Reply to Fitting into Upper Income Neighborhood Or Where Should Live/School

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Somebody in the other thread the OP referenced noted that many desirable neighborhoods are full of residents that were "grandfathered in" and could not now easily afford the houses they live in. So if you move into a $1 million house, there probably many families that bought their houses for half that a few years ago and are living a lifestyle well below what a $1 million house implies. So this would pose a favorable force on OP's concerns about being "outclassed" by neighbors. [/quote]

Waving hand-- Over here!  We are in southern McLean HHI of $150-$180k.  We could not afford our current home and still keep our current work/family life balance. However, unless poster has children in MS and HS, that is changing fast.  Families with younger kids definitely make more than the MS/HS cohort.  We used to call our section of McLean the "braownbag" section,  but that is changing faster than the teardowns are being turned into McMansions.  [/quote]

[b]This stuff makes me upset but whateve[/b]r. We have a HHI of over 300K but since we just started out and are in our early 30s and have high kids costs we don't have enough saved to buy in places where people make half.[/quote]

Why is that upsetting to you. The pp just stated her HHI but not how hard she has worked to afford her lifestyle. I have a similar HHI and I live in a well over 1 million home, but we've worked and invested since we were in our early 20's. We are very handy with our hands and have invested in real estate by buying shitty homes and worked at it ourselves, we were landlords while our friends were partying in college. So yes, you make more money than we do, probably smarter too, but not more deserving of a better lifestyle, we likely have worked harder. But it's easier to think there's come kind of inheritance involve, not good planning and hard work. [/quote]

I'm sure most people in DC work hard, whether hammering and painting or attorneying it teaching.

Please do not come off so much better than everyone else because you had the risk profile and resources to afford to be a real estate speculator while still in college.  Most of us were borrowing money to pay for college. 
 
[b]You can afford hat fancy neighborhood only because the bubble paid off your speculation;[/b] your elbow grease and 'hard work' really had nothing to do with it and added little real value.  You just won the roulette wheel, but with a speculative leveraged bet like real estate (like saying you graduated and didn't have a job and the bubble wasn't pushing up prices) you would quickly go bankrupt. Or be bailed out by family, I suspect. [/quote]

Wrong again.  Not so fancy neighborhood.  My type of house is commonly referred as a "shit shack" on this board.  Our first house was purchased in 1990 (Dh was 30, well out of college) just after another "bubble burst" it had 750sqft.  We sold it in 1997 at a LOSS, because housing in this area went down and was then basically flat for 8+ years, people were whining just like they do today (and it wasn't the first time either, this bubble and burst real estate has been going on for a long time)  We bought our current house (1900sqft) and have put in $, as a result, it has doubled in value (CV-purchase price-additional investment) - So from [i]1990[/i] to 2013, we have had a doubling in value of our house.  Sure, we have made some money, but as investments go- it is fairly average.  We haven't seen the rewards (just the increased property taxes)because we have to still live here.  (I am the PP who posted the HHI of $150k-$180k in southern McLean)

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