Genz and millennials don't want your small starter homes want forever homes now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are these smaller starter homes?

I live in 22181-Vienna- and the original mid1950s “starter” homes in 22180 are disappearing monthly - all being razed with enormous homes replacing.

Even a vintage Vienna Woods house is selling for 850k+

There are plenty of starter homes in places that you are not willing to live. https://redf.in/uUlxmm
This house is near the VRE. It has an easy commute to DC and Alexandria.

Way to miss the point. That’s not a “starter home” for a family with two working parents with DC jobs that want to send their kids to decent schools. That’s a non-starter home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am an elder millennial stuck in our starter home we bought a decade ago because housing values have risen much faster than wages. I really wish we could go back in time and just stretched and bought a slightly bigger house a decade ago. Those houses that were $100-$200 above our budget a decade ago are now entirely out of reach.

This is us, too. Our now slightly-too-small 3br condo was huge for two people (pre-kids). Now I'd like a 4br house with a small yard, which I could have had for another 100-200k back then. But we can't afford to upgrade to a 4br now at the current prices and mortgage rates. We'd be paying at least 2x as much monthly for a few hundred more sq. feet. Heck, I'm not sure I could afford to buy my condo at today's rates.

I completely see the appeal of wanting to just buy a house you love and be done with it. Moving is expensive: transactional costs (thanks to real estate agents and transfer/recordation taxes) eat up minimum 7-8% of the value when you sell, to say nothing of having to pack up your whole life.

[Anonymous]

Hahaha. Sure OP. Most people in the DC metro can barely afford "starter homes." I almost laughed when the realtor called the houses we were looking at "starter homes." Sure, we've owned two houses elsewhere, built equity, and this is all we can afford here dude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are these smaller starter homes?

I live in 22181-Vienna- and the original mid1950s “starter” homes in 22180 are disappearing monthly - all being razed with enormous homes replacing.

Even a vintage Vienna Woods house is selling for 850k+

There are plenty of starter homes in places that you are not willing to live. https://redf.in/uUlxmm
This house is near the VRE. It has an easy commute to DC and Alexandria.

Way to miss the point. That’s not a “starter home” for a family with two working parents with DC jobs that want to send their kids to decent schools. That’s a non-starter home.

Millennial here, I don't think you understand the concept of a starter home. If you're a millennial as well you're exactly the kind of millennial that is giving the rest of us a bad name.

A starter home is just that - the bottom rung of the property ladder. It's what you can afford at the very beginning, not what you want once you've got school-aged kids. You get the small, outdated house in a bad school district as DINKs in your 20s or early 30s, you cash out the equity for a place in a good elementary school district once you've had a kid and they're 4 or 5, and you do it again in middle or high school and hopefully along the way you've built enough equity and advanced enough in your careers to end up in your dream home.

I get that it sucks that generations before us were able to get houses in good neighborhoods as starter homes, and I absolutely wish we could have even just the same opportunities the boomers had, but that's simply not reality. Unless you're a dual income biglaw/tech couple it's just not feasible in 2025 for regular joe white collar couples to have a starter home in a great neighborhood no matter how much you sacrifice on size or condition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want a small luxury home. I like small things. I'd love for someone to build a small luxury car that's not a Mini Cooper.

I am still in my tiny "starter" home, despite having the millions to afford something larger... because I LOVE MY HOUSE.

So no. Not everything is as you say.

Same.

We just left our 2400 sq ft "starter home" for a gorgeous 2000 sq ft luxury home designed by an incredible architect surrounded by incredible landscaping. We're DINKs, though.

[Anonymous]

My parent's "starter home" in Leesburg just sold for $990k. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/220-Queen-St-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/12408796_zpid/

They bought it in the 90s for around $140k. They sold it in 2005 after I graduated HS and built a house outside of Richmond.

I live in Leesburg with my own family and noticed the house had a Coming Soon sign when I went to drop off my kid at her friend's house nearby. I looked up the house and couldn't believe it was now going for almost $1mil. A lot of improvements have been made since I lived there as a kid, but still...the house seemed SO small growing up (fam of 5) and it is old (built in the 20s).

As a comparison, an empty lot 1 street over was purchased and had 2 new homes built on it. Each of those homes just sold for just slightly over $1mil. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/210-Catoctin-Cir-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/338416888_zpid/ and https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/208-Catoctin-Cir-NE-Leesburg-VA-20176/12408332_zpid/.

If I was on the market, I would not pay almost $1mil for a 1920s house when I could get a new build for ~$50k more.

Starter homes are now condos, really. The pipeline now seems to go apartment (single) > condo (married, no kids) > townhome (married w/ kid) > home (forever home). I know so many people who bought a condo or townhome and lived in them for years before they were able to buy a home, and they have stayed in those homes rather than using them as "starter homes."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are millennials and bought a forever home

I'm a Millennial married to an Xer and we knew a decade ago not to buy a starter home. Why in this market would I want to pay realtor fees on upgrading when I could save that money for my kids' college tuitions? Why would I take on another mortgage when I paid off the one I have?

We stayed in our starter house and saved. Easier solution.

I mean our "forever home" is a 4 br, 3 ba, 1600 sq foot home we shove our five person family into. It fits us, but it's tight.

starter homes dont have four bedrooms and three baths. My house I grew up a family of six was a starter home had three bedrooms and one bath. 1,200 sf on a 40x100 plot.

Your house in that neighborhood would be called an Executive home My neighbors next block who were rich lawyers and doctors had the 1,600 sf models.

It goes to show how much home sizes have increased over last 50-80 years

This sounds horrific and I grew up in the city. What happened if anyone had stomach flu? How did you get ready in the morning? Even a simple shower takes at least 10 minutes, then also add flossing, shaving etc.

[Anonymous]

Older millennial. I bought a starter home out of school during the Great Recession, and have traded up several times and refinanced when rates were low. Now we have millions in home equity that we wouldn't have if we had waited to buy. I understand the arguments people make against real estate, but buying young and trading up worke really well for our family, and now we're in a home that is perfect for our family until the kids leave for school, at which point we'll downsize and pull some money out as we are overallocated to real estate right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also like small homes. I'm in my 40s and own a condo which has appreciated well (hot neighborhood that has gentrified while I lived here) and want to sell it and buy a nice, small home with a small yard or just a patio (outdoor space but low maintenance) and opportunity to install solar panels and a EV hookup.

It's harder to find than I thought it would be, especially in desirable neighborhoods. And I'm happy to buy renovated or unrenovated, I just don't want a hideous flip.

I don't get why people want such large homes. It multiplies the cost of everything -- furnishing, cleaning, repairs and renovations, energy usage, etc. plus big homes require more land and often come with bigger yards that must be landscaped and maintained. I like gardening but hate mowing the lawn and just want room for garden planters for vegetables and a little space for flowers.

I don't get it. Are millennials all having tons of kids?

I'm selling a smaller home. Wish I knew how to find you!

I agree with you and also like smaller homes. Easier to care for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am an elder millennial stuck in our starter home we bought a decade ago because housing values have risen much faster than wages. I really wish we could go back in time and just stretched and bought a slightly bigger house a decade ago. Those houses that were $100-$200 above our budget a decade ago are now entirely out of reach.

That's what happened to us, too. The housing prices rose faster than our salaries. While we would have qualified, we did not feel comfortable with taking out that much.

Years later, we have paid off our starter home and have no more mortgage. I do like not having that monthly payment any longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an elder millennial stuck in our starter home we bought a decade ago because housing values have risen much faster than wages. I really wish we could go back in time and just stretched and bought a slightly bigger house a decade ago. Those houses that were $100-$200 above our budget a decade ago are now entirely out of reach.

That's what happened to us, too. The housing prices rose faster than our salaries. While we would have qualified, we did not feel comfortable with taking out that much.

Years later, we have paid off our starter home and have no more mortgage. I do like not having that monthly payment any longer.

We are in our "starter condo" for the same reason -- we bought it because we wanted to start building equity and we were getting outbid on ever SFH we bid on (all tiny, unrenovated -- "starter homes") even though we were stretching to the tippy top of our budget. A lot of the places we missed out on were snapped up by developers to flip, and we just felt like we couldn't compete because a buyer like that can come in with cash and waive certain contingencies that we couldn't as first time home buyers financing the purchase. So we bought a condo we could afford and figured even if it didn't appreciate, we would build equity via mortgage payments and continue to save and be able to afford a house within 5-7 years.

Well it's been 12 years. It's probably appreciated a little, but SFHs near us have appreciated way faster and even our equity and extra savings have not kept up. We make more than we did, but now we have a kid, and the lifestyle we'd have to adopt to afford one of those houses just does not seem feasible for a family saving for college. Plus we have to deal with schools which eliminates certain less expensive options because the schools are worse than where we currently live (which only has mediocre schools anyway). So we're stuck unless we move somewhere with lower COL.

If we do that, we intend to buy a "forever home." Like we are even factoring grandkids and retirement plans, and feasibility of living there with mobility issues. Because we don't want to get stuck again and we don't want to assume we'll be able to afford to live to somewhere else that suits a future lifestyle shift.

The time when we could have bought some tiny unrenovated house in a dodgy neighborhood is just over. It's too late. We have to think about our kid's education and safety, our own bandwidth for renovating or living in a house with serious issues, and our ability to grow into the home over time. We would happily have bought a house like that in our 20s or early 30s. We tried! We couldn't compete with developers or whoever else was snapping those up. And now a house like that just would not work for where we are at in life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where are these smaller starter homes?

I live in 22181-Vienna- and the original mid1950s “starter” homes in 22180 are disappearing monthly - all being razed with enormous homes replacing.

Even a vintage Vienna Woods house is selling for 850k+

There are plenty of starter homes in places that you are not willing to live. https://redf.in/uUlxmm
This house is near the VRE. It has an easy commute to DC and Alexandria.

Way to miss the point. That’s not a “starter home” for a family with two working parents with DC jobs that want to send their kids to decent schools. That’s a non-starter home.

Starter homes aren't for families. They're for single people or DINKS to buy. And maybe you'll stay in your starter home for your first kid, but you buy a forever home by the time all your kids are born. It's 10000x easier to save without kids.

[Anonymous]

Don’t they care about the earth? The environment? Where is their eco-conscience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always love a home built in the 1950s for a large family of 4-5 kids that is 1,600 sf is now too small for a couple with one kid who don't even cook.

But more interesting how large starter homes have become.

In DC the house below is considered a starter home and is 5 bedrooms
https://www.redfin.com/MD/Potomac/8504-Buckhannon-Dr-20854/home/10507392

You and I both know that people had much smaller wardrobes and fewer toys back then.
- person who has a 5 person family in a 1600 sf home

Except a 5 person family would be someone with Fertility problems back then. Barely a family. My block my Mom had four kids and we had one of the smallest families. I dont care if less clothes or toys try fitting in 5 sons and two daughters into a 1,300 sf house. My neighbors the Mullens had that it was crazy. They had big families back then

Not true. 3 kids was totally normal for WASP families even in the 1950’s. My grandmother born in the 1930’s also only had ONE sibling. Only Catholics had large families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an elder millennial stuck in our starter home we bought a decade ago because housing values have risen much faster than wages. I really wish we could go back in time and just stretched and bought a slightly bigger house a decade ago. Those houses that were $100-$200 above our budget a decade ago are now entirely out of reach.

This is us, too. Our now slightly-too-small 3br condo was huge for two people (pre-kids). Now I'd like a 4br house with a small yard, which I could have had for another 100-200k back then. But we can't afford to upgrade to a 4br now at the current prices and mortgage rates. We'd be paying at least 2x as much monthly for a few hundred more sq. feet. Heck, I'm not sure I could afford to buy my condo at today's rates.

I completely see the appeal of wanting to just buy a house you love and be done with it. Moving is expensive: transactional costs (thanks to real estate agents and transfer/recordation taxes) eat up minimum 7-8% of the value when you sell, to say nothing of having to pack up your whole life.

But you couldn’t have afforded a 4 bedroom house …