretch. We put $100k down on $850k in Alexandria (so not the same situation, we left DC be we wanted a SFH but similar price/income consideration) with $280k HHI and probably not a ton of income growth. Will likely top off at $300k/$320k. We have 2 young kids and because of the pandemic have our own nanny which is the priciest childcare and we still manage. We meet our savings goals every month. We don’t max out retirement but one of us is close and the other has generous employer contribution in addition to employee contribution. I will caveat this by saying we have no debt other than the mortgage. We will, of course end up paying for PreK, but when we left DC we got into our absolute last preK lottery option (Inbound school was IMPOSSIBLE to get into for preK. They even rejected siblings.) so we were going to do private preK anyways And then we just decided to move.

What DC neighborhood were you in?

We were in Hill East, zoned for Maury. We only managed to get into AT Oklahoma Avenue which was our last choice. Getting into PreK 3 most places in the city is not easy at this point and places that used to be sure bets aren't anymore (at least on the Hill. AT OK is the only sure bet). I'm less familiar with the areas OP is looking at in DC as I was a hill resident for 7 years. But OP, if you are banking on free preK for your future children I'd check out your in bounds school and schools located in the neighborhoods you are looking at to get a sense of how competitive it is to get into schools for preK 3. It was disheartening that we literally had not a snowball's chance in hell of getting into our in boundary school for preschool. We knew Maury was popular but were naive in what that meant.: https://public.tableau.com/profile/aaron2446#!/vizhome/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData/MSDCPublicDisplay.

I'm new to this: can you explain a bit about how this works? I know it's not the point of the thread but it's relevant. I thought free prek was guaranteed for DC residents? So it's an issue of too much demand in certain areas, so you might not get into places nearby and have to go to other parts of the city? Is it the same lottery as the charter lottery?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Neither. Townhouses have horrible noise/smell transfer.

I have lived in a rowhouse for the past 20 years and I can honestly say that I've never smelled my neighbors.

Not a sentence I expected to be typing...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Neither. Townhouses have horrible noise/smell transfer.

I have lived in a rowhouse for the past 20 years and I can honestly say that I've never smelled my neighbors.

Not a sentence I expected to be typing...

I think since we’re talking DC they are probably referring to all the posts of people claiming about pot smoking neighbors.

[Anonymous]

I have truly rarely seen such consensus on the DCUM real estate boards! And came here to say STRETCH. which everyone seems to be in agreement for. This is definitely the situation to stretch. And I saw your update - the market probably will be insufferable but interest rates have never been this low so hey, there's that. And if it helps, the market around here is almost always like this. We bid on multiple houses in the close-in burbs 4 years ago when we were purchasing. It's almost always a bit crazy, so you just have to go for it, buckle up, get ready for some disappointment but know there will always be another house, keep trucking til you land the right one.

[Anonymous]

I will say the opposite in parts of DC like Chinatown or near riots and marches prices of Condos are soft.

If anything get a deal on a two bedroom with parking and it might surprise you long term

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will say the opposite in parts of DC like Chinatown or near riots and marches prices of Condos are soft.

If anything get a deal on a two bedroom with parking and it might surprise you long term

Maybe, but the supply of modern condos is kinda infinite, there are only so many row homes in decent neighborhoods in NW DC. And can't speak for everyone, but kids seem to love the neighborhood feel of the classic row home neighborhoods. Once they get to K age, they can kinda do their own thing outside of the house and not get in your way, or hang out with their friends in the basement play areas.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, if you want to get a 2b2b condo around citycenter, it is so cheap compared to how it was last year. You can easily find a good one on market for $599k and even for that price it is not selling

https://www.redfin.com/DC/Washington/1150-K-St-NW-20005/unit-609/home/10347542

[Anonymous]

https://www.redfin.com/DC/Washington/1150-K-St-NW-20005/unit-411/home/10347512

Good location and has been sitting forever!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stretch. We put $100k down on $850k in Alexandria (so not the same situation, we left DC be we wanted a SFH but similar price/income consideration) with $280k HHI and probably not a ton of income growth. Will likely top off at $300k/$320k. We have 2 young kids and because of the pandemic have our own nanny which is the priciest childcare and we still manage. We meet our savings goals every month. We don’t max out retirement but one of us is close and the other has generous employer contribution in addition to employee contribution. I will caveat this by saying we have no debt other than the mortgage. We will, of course end up paying for PreK, but when we left DC we got into our absolute last preK lottery option (Inbound school was IMPOSSIBLE to get into for preK. They even rejected siblings.) so we were going to do private preK anyways And then we just decided to move.

What DC neighborhood were you in?

We were in Hill East, zoned for Maury. We only managed to get into AT Oklahoma Avenue which was our last choice. Getting into PreK 3 most places in the city is not easy at this point and places that used to be sure bets aren't anymore (at least on the Hill. AT OK is the only sure bet). I'm less familiar with the areas OP is looking at in DC as I was a hill resident for 7 years. But OP, if you are banking on free preK for your future children I'd check out your in bounds school and schools located in the neighborhoods you are looking at to get a sense of how competitive it is to get into schools for preK 3. It was disheartening that we literally had not a snowball's chance in hell of getting into our in boundary school for preschool. We knew Maury was popular but were naive in what that meant.: https://public.tableau.com/profile/aaron2446#!/vizhome/MSDCSeatsandWaitlistOfferData/MSDCPublicDisplay.

I'm new to this: can you explain a bit about how this works? I know it's not the point of the thread but it's relevant. I thought free prek was guaranteed for DC residents? So it's an issue of too much demand in certain areas, so you might not get into places nearby and have to go to other parts of the city? Is it the same lottery as the charter lottery?

This is PP and like I said, I only have knowledge of the Hill but the system is the same for all of DCPS & PCSB (charter schools). So how it works is you have to fill out a lottery application (that is inclusive of both public neighborhood schools and public charter schools--they're all the same lottery). There are various preferences--for example you may have a sibling attending (your older child attends the school), you may have a boundary preference (you live in the neighborhood zone for that school)--in boundary, sibling attending trumps them all. For preK you are not guaranteed space at your neighborhood school, but you are guaranteed space when they hit kindergarten. Some people also play the lottery in the hopes of getting in somewhere that they plan to stay throughout school--usually a charter school. In our situation, we ranked Maury #1 since that was our in-bound school and thus we had preference. We then listed pretty much every public neighborhood school on the hill near us. We added some charters--nothing particularly popular as we knew if we didn't get into Maury we weren't getting into SWS (for example).

Anyways, here's how it shook out if you look at the data. There were 33 open seats in PK3 at Maury, our #1 choice. 418 people had it on their lists. 33 of those got in. All 33 of those slots went to in-boundary students who already had siblings attending. By October, 5 offers off the waitlist were made. Again, all to in-boundary students with siblings attending. After October, there were still 4 in-boundary students with siblings attending who did not get in, followed by 52 in boundary students who never even had a shot, let alone everyone else who had no preference. Again, I will reiterate, Maury is a very popular school.

More data here on DCPS (non charter): https://enrolldcps.dc.gov/node/61

Depending on what you put on your list, you can 100% strike out for prek--though there is a chance to get leftover spots after the lottery at other schools you didn't have on your list. So say you list 12 schools that are all hard to get into, you face a good chance of getting into zero. That's why you look at wait list data to make a determination of what school is your first choice, and if there are any where it seems like everyone or nearly everyone gets in and whether that school is a good match for your family. We listed a school we knew we'd be 90-100% likely to get into in last place, but we knew when we put it on it might not be the right fit and we might go private. That's the school we ended up getting into.

There are some schools with guaranteed Early Action which means you are guaranteed a spot if you are in bounds: https://dcps.dc.gov/page/pre-kindergarten-pk3-and-pk4. But these change over time--for example Payne used to be on here but isn't anymore.

If this is OP, you are far away from this decision making as you don't have a little one yet so it's really hard to understand how things will look, but this is to give you an idea. Regardless, I still say stretch Like I said, we did, and we ended up without free prek and have still been able to make it work no problem.

[Anonymous]

Stretch. Rowhouses in DC are finite supply. New condo buildings are going up everyday.

[Anonymous]

I would argue not all condos are in infinite supply. I say this as some older low rise ones have larger units in great locations that would never be built again. I own a garden apt from the 1960s in a super prime location. They put 30 units on one acre. Today there would be a massive large high rise buildings packed in with high common charges.

There are a few ones like that in dc but cookie cutter new Condos are going to depreciate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would argue not all condos are in infinite supply. I say this as some older low rise ones have larger units in great locations that would never be built again. I own a garden apt from the 1960s in a super prime location. They put 30 units on one acre. Today there would be a massive large high rise buildings packed in with high common charges.

There are a few ones like that in dc but cookie cutter new Condos are going to depreciate.

Agree with this poster. Some condos are a great value. Not the new ones but we live in townhouse condo in an amazing super nice location and have outdoor space with low fees. The place on K st is not a good deal. Those are high fees and that isn't a great neighborhood for kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would argue not all condos are in infinite supply. I say this as some older low rise ones have larger units in great locations that would never be built again. I own a garden apt from the 1960s in a super prime location. They put 30 units on one acre. Today there would be a massive large high rise buildings packed in with high common charges.

There are a few ones like that in dc but cookie cutter new Condos are going to depreciate.

Agree with this poster. Some condos are a great value. Not the new ones but we live in townhouse condo in an amazing super nice location and have outdoor space with low fees. The place on K st is not a good deal. Those are high fees and that isn't a great neighborhood for kids.

I agree, I have a friend living there and she told me that it is full of lawyers who worked nearby. Good side she mentioned is that it is pretty quiet/dead and has very very few parties.