Anonymous wrote:
There are still plenty of more reasonably prices houses available on this side of town. You can scrimp and save for years and work you ass off to be able to afford a $500K house in the more traditionally "good" (read "white") parts of this area, or you can step over to the less affluent side of town and live twice as well. At least that's what is working for us.

duh - didn't you know all the people in the more expensive houses are actually colorblind and only see test scores for schools in their neighborhood?

I bought a great brick two-family building in St. Louis for $55k in the 90s. I was in my 20s. My mortgage payment was $420 a month! I rented out one of the units for $350 and lived in the other.

Next purchase was in 2009. A big old 6 bedroom 3 bath house on a 6,000 sf lot just about a block from the NE edge of DC, in MD. Husband and I both in mid/late 30s. We paid $285K.

There are still plenty of more reasonably prices houses available on this side of town. You can scrimp and save for years and work you ass off to be able to afford a $500K house in the more traditionally "good" (read "white") parts of this area, or you can step over to the less affluent side of town and live twice as well. At least that's what is working for us.

OP, I feel you! DH and I are both 27 with an 11 month old little guy and there is no way we will buy a house here in DC anytime soon! Yet all of our friends/siblings have been buying big 4-5 bedroom homes in our home state and don't understand why we still rent. Ugh!

We bought a small rowhouse in DC when we were both 29 (Brookland). It was a big stretch financially and we have done a lot of work to it over the last few years. We'll hopefully buy our "forever" house sometime in our mid- to late-thirties.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think OP was asking for more current buyers and ages. You really can't get a decent house in DC proper now for under $750k it seems - and even that's a very small townhouse.

We rented in our 20's and were able to buy our first (but "forever") home in upper NW at 32 (me) and 37 (DH).

I'm a PP who bought awhile ago, and I was posting to make OP feel better about not having a house, not because I was suggesting she should enter a time machine and buy 10 or more years ago. I think the market here changed radically, and prices have far outstripped wage growth, at least in my field. We bought our first house for something like 1.5 times our gross HHI. Despite a significant increase in salaries in my field, you could never buy a house on 1.5 times gross starting salaries in my field today in the same neighborhood. So OP isn't doing worse than others. She's just hitting the same wall as many others.

I am not OP, but in in similar circumstances, and thank you for pointing this out. Seriously, I beat myself up on a regular basis for the fact that we are 30-somethings who cannot afford to buy a starter home in DC in a decent neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think OP was asking for more current buyers and ages. You really can't get a decent house in DC proper now for under $750k it seems - and even that's a very small townhouse.

We rented in our 20's and were able to buy our first (but "forever") home in upper NW at 32 (me) and 37 (DH).

I'm a PP who bought awhile ago, and I was posting to make OP feel better about not having a house, not because I was suggesting she should enter a time machine and buy 10 or more years ago. I think the market here changed radically, and prices have far outstripped wage growth, at least in my field. We bought our first house for something like 1.5 times our gross HHI. Despite a significant increase in salaries in my field, you could never buy a house on 1.5 times gross starting salaries in my field today in the same neighborhood. So OP isn't doing worse than others. She's just hitting the same wall as many others.

OP here - It is good to know that most people who bought around my age bought over a decade ago. It makes me realize that we really aren't that far behind our peers. I guess we will just keep chugging along and hope interest rates don't skyrocket! I can't believe that one poster had a mortgage at 12%. It never occurred to me that mortgage interest could be that high!

We were 27 and 25 in 2001. We bought a townhouse for 315K in Ballston.

Bought a SFH in 2005 for 815K in Arlington.

Just moved into our forever house in the beginning of June. It is also in Arlington.

Anonymous wrote:I think OP was asking for more current buyers and ages. You really can't get a decent house in DC proper now for under $750k it seems - and even that's a very small townhouse.

We rented in our 20's and were able to buy our first (but "forever") home in upper NW at 32 (me) and 37 (DH).

I'm a PP who bought awhile ago, and I was posting to make OP feel better about not having a house, not because I was suggesting she should enter a time machine and buy 10 or more years ago. I think the market here changed radically, and prices have far outstripped wage growth, at least in my field. We bought our first house for something like 1.5 times our gross HHI. Despite a significant increase in salaries in my field, you could never buy a house on 1.5 times gross starting salaries in my field today in the same neighborhood. So OP isn't doing worse than others. She's just hitting the same wall as many others.

33 for me and dh 31

I think OP was asking for more current buyers and ages. You really can't get a decent house in DC proper now for under $750k it seems - and even that's a very small townhouse.

We rented in our 20's and were able to buy our first (but "forever") home in upper NW at 32 (me) and 37 (DH).

35 (10 years into my career and after blowing all my money living in manhattan in my 20s).

I was 29 and DH 28 when we bought our 400k townhouse in 2010. We could not have afforded the exact same townhouse two years earlier because the prices were so inflated. It was only the combination in the rates and prices dropping that we could afford it at all.

40. During the boom. Oh well, we were at a stage in life when we wanted a single family house,

28 and 29. 300k silver spring.

i was thirty four and bought my first house in AU park. we are still here.