How are you able to afford the DC area - from an out-of-towner?

[Anonymous]

OP, are you interested in living in the city itself or a suburb?

Like several of the other posters, I grew up here (in a NoVA suburb), so the crazy COL always seemed normal to me. I moved into DC after college and lived the dirt poor nonprofit worker lifestyle. I love living in the city, and my now-DH and I decided early on that it was worth the trade offs. He makes about $125K. I was only making about $45K (again, nonprofit), and I became a SAHM after we had a child. You really have to know what sort of trade offs you are willing to make? We live in a 2 bedroom, 1,000 SF condo. We don't have a yard, but on the other hand there are tons of kids and parks around us, and with less than a 5 minute walk to the metro (and we only have 1 car), we pretty much consider the whole city to be our backyard. Even without the metro we can walk to the zoo, library, grocery shopping, 5 or 6 playgrounds and parks, and about 200 restaurants. Our condo is not fancy and our local school is average, but we love our fun, walkable neighborhood, and DS spends his days having fun at museums, parks, the zoo, etc. By DC standards we don't make a lot of money, but we love our lifestyle.

What is comes down to, OP, is what sort of lifestyle do you and your family want? What are your non-negotiables? What are you willing to sacrifice?

Btw, don't listen to the snarkers who hate living here. No place is perfect of course, but DC is a great place to live if you are looking for that lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's the point of your post? Apparently, millions of us are finding a way to make it work. When you come to visit, remember to stand on the left when you go on the metro.

No! Stand on the right; walk on the left.

[Anonymous]

Bought close-in Bethesda in the mid-90's and then traded up several years ago.

So, we have a $700k mortgage on a large new $1.6M home instead of a $600k mortgage on a 1940's needs- updating-inside-the-beltway sfh that cost $750k.

Timing and location, location, location of old house helped a lot.

Also, both of us have always worked and salaries have increased.

1-2 vacations a year. Cars we like, but nothing crazy. Really no extravagant purchases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't mention what your spouse makes? Most families here have two incomes and, almost more importantly, two careers to support. If not, I see no reason why someone at your career level would move here.

Spouse makes about $45,000 but incredible benefits (dirt cheap healthcare) are also part of the package.

Wow. Just wow.

If your spouse continues to teach here, presumable she or he will make more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don't mention what your spouse makes? Most families here have two incomes and, almost more importantly, two careers to support. If not, I see no reason why someone at your career level would move here.

Spouse makes about $45,000 but incredible benefits (dirt cheap healthcare) are also part of the package.

Wow. Just wow.

If your spouse continues to teach here, presumable she or he will make more.

Depends on years of experience, but yes, he will probably make more. I teach in FCPS, have 14 years of experience with a Master's, and make $67,000/year. We pay about $430/month for health insurance for the whole family (Carefirst PPO).

[Anonymous]

The Dumfries house zones to Forest Park which is the best of the eastern PWC high schools. If that house had zoned to Freedom, Gar-Field, or Potomac, I'd have said that's the reason it's $300k.

But there's no jobs in that part of the world. That house would run you in the $400k range in close-in Leesburg (not in downtown but within walking range.)

Frederick and Leesburg are well-positioned due to their end point status on this area's suburban job corridors.

Folks who want their historic/walkable downtowns can live there -- basically Frederick is a sanitized version of Baltimore and Leesburg is a sanitized version of Alexandria -- and work at some location along the 267 or 270 corridors.

The key with the smaller/less expensive cities is that there's fewer chances to land the 80-150k jobs and definitely the 150k jobs.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I moved here at 18 for college and have never known anything else. My friends at home (KC) all have much bigger, newer houses than I do. But I get to live here. I probably make more than some of them do, but I don't make a ton - about $100K. I just bought a house in 1999, rode the market up and then sold and sunk the equity into a better place last year.

My house is a $600K sh*thole compared to my friends who have $250K mini-mansions back home - but for me, it's worth it to live here. I can't imagine living anywhere else. But yes, if you're used to living in a cheaper place, there is serious sticker shock here.

[Anonymous]

Yep to all of the above. In fact, one of my best friends from back home is coming to visit for the first time this weekend. I can't wait to see the shock on her face when she sees what I managed to buy for $500K. Her house back home was $400K and is the biggest, most luxurious looking home within the city limits. Should be fun!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We earn 250k, live in a 1200sq town house, one car, no cable, limit vacations to day trips, and only have one kid. That's how we do it.

Goodness. We early about 1/2 of what you do but otherwise, everything else is similar: 1400sq TH, two paid-for cars, no cable, one paid-for vacation for a week at the EAstern Shore, one child, pay for daycare thru the nose, DC will go to parochial school next year). You must have extra $$ floating around. Or maybe you have a lot of debt you are paying off (student loans, other)?

*earn* not early. gulp.

We rent in a close-in suburb so housing costs are much higher than we'd like (we moved here during the bubble and it never made sense to us to buy at those prices). All of my salary goes towards childcare and student loans. We save for retirement, college, and emergencies. Most of my friends in our income bracket live similar lifestyles to ours.

OH, ok, that makes more sense. We save for retirment, college, and emergencies, and pay for childcare. But the only diffs seem to be we own, not rent, but we may live further out than you do (we are in Ffx Cty), and we went ballistic paying off student loans before we had children. IF we hadn't done that, we'd be paying a lot each month to that at the same time we are doign all the above. Ok, sorry but my buttinski-ness. . . carry on, everybody!

[Anonymous]

We make 180K, both working FT. We bought close in at a bad time but refinanced and it's really not that bad. Two young kids in daycare. We live close to public transportation and so choose to have one car.

Next year daycare costs will drop when our oldest starts K, and our youngest turns 2. My husband just hit a point in his career where he will likely be making a few big leaps in the next few years and his income is expected to go up. I think I just hit some good career momentum so will probably just go up in increments for the next few years.

Like others have said there are some great things about his area, including great job opps. If you are both working that is huge, probably not as huge if just one of you wants to work (or needs to). Schools are good, lots of educated people, resources, I love the public transportation. It's a very walkable place. We are in the close in burbs and it's very walkable, tons of gorgeous trails around us, and can walk or bike to grocery stores, retail, farmer's markets, etc. My parents in the burbs of a mid-sized city can do none of that.

[Anonymous]

we have an HHI of 120 at the moment, just moved here. Live in close-in MD suburb. Only reason we can afford to buy at the low end of the market here is because we owned in another pricey city in 1998 and realized some gain from selling that house. So we have some $ for a down payment. That was just luck. Good luck with your decision OP. I am still glad we moved here from the smaller town we were in because I like being around more educated cosmopolitan people. Call it what you will... I also like the "culture" but agree that many less expensive cities also offer good music and theater etc. It is a little hard to take the way everything seems more expensive here (not just housing.)
I also feel like the kids are obnoxious. But I found the kids obnoxious in our small town too, so it may be that I am just an old out-of-touch grouch.

[Anonymous]

Another out of town lurker here with a prospect to relocate. Many of you seemed to earn a bundle in the 90s before the housing boom. I was still in high school then. How do people in their early 30s and younger manage in DC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another out of town lurker here with a prospect to relocate. Many of you seemed to earn a bundle in the 90s before the housing boom. I was still in high school then. How do people in their early 30s and younger manage in DC?

I'm 34, DH 37. We both earn decent money together just over 300K/yr), but the real reason we can afford to live here is that we purchased a home before the housing boom when we were in our early 20s, at that time loans were given out to anyone. We got lucky and flipped two homes and walked away with a few 100K in tax free profits. Added to that we both gratuated GMU without debt, as we attended as commuters living at home and paid for school out of pocked from PT jobs.

You get a huge start in life when you have no college debt and are able to buy a home very early, pre-boom and sell at the top of the market. We were wise enough to realize that it was time to bail when housing had hit the peak in 2006. At that time both of our homes had been converted into rentals and we quickly unloaded them. The poor people that bought them? I don't think they are probably sitting too pretty right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another out of town lurker here with a prospect to relocate. Many of you seemed to earn a bundle in the 90s before the housing boom. I was still in high school then. How do people in their early 30s and younger manage in DC?

Like many of the other posters have said on here, there are trade offs. If you want close-in and you don't make 500K a year and didn't buy your first house in the 90s, you buy something smaller and older. We live in Arlington, make just under 250K a year (DH is in govt relations, I am a teacher) in a typical 3 bedroom, 2 bath Cape. Great neighborhood, great schools, easy commute to D.C., but the house is small. Our kitchen is tiny and old and the house could use some updating. We paid 590K for it in 2006 and did make about 120K from a townhouse that we put toward our current mortgage. Friends of ours bought at the same time for just about the same price out in Ashburn (30 miles west of D.C.) and their house was brand new and a lot bigger. But they are much further out. Their house has also LOST value since then whereas ours has gone up in value in the past 6 years. There are a lot of people here who do make a boatload of money, but there are also those who do not and you just make it work somehow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another out of town lurker here with a prospect to relocate. Many of you seemed to earn a bundle in the 90s before the housing boom. I was still in high school then. How do people in their early 30s and younger manage in DC?

We are early 30s, moved here 10 years ago right after college for grad school and a government job. Our HHI is a little over $250k now, and we have 2 kids, one in daycare and one in private school (not independent). We live in a mid size townhouse about 8 miles outside DC that we bought at the top of the market in late 2005 and that is worth much less now than what we paid for it. We live pretty comfortably, but we don't live in a massive house or drive luxury cars. Like others have said, it's all about your frame of reference, expectations, and choices. All of our adult life has really been spent out here so that is our frame of reference for things like housing costs, daycare costs, general costs of living. Our expectations have adjusted accordingly, and we are fine with that. It has been a lesson in what we want versus what we actually need. Like anyone, there are things that frustrate me about living here from time to time, but we really enjoy it.