Is it completely hopeless? Want to buy home, no down payment.

[Anonymous]

Keep renting, keep saving, but don't go back to work until the kids are in school. It's just not worth it on that salary. The next couple years will go by extremely fast -- not worth it to miss it to get a house (maybe) a little bit quicker.

[Anonymous]

Saving for retirement was wise. You are getting bad reaction because you have no downpayment. If you had said you saved at least 30k and wanted to buy people would have been more sympathetic. You don't live in a big place and you quoting 2k for 2 kids childcare tells me you don't overspend. Cheapest daycare is around that.You seem grounded enough. Remember all that financial emotional stress when your home tanked and you did deed in lieu? Remember property tax insurance and repair costs? I went through a short sale and lived with the stress of plummeting income and short sale paperwork for such a long time I am glad I don't have a mortgage. We need to concentrate on the positive side of things. You are young enough you will get a place in 10 years max.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who said anything about needing to be close in or in Arlington/McLean or in any sort of "most desirable" area? DH works sorta near Tysons with an easy exit to 495.

If 1000 square feet is working well for us now, I believe we will need no more than 1200 square feet. We would prefer a TH or a neat condo to a run-down SFH. Not new, but maybe 15 years old or so. The idea of old, moldy houses stresses me out.
I'm not trying to buy now, I know that's out and makes no sense anyway. I'm thinking/worried about being able to buy EVER. Or at least within the next five years. DH job is stable and we're pretty sure we will be here.
It just sucks SO MUCH because DH and I lived live poor students early in our marriage to save up a DP, all for naught.

Part of the problem is that there isn't a lot of what we're looking for - smaller, newer, maybe in Fairfax/Burke. Most of the newer stuff being built is big and expensive.

Right, because Tysons is cheap. Fairfax and Burke will be out of your reach also, unless you are ok with a tiny condo. Really, you don't have enough income to support a home purchase.

OP here. I do not want to live anywhere near Tysons - yuck. DH works kind of near to there but not actually in it and does not have to go through the worst part of it. Considering he spent 3 hours a day commuting before this, I don't think a 45-50 min commute is that big of a deal.
1200 square feet will be enough for us for our forever home/condo/TH whatever.
PPs are correct here mostly, we will wait and keep saving, and hope that the evil people who caused the real estate mess will get theirs. However, I don't agree that a 70k income should necessarily preclude a family from owning a very modest home. Most of you already own homes and only want to see the value go up, up, up. High home prices only benefit owners. Wherever there are winners, there are losers. We are paying rent - I disagree that this is throwing money away; we do need a place to live after all. But aside from the issue of the down payment, the way most of you are putting it is that it more expensive to own than to rent a similar home, but then why on earth would anyone buy?

We will probably wait until DC2 enters kindergarten. I just realized that's only 2.5 years away (a few months ago it seemed like forever away.) We'll see what, if any, reasonable work opportunities come up for me. I know that would raise our HHI - and our taxes. Amazing, but there are families that only earn 70k with both parents working.... imagine that!

Your opinion on the issue is absolutely irrelevant. I don't agree that most companies provide no paid maternity leave, but there's nothing I can do about it. Same thing. There is no way, no how that you can afford a remotely decent home (and you want "newish"!) on your HHI anywhere in the DC metro area, especially if you are hoping for decent schools. I know you don't want to hear it, but you need to focus all of your energy on getting a job. It may not help in the short term, but it will go a long way toward securing your family's financial future. The longer you wait, the fewer opportunities you will have.

I bought a townhouse in a good (not great) school area on this salary. However, I did have the 20% to put down.

[Anonymous]

OP I feel hopeless too and I have 100k for a downpayment and 250k in equity on my first home. It's just a rough area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP I feel hopeless too and I have 100k for a downpayment and 250k in equity on my first home. It's just a rough area.

wow do you feel hopeless??? sounds like you could buy something really nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I feel hopeless too and I have 100k for a downpayment and 250k in equity on my first home. It's just a rough area.

wow do you feel hopeless??? sounds like you could buy something really nice.

meant to write "why do you feel hopeless?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP I feel hopeless too and I have 100k for a downpayment and 250k in equity on my first home. It's just a rough area.

wow do you feel hopeless??? sounds like you could buy something really nice.

meant to write "why do you feel hopeless?"

Because I'm looking in the Tysons area and can't find anything nice under 700k (or 800k really). We don't make that much money (170k) but live very frugally and are big savers but mortgage companies don't care about that. We recently tried to get a home for 640k (with 100k down and not selling 1st home right away) and were turned down. Houses sell incredibly fast in my neighborhood (average is 8 days) so we don't want to put ours up for sale until we've found a place since we've looked for nearly a year.

[Anonymous]

Maybe try Manassas.