Reply to My aunt started working as a maid at the Watergate after graduating HS & bought a home in Arlington

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did your aunt demand an HGTV-ready kitchen? A bedroom for each child, plus a guest room, plus an office? A two-car garage? A master bathroom with dual sinks? Ten-foot ceilings, built-ins, and a screened-in porch with television hookup and wet bar?

Or did she buy a 2-3BR/1-2BA with street parking and no air conditioning, in a new tract development that used to be someone’s farm?

You can still get a bare-bones place built on newly developed farmland. But it will be a TH in Warrenton. Because that’s the way population and urban expansion work. [/quote]

NP here. I will admit buyers are somewhat pickier, but that’s also because we are spending a proportionately larger percent of our salaries on housing, and we had to achieve many more years of higher education to compete in the workplace compared to earlier generations. Also, the HGTV generalizations are way overblown. In order to afford a SFH in Arlington we gave up having a garage, a bed room for each kid, an en-suite master bathroom, ten foot ceilings, wet bar, etc. DH and I both have six figure salaries, but with the cost of childcare, saving for college, etc. knew we’d have to sacrifice a lot to have a short commute. Even still we spent over 800k.

Sorry, but today’s hotel cleaners are not even buying SFHs on that one salary. They are renting a small apartment on a bus line. The homes that hotel house keepers used to buy now go to dual fed households. It’s been a downhill slide for a lot of people.

Sure there are people buying new construction HGTV homes, but they make a lot more than a house cleaner. I’m so over people summing up the problem of housing affordability by claiming it’s all because of people wanting granite countertops and a three car garage.  :roll: [/quote]

And to add on — Google shows Arlington, VA as one of the top salary locations for a hotel housekeeper at just under 35k/year. Let’s say some higher end DC hotels are really and pay 50k. No one is buying a single family home in this area on that salary.

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be that way, areas get more expensive. It is what it is. But I don’t know why people are so stuck in the mud about acknowledging you need a higher education and larger salary to achieve today what you used to be able to achieve on one salary with a college degree. It’s so much easier to blame HGTV though. [/quote]

This is a GREAT point, especially in this area of Keeping up with the Joneses.  Also, think of how much more CROWDED this and other areas are now, OP. [/quote]

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