Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said middle and umc families. You have shaw, DuPont, Logan circle, brookland, Capitol Hill, etc. all neighborhoods where you probably wouldn't have raised a family 25 years ago and now it's an option. Dc has changed a lot.

DC had one OK high school, and one OK middle school, 25 years ago, just the same as today. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Anonymous wrote:Immigrant millennials want mcmansions

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said middle and umc families. You have shaw, DuPont, Logan circle, brookland, Capitol Hill, etc. all neighborhoods where you probably wouldn't have raised a family 25 years ago and now it's an option. Dc has changed a lot.

DC had one OK high school, and one OK middle school, 25 years ago, just the same as today. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Used to be UMC folks did not live east of the park. Then they did not live there with kids. Then they did not live there with school age kids. Now the "gentrification denial" meme is they do not live there with middle school age kids. Yes, things change.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The obsession with McMansions on this board is weird.

Real estate porn, my dear

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said middle and umc families. You have shaw, DuPont, Logan circle, brookland, Capitol Hill, etc. all neighborhoods where you probably wouldn't have raised a family 25 years ago and now it's an option. Dc has changed a lot.

DC had one OK high school, and one OK middle school, 25 years ago, just the same as today. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I said middle and umc families. You have shaw, DuPont, Logan circle, brookland, Capitol Hill, etc. all neighborhoods where you probably wouldn't have raised a family 25 years ago and now it's an option. Dc has changed a lot.

DC had one OK high school, and one OK middle school, 25 years ago, just the same as today. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gen Xer here with two middle school kids in McLean VA. My wife and I knocked down our tiny 1960s split level (worth $~750K) and built a new home (now worth ~$1.6 million). The neighborhood we live in has a mix of tear downs and older homes. It's a large home, but we still have a nice backyard and added many upgrades that weren't cheap although I think the haters would still call it a McMansion. However, I don't understand the desire for the alternative. Here's what I mean:

Our old home had a brick exterior, no house wrap, tiny windows, squeaky floors, no drain tile so the basement leaked, no basement vapor barrier so radon was leaking up, and no character. The original kitchen contained asbestos tiles (which was covered up). The energy efficiency of the house was terrible. Why is what I described better than a new home? Sure, we decided to use HardiPlank vs. brick on the outside but that’s a personal design preference but everything else in the new place is superior to the old one. I hear comments from people that our old home used plywood and solid wood beams but the new home uses Advantech OSB and beams. Well, science tells us that the products are structurally equivalent and OSB is stronger in shear values. The new home has a radon system, better drainage, large windows so we don’t need to use as much electricity, sensors that shut off lights to save energy, and is air tight. The floor doesn’t squeak and is less likely to in the long run, our fire alarm is integrated into home security system which makes it a much safer home (e.g., the air conditioner shuts off if a fire is detected). And yes, we now use our gourmet kitchen to cook most of our meals because it’s just much easier and fun (our old kitchen was tiny and it sucked to cook in)! Why is our ‘McMansion’ worse than our old home?

You raise a good point that not all old homes are created equal. People tend to be biased toward liking old construction, because it's mostly houses with good craftsmanship that are still around. The 'shitshacks of the 1800s have long since been torn down and replaced.

In most ways your new construction is superior to the approx. 1960s era house you replaced. However, don't overestimate the longevity of OSB. I have seen multiple houses that have roofs that need replaced after thirty years or less, because air moisture causes these manufactured woods to warp and degrade over relatively short periods of time. Two houses I saw in Burke, VA had such crappy OSB roofs that you could see the parallel humps of the roof rafters under the shingles from pictures of the exterior of the house.

Anonymous wrote:...However, don't overestimate the longevity of OSB. I have seen multiple houses that have roofs that need replaced after thirty years or less, because air moisture causes these manufactured woods to warp and degrade over relatively short periods of time. Two houses I saw in Burke, VA had such crappy OSB roofs that you could see the parallel humps of the roof rafters under the shingles from pictures of the exterior of the house.

Anonymous wrote:Gen Xer here with two middle school kids in McLean VA. My wife and I knocked down our tiny 1960s split level (worth $~750K) and built a new home (now worth ~$1.6 million). The neighborhood we live in has a mix of tear downs and older homes. It's a large home, but we still have a nice backyard and added many upgrades that weren't cheap although I think the haters would still call it a McMansion. However, I don't understand the desire for the alternative. Here's what I mean:

Our old home had a brick exterior, no house wrap, tiny windows, squeaky floors, no drain tile so the basement leaked, no basement vapor barrier so radon was leaking up, and no character. The original kitchen contained asbestos tiles (which was covered up). The energy efficiency of the house was terrible. Why is what I described better than a new home? Sure, we decided to use HardiPlank vs. brick on the outside but that’s a personal design preference but everything else in the new place is superior to the old one. I hear comments from people that our old home used plywood and solid wood beams but the new home uses Advantech OSB and beams. Well, science tells us that the products are structurally equivalent and OSB is stronger in shear values. The new home has a radon system, better drainage, large windows so we don’t need to use as much electricity, sensors that shut off lights to save energy, and is air tight. The floor doesn’t squeak and is less likely to in the long run, our fire alarm is integrated into home security system which makes it a much safer home (e.g., the air conditioner shuts off if a fire is detected). And yes, we now use our gourmet kitchen to cook most of our meals because it’s just much easier and fun (our old kitchen was tiny and it sucked to cook in)! Why is our ‘McMansion’ worse than our old home?

Anonymous wrote:I said middle and umc families. You have shaw, DuPont, Logan circle, brookland, Capitol Hill, etc. all neighborhoods where you probably wouldn't have raised a family 25 years ago and now it's an option. Dc has changed a lot.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't know how on earth you've convinced yourself that it's millennials buying those homes, but I agree- let's stop navel gazing and go with statistics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/millennials-arent-buying-homes--good-for-them/2016/08/22/818793be-68a4-11e6-ba32-5a4bf5aad4fa_story.html

Millennials aren't buying homes across the board, and I'm willing to wager good money that they weren't buying the majority of the McMansions in Loudon county. This is not about the CURRENT state of the housing market, which is primarily still driven by boomers and gen-x. This is about what the housing market will look like in 15, 20, 30 years.

If you want to stop navel gazing and have info that it was in fact millennials who bought the homes in Howard county, by all means, post it.

But no one knows that or can predict that with any degree of certainty. The current suburbs are packed with what used to be bright-eyed twenty-somethings roughing it up in the city. Thirty years from now milennials will be the same aging, stressed, adult people that 50-somethings are today. Times change. Things change. People change. Thirty years from now there will be another 20-something generation out in the world, just as convinced that it was them who invented all the cool things in life.

+1000

I disagree. There are neighborhoods all across DC full of middle class and umc families. One generation ago you wouldn't have set foot in these neighborhoods. There's been a huge shift and wave of gentrification in DC. Now moving to the burbs isn't the only option for families.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't know how on earth you've convinced yourself that it's millennials buying those homes, but I agree- let's stop navel gazing and go with statistics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/millennials-arent-buying-homes--good-for-them/2016/08/22/818793be-68a4-11e6-ba32-5a4bf5aad4fa_story.html

Millennials aren't buying homes across the board, and I'm willing to wager good money that they weren't buying the majority of the McMansions in Loudon county. This is not about the CURRENT state of the housing market, which is primarily still driven by boomers and gen-x. This is about what the housing market will look like in 15, 20, 30 years.

If you want to stop navel gazing and have info that it was in fact millennials who bought the homes in Howard county, by all means, post it.

But no one knows that or can predict that with any degree of certainty. The current suburbs are packed with what used to be bright-eyed twenty-somethings roughing it up in the city. Thirty years from now milennials will be the same aging, stressed, adult people that 50-somethings are today. Times change. Things change. People change. Thirty years from now there will be another 20-something generation out in the world, just as convinced that it was them who invented all the cool things in life.

+1000

I disagree. There are neighborhoods all across DC full of middle class and umc families. One generation ago you wouldn't have set foot in these neighborhoods. There's been a huge shift and wave of gentrification in DC. Now moving to the burbs isn't the only option for families.