Anonymous wrote:We compromised and bought relatively close in and a good school district just outside the beltway in kensington, md. We liked the style of the house but we compromised on small backyard and one side of the house is along a busy two lane road. But as our realtor said, you have to compromise on something if you are below a million dollar budget.

Even at $1 million. That would get us an ugly house inside and out that needed updates galore. Our compromise would have to be: we got four bedrooms in a great school district but wish we could tear the whole thing down.

We compromised and bought relatively close in and a good school district just outside the beltway in kensington, md. We liked the style of the house but we compromised on small backyard and one side of the house is along a busy two lane road. But as our realtor said, you have to compromise on something if you are below a million dollar budget.

Anonymous wrote:What about a townhouse? In my price range there were disgusting 50s homes with mold issues or nice townhouses

I find myself asking why more people don't do this. We currently live in a TH and it suits our needs for our young family. They're cheaper, I appreciate having neighbors in case of an emergency, some of the new ones are really beautiful.

The ONLY thing I regret that THs don't have are larger yards for the kids and doodle dog. I know space is at a premium in this area, but if developers would make the tiny yards twice as large, it would be plenty for a family and would make us TH'ers for life.

Anonymous wrote:Just wait, housing is a huge bubble. Will pop within 2 years.

08/28/2012 "Housing bubble 2?"
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/256816.page#2719642

2/18/2014 "This must be some kind of housing bubble again"
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/363812.page

7/10/2017 "housing bubble is about to burst"
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/15/654200.page#11194480

Don't worry though. Even if you've been waiting for th bubble to burst for 7 years, THIS time it's really coming. Any day now.

Just wait, housing is a huge bubble. Will pop within 2 years.

I agree with PP that is the commute not the school. We don't even have children yet. You are getting a shit shack shoe box anywhere within a decent commute for under 700k. That is including condos, because after the ridiculous fees you are still paying a PITI the equivalent to a 700k house.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What did you do? Do you just settle at his point? Home prices aren’t going to get cheaper anytime soon.

I just sold in DC b/c my charter school did not have a path to high school and I cannot take the stress of playing the DC lottery again when the kids are approaching a critical school age. Moving into a 2-bedroom and hoping something hits the market in winter where there is less competition. I wanted to move to in or around Vienna but all I see is junk in my price range $850,000-$950,000. I'm seriously considering moving to an area where the schools are not ranked as high and hope for the best. That or leave this crappy expensive area altogether.

Wow, prices in Virginia must be going nuts. I knew it was cheaper in Maryland but that kind of budget will easily get you a good school here. Can you link an example of a house that's in your price range in Vienna with a good school that's a crapbox? I'm really curious now.

I wouldn't take OPs comment as a statement about VA but about her. My house in Arlington is in that range, and it is not a crap box. It isn't grand, but it is solid and in good shape.

We settled. We plan to retire elsewhere anyhow so gave up on finding anything here we really liked.

This happened to us -- we looked at the things we could change vs the things we could not.

We knew that we could not change the schools or the commute so that is what we keyed in on.

We knew that we could fix it up or add-on eventually, even if we could not afford to do that right away.

I spent the first week scrubbing and scrubbing the gross kitchen. I knew eventually we would re-do the kitchen. It was another five years.

Anonymous wrote:And people think they have to live in a shit shack in Bethesda. If you really want a bigger house, you can get a new build in silver spring or wheaton for the same price. Stop thinking the schools are so bad.

Its not the school so much as it is the commute.

We had to move a little further out than I wanted to move, but still a reasonable commute and we had to settle on a little less land than we wanted.

The home met our size criteria, was in an excellent school district and wasn't ancient so it didn't need much work.

We kept looking for a very long time. There were times we had to stop for a year or two and then come back and recalibrate with new life circumstances. We were willing to make some compromises and made offers on some houses that weren't everything we wanted, but we would have been happy there. We were outbid over and over. We kept at it. We figured out we didn't want to pay for someone else's choices that may not have matched our taste.

Over time, we honed in on what type of house we wanted but other people might not (very dated and not quite liveable as is so it looked bad in the listing, but in better condition than a gut rehab a developer would snap up for cheap) and eventually got lucky. We also stretched our budget more than we had planned and it has thankfully worked out fine so far - knock on wood. We were able to afford some renovations up front but are going to do the rest little by little. While it has been a ton of work, we love the house and it is perfect for us. The more effort we put into making it our own, the more it feels like home.

I hope you find the same.