Reply to s/o How old are you? What kind of house do you live in?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are in our mid 30's with two school-aged children.  We live in a 4 bdrm. colonial in Arlington.  We are getting ready to do a pretty substantial addition.

[b]Prior to that, DH bought a townhouse in Arlington at age 27 which we sold in 2005 (to have the money to buy our current house).  [/b]
We are not lawyers and have never received any type of financial assistance (after graduating from undergrad) from our parents.  So, you don't have to be "Biglaw" or have a trust fund to make it in this town.  DH has a really good job, we send our children to a great public school, and we live within our means.
[/quote]

ok, so you were lucky enough to ride the real estate roller coaster and come out ahead.  which is how most of the mid-30s+ couples I know were able to afford a SFH closer in.

I kick myself every day that I didn't take my aunt up on her offer to loan me money to help me buy the 1 BR condo she eventutally invested in and let me rent from her.  At 23 and making $28K/year, $10K seemed like a LOT of money to pay back.  She sold that thing in 2003 (3 years later) for $120K more than she paid for it.  That would have been an REALLY nice down payment on at least a decent sized TH, and maybe even an older SFH in South Arlington.  Instead, we scraped together our very little life savings and wedding money and put down 5% on a tiny TH in the burbs.  Thank goodness we were able to sell that for a profit still and purchase a SFH (nowhere closer in, but it's not the exurbs either), but if we'd had 2 properties sold in 2003-2005 time frame, we'd have been rolling in real estate profits to buy a much nicer house closer in.

As it is, we have run out of renovation money because we bought a house in need of some renovations in order to get slightly more space (and I'm talking 2200, NOT 3K or more).  At least this one WASN'T a short sale or foreclosure, but it needed a good deal of updating.  Such is life when you can't afford more than $450K in this area.  But I refuse to move to Loudoun - the thought of that commute makes me want to cry.  It would only make sense if my husband was making alone what we make combined currently.[/quote]

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