Anonymous wrote: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 here - I love DC and would live there if money were no object (although we are currently looking Arlington) but I worry about the schools in any neighborhood hwere I could afford a SFH in DC. We can't do private (since DH works to promote public education, it would just look very bad haha) and I won't do Catholic schools.