Reply to WWYD: keep DC rowhouse in Shaw as investment?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband and I have a rowhouse in Shaw we bought in 2011 for around 600k. Houses on our block are now selling for 900k. We have one toddler now and the house is great, but if we add to our family in a few years, we will likely need to move somewhere larger. We've got about 125k saved now for our next down payment and are saving a little more than 3k/month to that fund. We could increase the monthly savings if we needed to, so we could probably manage a down payment on a new house without the proceeds from the row house.

Would you hang on to the row house as an investment? Husband thinks we can manage it ourselves, but we are two busy working professionals and will possibly have two kids at the time, so I want to hire a property manager. It is three bedrooms with parking, I am guessing we could get around 4k in rent, mortgage is $2186. What would you do?[/quote]

I'd look really hard at vulnerability to flooding.

I'd find one of those Google flood maps and show what happens to the house if a storm pushes the sea level up 12 feet, and look at what happened to the neighborhood in the worst recorded floods.

If there could ever be any flooding issues, I think you should consider selling, no matter what other analyses show.

Even if you still want to invest in residential real estate, try to trade this property for a property far from where you'll own your primary residence, to reduce the odds a bad storm will take out both houses at the same time.

I'd also look at how this might affect college aid. I have the impression that real estate assets make calculating financial aid harder than owning financial assets does.

[/quote]

There are a lot of points, both pro and con, being raised in this thread.  It's not a clear cut decision.

This, however, is nuts.  Where exactly do you think this house is?  [/quote]

Agreed.  Even at 12 feet of sea level rise (which is probably about 100 years away), basically all of NW is fine, except for some areas down by the mall.  Shaw can handle a lot more than 12 feet in sea level rise.[/quote]

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