Reply to Leaving DC for a lower COL area

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Have you done it?

We are strongly considering it over the course of the next five years.  We have to make it work with careers, of course, but if we can, we'd like to head back to upstate NY to be closer to family and to be in a lower COL area.

[b]We didn't get on the property ladder [/b]when we should have and now are still renting while paying for childcare, saving for college, and saving for retirement.  We simply cannot afford a home in the city that would guarantee good school options through high school.  We hate the thought of long commutes and what that will mean for spending time with our kids.  DC is increasingly expensive and we think we can have a better quality of life elsewhere.  BUT I am sure I am romanticizing, and there are likely plenty of factors I am not considering.  So, have you done it?  Have you left for a lower COL area, and if so, what have been the pros and cons?
[/quote]
What is a property ladder?[/quote]

Not the PP, but I’m guessing that it means constantly trading up houses to keep up with the Joneses and generate fees for RE agents.[/quote]. So a fun term for wasting money on a condo. [/quote]

I mean, not really.  It means buying property early on, gaining equity that you trade up for a larger or otherwise better property, and so on.[/quote]

Buying a condo isn't always the smart way to get on the ladder. As many condo owners will tell you. Minimal appreciation, even underwater. And this is 10 years after the crash.

Real estate always involves luck if you see significant appreciation in a short period. Plenty of people who bought what was considered solid value investments in Potomac and Great Falls and other suburban areas are struggling to sell today what they paid 15 years ago..... But if you bought in a transitional DC neighborhood 15 years ago you've definitely made out like a bandit. But you had to be in the position to do that. Not just living in DC at the time, but willing to invest in a risky area with bad schools. [/quote]

"Risky" isn't the right word.  Nothing about the relative rise of DC housing prices and the relative decline of far-out places like Potomac and Great Falls was unexpected. Lots of people could have told you this was going to happen, because this is the pattern of prices virtually everywhere else in the world.  The only reasons DC managed to stay so cheap for so long were its particularly violent history around desegregation and the severity of its crack epidemic in the early 90s.

The reason that more people didn't invest in DC real estate years ago is just that they didn't want to be owner occupiers in neighborhoods that hadn't yet gentrified.  The writing has been on the wall for the last 15-20 years.[/quote]

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