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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Agre with the suggestion to consider relocating if nothing is tying you here.  We'd be out in a heartbeat if we didn't have family nearby.  [/quote]

NP here. I agree with this. I would have been happy to leave this area if my family weren't here, but it is really important to me that my kid (and her possible future sibling) grow up with grandparents nearby (I didn't).

It *is* very hard to save the huge amount of money needed to buy a house, or even a townhouse, in this area. It took us six years to save up a 20% DP, plus closing costs and cash reserves, for our $620K house. This was only possible through relative austerity:

--We postponed having kids until now (expecting our first soon, in our mid/late 30s).
--We have never gone on a really big vacation together.
--We did eat out, but rarely at pricey restaurants.
--We have never had cable, almost never go to movies or performances, and never ever go to bars.
--My husband drives an elderly hand-me-down car. Mine is newer but also paid off.
--I work at home so do not have commuting costs.
--We bought almost nothing for the homes we lived in before this one, instead using inexpensive furniture, etc., from our single days.
--We contributed very, very little to retirement in the last few years (stupid, maybe, but necessary to meet the goal of buying a house).

Ways in which we were fortunate:

--Neither of us have student loans.
--We did not have any super-expensive crises during those six years.

But:

--We lost $30K on the sale of the condo my husband bought before the financial crisis. It lost value every year we were there, but for various reasons we could not sell before we did.

We had no direct family help (by "direct" I mean loans or gifts to help with the down payment; it was a big help that my parents paid for my undergrad, so no student loans). We obviously had no equity from a prior sale. Our income is very average for the area. It was just a combination of being really boring and cheap and being somewhat lucky.

If after cutting what expenses you can and taking a hard look at your likely financial future, you really don't think you'll be able to buy here, I'd suggest thinking about relocating if that's something you think you can do.[/quote]

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