Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in AU park - not a huge mortgage though, but our HHI is a lot lower. Anyways, we can't afford private.

I'm the PP that is currently trying to do this and we are hoping our offer is accepted shortly on an house we bid on in AU park. I really like the area and hope we can get a house. This is our 3rd offer.

Good luck - it took us 8 offers.

Only took us 5!

We didn't get it. Bummer. Fife red above asking and thei closing date of choice. Someone else offered more $$. Back to the drawing board.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in AU park - not a huge mortgage though, but our HHI is a lot lower. Anyways, we can't afford private.

I'm the PP that is currently trying to do this and we are hoping our offer is accepted shortly on an house we bid on in AU park. I really like the area and hope we can get a house. This is our 3rd offer.

Good luck - it took us 8 offers.

Only took us 5!

For four years, we lived in a cheaper neighborhood for a while and did private school for our two kids. We loved the school. The one downside was that it was a challenge to foster friendships after school with their classmates because everyone lived in places scattered about DC and Maryland (or at least closer to the private school than we did).

When we had a third child, we figured it was time to move. We found a small house in Bethesda. We miss the private school, but we are content with Montgomery County schools. And the advantage is that their friends live right near us in the neighborhood, which has been really nice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We bought in AU park - not a huge mortgage though, but our HHI is a lot lower. Anyways, we can't afford private.

I'm the PP that is currently trying to do this and we are hoping our offer is accepted shortly on an house we bid on in AU park. I really like the area and hope we can get a house. This is our 3rd offer.

Good luck - it took us 8 offers.

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone done the opposite (moved to a cheaper neighborhood with the intent of going private)? Any regrets?

We did this. We are very happy. I actually prefer to live in a diverse neighborhood with down to earth neighbors.

It's funny to me that a lot of the analysis of how how big your mortgage should be assumes that this is strictly your housing expense or a place to park your money as an investment. We're being driven almost exclusively by the school issue. When you do the math and compare the expense of private school for 3 kids to taking out a big loan, the numbers, at least for us, favor taking out the big mortgage.

Anonymous wrote:We bought in AU park - not a huge mortgage though, but our HHI is a lot lower. Anyways, we can't afford private.

I'm the PP that is currently trying to do this and we are hoping our offer is accepted shortly on an house we bid on in AU park. I really like the area and hope we can get a house. This is our 3rd offer.

We bought in AU park - not a huge mortgage though, but our HHI is a lot lower. Anyways, we can't afford private.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you took a map and drew around the borders of our HS, you will find that there are roughly 2000+ people who made the same decision.

How do you know when they purchased and how much they paid?

I think PP's point is that everyone in expensive/good school neighborhoods has made that very choice.

True but some neighborhoods in this area have gone from 500k homes to 800k homes in a little over 10 years. Perhaps some of those owners would have made different choices if facing the same options today.

We're about to do this as well, though we earn less than you, roughly $210k. We can't swing 2 private school payments on top of the roughly $400k mortgage balance we have now, and the higher mortgage payment on what will be a roughly $700k note will be far less than 2 private school payments. It seems to make about a $1500 a month difference. We can pretty easily do that, especially with daycare expenses ending.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you took a map and drew around the borders of our HS, you will find that there are roughly 2000+ people who made the same decision.

How do you know when they purchased and how much they paid?

I think PP's point is that everyone in expensive/good school neighborhoods has made that very choice.

Anonymous wrote:If you took a map and drew around the borders of our HS, you will find that there are roughly 2000+ people who made the same decision.

How do you know when they purchased and how much they paid?

If you took a map and drew around the borders of our HS, you will find that there are roughly 2000+ people who made the same decision.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm debating this with DH now....the homes in pyramids he's interested in need a lot of work and would cause us to be house poor. I'm not sure I can stomach it though and am leaning towards cheaper/nicer home and using private school

oxymoron?

Not the poster you are talking to, but it's not an oxymoron to buy a house in a worse neighborhood that is nicer and still cheaper than a more expensive (but not as nice) house in a good neighborhood.

OP, we have a household income similar to yours. We tried private for one kid and it was fine. Private elementary was better for arts, music and science, but public middle and high schools go over similar territory, so it wasn't a significant loss at the end of the day.

The second kid got into a public language immersion program-- this was far and away the better outcome because, by the end of 5th grade, both kids knew roughly the same things, but the second kid was fluent in a second language.