The realtor who sold us our house in June says if she were to list it today it would be 40% higher. Based on the few comps in the neighborhood I think she is low. It isn't just dfw that is crazy.

Couple things...

1. a lot, and I mean A LOT (would estimate 70+% in my neighborhood) work from home, commute isn't an issue anymore that's why people are flocking here. If they do commute most aren't going south of the Legacy area.

2. The Colorado markets are just as crazy as ours so that $1.1MM Colorado Springs house will probably go for $1.4-1.5M+...but yeah I'd take it as well, but who wants to deal with those pesky mountains when you can have flat cotton fields??

In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

knoxtom said:

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In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

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Kids. Schools.

YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

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Kids. Schools.

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Let's be real here...

Target. Container Store. Chick Fil A. Loft.

YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

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Kids. Schools.

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You do understand that literally every city in america has both kids and schools.

knoxtom said:

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YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

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Kids. Schools.

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You do understand that literally every city in america has both kids and schools.

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You do understand that people raising families generally prefer to live in suburbs where their kids aren't subjected to big city / inner city schools?

miller0926 said:

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So how much of a down payment is required on these? I probably pulled in more money than 95% of my age group the last 2 years and still can't afford a house up here.

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Minimum is 3.5-5% down payment.

The issues arise with what it takes to actually win the bid for the house and then hoping the appraisal comes in.

Say a house is listed for $519K with 2900SF and 4bed/3bath on the market. You'll have a flood of buyers offering on the house. The one who offers $600K for the house ends up winning the bid. Now, you can only put 5% down and still qualify for conventional financing, but what about the appraisal? It comes in at $550K. So your lender is going to peg your loan to that "value" and you'll need to come out of pocket that additional $50K, in addition to the 5% down payment.

So you really have to come up with $80K plus closing costs to buy said house. Because $600K x 5% = $30,000, but house only appraised for $550K, so you need another $50K plus that $30K to get all squared away.

You can ask the sellers for a price reduction, but they probably aren't going to be happy and agree to it and will just dissolve the contract and go with one of the other 16 offers they got.

This all assumes of course the sellers decide to roll the dice on someone who's only putting 5% down. Usually they are going to go with not just the highest bid but the strongest offer that includes solid down payment, preapproval letter, financial proof of funds and provides the best certainty of execution.

That's what it's so hard for first time borrowers. They can barely scrounge up enough cash to make for down payment and closing costs and have enough left in the tank in reserves…meanwhile they are competing against Mr. Moneybags comes in and makes a cash offer with 14 day close.

And no I'm not saying a starter home should cost $5-600K. I was using that as a real life example I've seen, starrer homes are and should be way cheaper. But there's no supply of those on the market.

Everything I read here just tells me I'm stuck in my current home until I'm dead.

YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

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Kids. Schools.

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You do understand that literally every city in america has both kids and schools.

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You do understand that people raising families generally prefer to live in suburbs where their kids aren't subjected to big city / inner city schools?

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Who said anything about inner city / big city?? I was questioning why, if able to work remotely, anyone would live in the suburbs of DFW or anywhere in DFW, moving from air conditioner to air conditioner versus somewhere with decent weather and real things to do. You responded with "school and kids" which I say makes little sense since all places have both schools and kids.

Now if you were to respond that family lived there, I can't really argue with that. But to say one lives in the suburbs of DFW because of school and kids just doesn't make sense.

knoxtom said:

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YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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YouBet said:

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knoxtom said:

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In a lot of ways working from home makes it worse. You are stuck in a generic house with a crappy backyard looking at a 6 foot privacy fence and your neighbor's roofs.

If you are allowed to work from home then why the heck would you live in the suburbs of DFW? I understand if you have to go in to work, but why otherwise?

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Kids. Schools.

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You do understand that literally every city in america has both kids and schools.

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You do understand that people raising families generally prefer to live in suburbs where their kids aren't subjected to big city / inner city schools?

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Who said anything about inner city / big city?? I was questioning why, if able to work remotely, anyone would live in the suburbs of DFW or anywhere in DFW, moving from air conditioner to air conditioner versus somewhere with decent weather and real things to do. You responded with "school and kids" which I say makes little sense since all places have both schools and kids.

Now if you were to respond that family lived there, I can't really argue with that. But to say one lives in the suburbs of DFW because of school and kids just doesn't make sense.

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About 9.5 times out of 10 when people ask, "why live in the suburbs?" ...it's against the backdrop of your other option being to live closer into the city core. And since you didn't elaborate that's not what you were talking about, I made a logical assumption. So, your question is a different one.

However, since my logical assumption still applies to most of Americans, people living in the suburbs of DFW because of school and kids is still a completely valid scenario that is way more common than yours. If you are truly able to work remotely the vast majority of the time then that's a completely different scenario and also one that hasn't played out as much as people hoped.

Most folks are in a hybrid situation at best requiring them to still be anchored semi-close to where their job resides.

double aught said:

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Everything I read here just tells me I'm stuck in my current home until I'm dead.

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You forgot the part about having to pay property taxes commensurate with the insanely high value of your home despite the fact that you'll never actually capture any of that value for yourself because you can't afford to move anywhere else.

I live on the same street as the Celina link above and my value was like $406k last year...don't think I'll be reducing my tax values based on comps for awhile.

Or, (shameless plug coming) use our cash: https://hurstlending.com/dominate-loans/dominate-with-a-cash-offer/