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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In came back to the DC area in 2008 after working abroad for 5 years.  My salary then was $65,000.  My DW and I bought a house near DTSS for $228,000.  We could have sold it at the peak of the bubble for about $600K.

From 2002 - 2003, we were single income as my DW went to grad school.  Our mortgage payment was $1500/mo.  In 2004, we went back overseas for four years (Korea).  During this time, and this is the only time in our 17 years of marriage, we were dual income.  We rented out our SS house for $1600/mo.  We saved enough money while overseas for a down payment on another house.  So, we bought a second home as a primary residence and continue to rent out the SS house.
We currently have a net work of $500K, $100K iinvested and available for college and $300K in my TSP.

I make approximately $140K as a Fed.  DW is SAHM.  We seem to be doing OK.  We dont' take extravagant vacations.  We drive old cars.  DD is in public schools in FFX and we are happy with them. So, it is completely doable depending on your lifestyle choices!

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Must be nice to have taken advantage of the housing boom and not have childcare expenses.[/quote]

Your children will not always require childcare costs. Just wait until braces and driver's license and college.  :)  There will always be another boom and bust cycle and you will be on the beneficial side then.  [b]We bought at the top of the last boom (1989), [/b]24 years later you guys are telling us we caught a "lucky" break.  It took over 10 years before our house value increased.  [/quote]

But prices at the top of that boom were still lower, relatively speaking and adjusting for inflation, than prices are now. My parents bought a house in Burke (so not even an area that's boomed as much as the closer-in suburbs) for about $320K in 1999, before the last run-up. That's the equivalent of $447K now, according to this inflation calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.

That house is probably worth about $600K or 650K now. Even if you bought at the top of the last boom, if you bought 25 years ago housing was still much cheaper relative to salaries then it is today.[/quote]

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