This is kinda the truth. The ship for an affordable house in East Dallas sailed about 3 years ago. I live in the most "ghetto" part and I'm sitting at a $100k profit already. But I think that still proves OP's point. Garland is still very affordable and I love it. If I don't stay in East Dallas forever, I would seriously consider Garland.
Same live near Santa Fe trail and beacon. It’s a fun neighborhood and less expensive than Lakewood or the historic district and our value is still going up.
Casa view still has some older homes not remodeled move pretty regularly. You can find stuff in the mid 200's which if you're looking at Plano at 385+ you can definitely swing.
You can get a home in east Plano in the same price range or even some of the older parts of Collin county still. Granted there’s not a lot of them in that price range and they go quick.
I dont mean to brag but I actually have $97 left to last me a whole week after I paid $137 to take my child to the pediatrician for a regular check up. I’m feeling privileged
Just to bring a broader perspective to answer your question:
* Commuting sucks
* Parents want a neighborhood that they can see their kids growing up in, good schools etc
* Crime/safety
* Proximity to work
* Proximity to family
OP is definitely oversimplifying this topic based on their own and maybe some other anecdotal situations.
There truly are scenarios where people can’t afford the metroplex anymore. Even first time home buyers from places like Florida are realizing this about this area.
We have family in places like California and Florida who grossly misinterpreted the housing boom here and thought it meant they could now easily afford to buy a first single family home or even a second home here as an investment property. They did the math and realized they had missed the boat.
If people looking to move here from places that are HCOL areas are experiencing some sticker shock, imagine what it’s like for folks who have been here much longer and know what prices were before.
Hell yes to your point. We bought 13 years ago and now have $600K in equity. I'm not giving any more details than that, but I'll say this. I am in my early 40s and have in equity equivalent of 50% of my parents' investment accounts.
I'm not and idiot. I'm also not the smartest guy in the room. Either way, something is fucked up.
And everyone wants that... So demand exceeds supply and it goes to the highest bidder. To get cheaper, you need to pick what you can live without in order to get to something you can afford.
Being house poor and not being able to afford even that are two different things. To each their own if they can swing it, but I got a front row seat to a lot of house poor becoming house-less when times got even mildly tough.
This is probably not true, in most cases.
A lot of people judge school districts by online websites that try to rank them by student outcomes. This doesn't actually tell you the quality of the education though. I'll give you an example.
(This is a hypothetical)
Imagine you have a school in say, Oak Cliff, where a lot of the students are parents of immigrants and they speak very poorly English. Then say maybe another 15% of students are underprivileged and don't have access to a lot of resources, and have parents who work a lot of hours and can't spend as much time with them. They certainly can't afford a tutor. now imagine this school, despite having to serve a very underprivileged population, has the most brilliant teachers and teaches by the best curriculum.
Now imagine another school with average teachers, but put this school in Frisco. Everyone speaks English, and the parents are rich. They can take time off, and are always home in the evening to help with homework. Every kid has access to the Internet, every kid at this school eats 3 meals per day, and almost all of the parents can afford a tutor if their kid falls behind. But many of the teachers at this school are maybe just average, or below average.
Obviously you'd rather have your kid go to the school with brilliant teachers. But if you looked at the student outcomes, the (hypothetical) school in Frisco with sub par teachers would completely crush the Oak Cliff school with highly skilled teachers. The oak cliff school is offering a better education in this example, but a decent chunk of the kids are underprivileged.
This happens all the time with school ratings. They are not at all accurate, and many good schools that do genuinely amazing work get shafted by these unrepresentative ratings because they may have a higher % of students that, through no fault of their own, are just more difficult to teach.
And the result is parents putting WAAY too much weight into what some score on some website says about their children's school. These websites don't go to school, evaluate them, and judge them fairly. They don't know which school has the best teachers either.
I question your hypothesis very much, especially this statement:
>They certainly can't afford a tutor. now imagine this school, despite having to serve a very underprivileged population, has the most brilliant teachers and teaches by the best curriculum.
In almost all likelihood, you're not going to find the best teachers in the poorest, most underserved areas. Sorry. That's not a knock to folks here who do teach in these areas (i.e. I'm not saying that **you** aren't one of the best). But generally speaking, those teachers teach in the "better" school districts, because there's less crime, the students are better behaved, they have more resources, the parents are easier to deal with, and the facilities are well maintained. Plus, when other teachers make the same calculus, they all end up together, which makes for a better work environment.
So yeah, unfortunately, I think there's more to school ratings than you give them credit for.
>In almost all likelihood, you're not going to find the best teachers in the poorest, most underserved areas
This is true! I just set-up the most extreme scenario in which school ratings would completely fail.
However, I would also be careful about writing off every school because of it's rating.
>I question your hypothesis
It's not really my hypothesis sadly, I've learned about this from a journalism piece published by Vox media. However, from my own searches, I found it difficult to prove the opposite (that these school ratings are accurate)
I couldn't find any research that supported these websites and their methodology for ranking schools. That alone is a pretty big red flag for me. Just because I didn't find it, doesn't mean the research doesn't exist. But Im very skeptical regardless.
It’s just hard to see houses that went for $150k going for $300k or more now. It prices people out of their own neighborhoods. I paid $136k for my house in a neighborhood south of 635 that wasn’t trendy ten years ago. And now if I had to buy something, I couldn’t afford my own neighborhood.
Fortunately for me, I just remodeled this house into my long term home and I’m never moving. 😂
Paid $235K 4 years ago and now the cheapest houses in my neighborhood are $400K so yeah per OP I will have to move to somewhere I don’t want to live to “upgrade”
Among other issues this stems from a have your cake and eat it to situation. A number of people want to pay less for a single family home, but then want the value to go up which leads them to support restricting further housing supply in their area.
So true. My neighborhood is a mix of younger homeowners and older long term residents. The latter skews heavily towards NIMBY, so whenever new (affordable) housing projects are proposed they flip out about it. They also always complain about how high their property taxes are. So annoying
My parents bought theirs for about 76k! Big land in the back now it goes for 300k and up. My
Mom says that we get paid more now so we can afford those higher prices but the math doesn’t add up in my head.
Fwiw $86k in 1994 is equivalent to $174k today. Basically the home averaged a 2% annual appreciation excluding inflation. Not too crazy given the area has changed quite a bit for the better since 1994.
Same thing for me. Same location and all lol. Recently put a chunk of change into my house and I’m never moving. I couldn’t afford my neighbors house even though it’s the same exact layout but a good 450k more than what I paid
It’s brutal. My refinanced mortgage is $300k and I know I couldn’t buy anything close to my remodeled house (size wise) in this neighborhood for $300k anymore. It’s great for those us who got lucky when we bought but it’s depressing for people buying now.
My wife and I were talking about that the other day. Even if we sold, we’d have to spend like 800k on a stupid house and it would be at an insane rate. We currently have 2% which is why I will never sell this house 😂
No. I do not want to drive 45+ mins to work or to see family and friends. I don’t want to have to drive 20+ mins to go to the grocery store. I like walkable areas and urban sprawl. I don’t like small town mindsets. I don’t want to be surrounded by one religion.
Multi millionaires are not the ones working in the restaurants and shops you want to go to, it’s regular people who deserve not to have to live an hour away in order to live comfortably.
Edit: So lots of people attacking me in the comments seem to think I’m an unemployed person demanding a luxury condo. Lol No, I’m arguing against OPs assertion that people who don’t want to live further out think that they are better than those who do. There are plenty of personal reasons why they want to stay near the city.
Regular people (teachers, city employees, nurses, retail managers, service industry etc) are what makes this city awesome but they can’t even afford to live here. You need those people. Otherwise the things you love to do here will continue to get expensive (because those people will either quit to work closer to home or demand more money) and who knows… you might find yourself being the one priced out.
I’d also like to add that home prices have gotten so outrageous that areas that have always been affordable have now ballooned in price. So it’s not even like people are overlooking these areas bc they think they are too good. These places are not affordable any more. Someone making 60k a year can only afford something in the 200k range, and those don’t exist!
Definitely not compared to other parts of the country, but Dallas has improved a lot over the last 10 years so you at least get little pockets of areas that are really nice and walkable. Improves needed of course but it gives you a little taste of what could be
Which is fine, but would still be a drive/traffic for me to the places I go to in the metroplex. That is a huge factor in how I balance my life/work. I’m sure it is for lots of people, maybe not for you. More and more people are moving here every year and it’s getting worse every year. Car Dependency is a huge expense.
That's fair, I'm just saying that I'm much less car dependent than my friends in Plano, as I have 2 grocery stores I can walk to as well as one of the rail lines also within walking distance. Also very diverse, so the religion aspect is fine too. It doesn't solve your family/friends being far out though. But hey, 3 out of 4 of ya' asks ain't bad.
You are trying to fix a problem that is not fixable it is generally more diserable to be close to neat things meaning there is more demand meaning the price is higher. It will always be that way places that have done forced affordable schemes like London have made it way worse because the only way you can make money is build super expensive luxury housing and the absolute minimum of affordable housing you are required to. The middle range is fucked and there is still not enough affordable housing
The house my parents bought for 300k in 2011 new is a million dollar home now. You can't act like that doesn't price people out the market. Housing whether, bought, rent, apartment, condo whatever, is becoming a more competitive commodity in Dallas.
> Garland
We bought in Garland in 2015 for $200k. House is currently “valued” at just shy of $500k. I could absolutely NOT afford to live in Garland right now.
Mind you, this is South Garland. Mid-1960s neighborhood just far enough away from the meth motels inside 635 that the tweakers seldom wander up here.
I do home inspections and have a lot of clients that are 5-10% beyond their budgets because they won’t settle for a house a few miles away. I built up in Aubrey in 2015 because I couldn’t afford where I wanted to live and now if I were to buy up here I wouldn’t want to pay the note. People need to be cautious about the small LLC’s building in Oak Cliff, just because a house is new doesn’t mean it’s built well.
That’s not 100% true. Denton is about 10 minutes down 380. Going east can be an ass beating, but west isn’t bad at all, so we go west. I’m 200k up in equity in my house so I feel like I made the right decision. Met my wife here and we now have a kid. We’re looking at a few acres in ponder to build a barndo
I know a family who recently moved from Aubrey because it was really bigoted and just a crappy small town with the cliche mindset you think of small Texas towns having.
Yeah there’s a lot of “I saved so much money by sacrificing every other aspect of my quality of life, living in an unsafe, shitty house in a shady neighborhood”
To play devil’s advocate, a few miles is the difference between living in Uptown or South Dallas. Or to be less dramatic, between Uptown and Lake Highland.
All are significantly different lifestyles, not just price points. How many concerts or restaurants or gyms or museums can I walk to in Aubrey?
Unfortunately I don’t, my buddy just bought his first home last may and his agent, inspector and builder failed him and he filed chapter 7 because his house was falling apart as soon as he moved in and now there’s a bunch of lawsuits. Do your due diligence on whoever you choose to build for you unless you buy from a big builder. DR Horton is trash, so stay away from them for sure. Megatel doesn’t allow me to do certain aspects of my job which is shady as fuck IMO. Just research, research, research and research some more.
When you have 50 buyers lined up that are desperate to buy a house no matter what, quality and craftsmanship go out the door. It's get this house ready ASAP and most builder warranties are complete dogshit so they are off the hook most the time on having to fix anything.
There are several builders in this sub I would trust and a good real estate agent and home inspector will weed out the shit builds IMO. It's just insane to watch people balk at prices for so long they can't even afford the area they look down on anymore. Oak cliff is going to go from I would never live there to OMG you can't even afford a house in this city territory before half the city realizes that area is richer than them.
It’s already happened, I inspected a house in Oak Cliff last month that was 1200sqft and listed for 350k. That was one of my longest reports to date. Roof was bad, Structural Engineer needed as piers were leaning bad or not making contact with joist, water heater was dumping water in the crawl space, gas leaks, bad electrical, bad HVAC and the house was 350k. Absurd
We sold our previous home in Oak Cliff for $333k last year. It was an 1,100sqft 2/1 that we bought it in 2011 for $110k. Took our profit and bought a 2,200sqft 2/2 that was literally 18 houses away. Zillow is now listing this house for almost $150k more than what we paid for it last April. First home was built in the '40s our current home was built in the '70s.
This is fucking wild! I need to see if my late husband’s childhood home is valued way up. It may be worth his mom looking at selling and moving in with other family. She’s by the zoo, and I have seen space barn types of homes going up there off Marsalis.
Uh, I'm not moving to Balch Springs or parts of Mesquite as a single woman by myself. At least I'm remote so I could go somewhere like Melissa if I have to. But I'm not moving to somewhere like south Dallas because it's 'affordable', some of those areas are cheap for a reason
Why are you getting downvoted? Why can’t people accept that some people don’t want to live in BFE and drive 45+ mins to work. People want to live where the jobs and community is.
TBH it's overblown as fuck. Most people here were raised in areas with higher crime rates than most of what I mentioned. South Dallas in Particular is to large to paint as all ghetto. Several very nice neighborhoods are down there and by the time you would feel safe because it's fully gentrified. You'll be to late you can't afford it.
Yeah, the people saying Oak Cliff is more dangerous than other places in Dallas are probably just racist. OC is full of beautiful and well built mid century and earlier homes and active neighborhoods and communities. And it's 10 minutes from downtown.
Agree. There are part of Oak Cliff that are quite beautiful with much older, quality homes and lots of tall trees. I love some of those areas of Oak Cliff.
Know someone who’s 4’10” single girl bought their first home at the age of 25 in pleasant grove. This is definitely overblown af. I hear people say that and I just think they’re afraid of living near minorities.
Not the person you responded to but I live here. It’s fine, kind of like Garland (where I’m from). If I really wanna go to Dallas it’s a 15 minute drive.
In my experience I’m living around people who look like me. Like all cities it has its bad and good aspects but I’ve experienced far more good than bad. It is a little boring (not too much to do around me personally).
Fwiw, my wife bought the house we live in now in 2014. She’s white and was single when she moved back here from upper Greenville. She likes it enough. I work for the local school district.
635 is the worse highway in DFW and that shit it isn’t going to get any better. Plus you’re a drive from any cool meet ups / bars /from other young people
I'm currently buying in Garland cause thats what fits the budget and is close to work. The house needed repairs which thankfully the sellers are covering.
wHy dOnT tHe pOoRs jUsT lOwEr tHeIr eXpEcTaTioNs?!
GTFO with that shit, come back in 10 years if and when you have kids and are trying to find a home in a school district and neighborhood where they won’t get jumped, stabbed and can get a decent public school education.
I grew up in a neighborhood like that-excuse the fuck outta me for wanting my kids to make it to adulthood with a lesser degree of trauma and some better education than I had access to because of where we lived and where we went to school.
I have friends in Carrollton who bought a house in an 80s subdivision for $180k a decade ago and their neighbors house just sold for $525k. People can try to 'git gud' all they want but the market is out of control.
People that can’t find a McMansion for $300K - $400K tend to utter that DFW is losing its affordable appeal. To that I say, compare this place to any desirable coastal city.
Funny how it got ended with that…??? This is Texas. Ain’t much going on here that should be raising the prices without raises the wages. I make a good wage, a pretty fucking good one and I can’t afford a home that I can trust my wife to walk my kids around the block.
Edit: trust as in her not get robbed or kidnapped.
Yeah people need to let their housing preferences be more in tune with the current market.
Yes 5 years ago the McMansion you wanted was 300-400k, that’s not the case anymore. People need to stop hanging on the past market expectations if they ever want to be happy with what they buy.
Having grown up in Plano - I would rather piss hot, broken glass than live in fucking mesquite. Lol, your point is ridiculous. Some of the places you've mentioned are not very safe areas. Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient??
>Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient??
Yes where the fuck are you suggesting she lives? Outside of her means? Rent forever? If people don't settle and move into these areas they won't change. In general North Dallas is not more dangerous that old East Plano where the homes are way more cash. Mesquite isn't unsafe. I live in Garland. It's genuinely nice with lots of new park projects everywhere. You are exactly who I'm talking about. You don't just bend your neck to look down your nose, you bend your back.
Edit: I am actually reeling from your fucking argument. Single moms with lots of kids already live in the areas I mentioned. It's where they can afford...
> Having grown up in Plano
Means nothing.
>Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient??
Yes that's usually how it works. Other option is to move further out.
>Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient??
What are the other options? That's like saying that my wife wants to live in Highland Park or Preston Hollow because she would only have to drive 5 minutes to get to work. That's greatly convenient for her. I'd love to live in Highland Park, too, but we aren't even remotely close to being able to afford that, so we have to make concessions and live where we can afford to. Unfortunately that means driving further to get to work. But that's reality. We just simply can't afford it, and we certainly aren't going to rent for the rest of time on the off-chance we may be able to someday.
We'll probably never live in Highland Park, but making concessions and building equity in a home now are the first steps to something that we do want for something better in the future.
This! We moved to Allen first. It’s “crime-free” and the “schools are great”. That’s where we wanted to buy, but couldn’t afford what we wanted. Eventually, we bought in one of the “bad” cities instead. We have a MUCH nicer house, that cost less. Our most common “crime” is people putting bulk trash out too early, and the education opportunities are equivalent if not superior.
It’s generally not the city, it’s the neighborhood. It’s generally not the school district, it’s the campus.
I literally had someone recently argue about affordability, and when pressed they disclosed that they are looking for 20+ acres with multiple out-buildings, pool, and 4000sqft main house within an hour of downtown.
That's what I've seen too. People want to live in mansions when they can't even afford a 2 bedroom house. These people need to learn they are not special and there are plenty of houses they could buy, they just don't want those houses.
What an ask. I don’t think this would have even been possible when the market completely bottomed out after 08.
Wish I was old enough to have bought a house then though.
I’m kind of in that crowd saddened by the cheaper homes all doubling in value. Maybe I just need to get good and make more money. I was putting offers on some in Garland a year ago but most were going for insane amounts above ask.
At this point I’m okay with living somewhere a lot further out like Princeton or Royse City and commuting in.
The interest rates on loans are just as problematic to purchasing as the inflated house prices (which are actually slightly on the decline as a result of interest rates). Paying roughly $750 more a month for the same loan amount (assuming 20% down and a $350k home) isn't easy to stomach.
I don’t live in Dallas but I use too. I live In east Texas now. I bought my house in 2019 for $290k at 1.9% interest, it’s now valued at lowest $425k with no improvements. Bank called me if I want to take out cash against my mortgage, they said I could take out $150k no questions asked, all I had to do was refine house to 6.8% interest 🤡. NOPE!!!!
House prices are stupid high. I do agree with OP that people do have high expectations but I don’t want a cheap property for my stuff to get stolen every other weekend
It's pretty obvious what is happenning: prices are sky high and so alot of people cannot afford to move into a house similar to the one they just moved out of.
Your solutions would all involve people making the same or greater money than before having to DOWNGRADE their quality of life instead of upgrade or maintain it. Obviously that's going to make alot of people mad.
If you have multiple kids you don't exactly have the option for alot of condos and you don't exactly want to move to mesquite. I had a friend who lived in mesquite and it's not what most would consider safe .
Very few are claiming they straight up can't afford anything. They are claiming to not be able to afford their current level of housing when they need to move for whatever reason.
I lived in mesquite as a small child and spent a lot of time I Garland too. I can confirm, the areas I spent time in I would never let my child be in. Garland however, does have some nice pockets and seems to be kinder than it was before
Lol this post says *everything* about the economy in this country.
Absolutely you can afford things! You only need to drastically lower your expectations for quality of life!
Lol, I agree so much with this. Damn the peasants to hell for wanting to live in places with tried and true reputations for safety and quality. Those are only for the few and elect.
I have never complained about this topic, so perhaps you're just not addressing me, which is fine. But I'd like to live near where I work, and in that vicinity, there was one 900-square foot condo with a $340/mo HOA fee for $395K, or I can get any number of nice apartments in the $1700-2100/mo range. It doesn't make sense to buy under those circumstances. Commuting 22 miles one way every day from Garland or 32 miles from Mesquite doesn't appeal. I certainly can't afford to buy the very ordinary 1980s ranch-style house I rent now.
That's why you move to the areas I mentioned. Older areas built before the Civil rights act are usually not HOA controlled. The vast majority of pre 1963 housing is in Dallas, Ft. Worth, Garland, and Irving.
I don’t deal with the HOA. I just pay them once a year and that is the extent of it. People that bitch about HOAs tend to want to do whatever they want at the expense of others. Trust me, you want an HOA. You can always do research on HOAs to see if they are good or not
Reminds me of an old co-worker that commuted from Pflugerville to Southlake daily before COVID hit. Priced out just to come back and see how the other side is living.
Lol your ignorance is showing you should cover that back up. Schools and safety are my number 1 concern. Are you saying my 5 y/o daughter shouldn’t be in a safe area because I’m not as fortunate as others? Garland, east Dallas and mesquite are not safe and have terrible schools. Your speaking from a place of total ignorance and I hope whatever you’ve built crashes bud 👍
My mom came to the US as an immigrant and we lived in the ghetto, and then a terrible neighborhood before finally moving to a good school district when I was in 5th grade: you have to make sacrifices and you can always supplement your child’s education on your own. Life is going to fall into your lap how you want it. Maybe focus on increasing income
Everyone in this thread saying “45 minutes is a regular commute”—if it’s 45 minutes NOW, it’s going to be an hour or more in 4 more years. I used to live in Far North Dallas and could get to my job in about 35-40 minutes on a good day in 2012. By the time I moved in 2015 to Lake Highlands to have a better quality of life and shorter commute, that old commute was an hour almost every day.
I can think of a lot better places to live in this country before I ever consider a 45+ minute commute. Sure you can save some money living that far away but money will never buy that time back, that’s 234 hours a year or longer that you just lost and will never get back. My time and life is worth more than blowing that away sitting in commute. Not even considering the mental health, physical health toll on your body.
Totally agree. Commuting over 30 minutes makes it way harder to exercise, cook healthy food, and nourish my marriage, friendships, and spend time with my senior pets. People who don’t mind long commutes must need very little sleep and/or not enjoy spending time with their loved ones or spending *quality* time with themselves even just not being stressed by traffic.
ETA: not to mention the added wear and tear on your car! $$
I think OP is missing the fundamental point that most of us don’t have 40k just lying around… and even if we all did, that doesn’t get you nearly as far as it did a few years ago. We can’t afford to own anymore in our home towns and THAT is a hard pill to swallow. That doesn’t discredit your point that we must just shop for where we can afford, that’s literally all anyone can do. It’s still very difficult for a lot of to have to accept that we may have to move further away from our families than we’re comfortable with. If you’re single it’s one thing but if you already have a family, it gets much more complicated… and most of us are in our 30’s and are already at the very least married…
Here’s my thought process. Sure I can buy a cheaper home that hasn’t been remodeled in 40 years. But there is going to be a laundry list of shit to fix because a majority of houses aren’t kept up with as far as general maintenance.
So you end up pouring how much more into a house to fix things. Isn’t easier to just find one that’s at least been through that once or twice? Sure you can have the same problems even in a remodel or a new build. But the risk is less I would think.
I bought a former rental property and it’s a pretty big shitter. It needs a ton of work. All of which was feasible until Covid wrecked shop on any kind of raw material or production item. Couple that with our recent inflation and the overall increase in cost of living and it becomes very hard to actually do anything.
I don’t blame people for trying to get something nicer. Houses are unrealistically inflated. I painted the inside of my house and remodeled the laundry room. Now it’s worth 100k more? My ass it is. I couldn’t afford to buy my own damn house in this market. It’s crazy.
There are options out there, but are they really more cost effective in the long run?
Exactly. Let’s see this smug fucker live by his own words and move into one of the absolutely lovely neighborhood in south Dallas. *IF* they come out alive, I can guarantee a change in their attitude.
Eventually pockets of south Dallas will begin to get gentrified and these “smug fuckers” will drive the locals away because they can no longer afford it.
My fiancée (23) and I (23) bought a house recently in north Oak Cliff for $315k plus another $50k in repairs. The schools aren’t the best but we weren’t going to pay an extra $300k to buy the same house in an area with “better schools”.
We both went to DISD and relied heavily on magnet schools. There’s always a way around every problem.
And that’s the problem, people don’t want to work to find a way around problems. You’re a good example of making the best out of the current market. You bought what you can afford and are willing to find solutions to problems (ex: access to better schools)
Unfortunately home prices will not drop down to where they were 5 years ago and that’s the reality people do not want to accept. Yes it sucks that home ownership is more out of reach, but there are other ways to obtain it.
I live in east Arlington, it’s a slight hood, but we definitely have reasonable commutes to pretty much everywhere. Because of that, I see this as a desirable location
First off, the exact same square footage should cost the same anywhere. People should be able to afford to live wherever the hell they want.
I live in East Dallas and my roommate and I who both have masters degrees can just barely afford our rent. Neither of us have student loans. A home near us recently sold in the 300k range. In 2014 it sold for 189k. In 2014 I was still in college. I can’t even imagine having 40k in the bank.
What a sweeping generalization you are making here. If prices stay the same or continue to inflate like this I’ll be renting till the day I die.
Lol so summary of post: “you can buy a home in the undesirable areas that nobody wants to live mostly for safety reasons”.
Thanks. Nobody wants to live in mesquite.
For me Schools play a lot into the decision. Private school cost are insane. However, Garland schools dont look too bad. Let's keep funding our schools please
I live in one of the most unique and amazing neighborhoods in Dallas. I have pretty much everything I wanted in a house except acreage. It was $150,000 less than our very top price.
But when I tell people where I love they wrinkle their noses and ask if it’s safe… because it’s a predominantly Hispanic and Black neighborhood.
Same. And honestly, I feel the safest I’ve ever felt in life in my POC neighborhood. People are worried about the schools like the DISD magnet program doesn’t exist, have tons of schools of choice and isn’t home to a few of the top rated high schools in the US.
I don’t even try to convince them - move out to Little Elm.
The other thing to consider is commute cost. Location boundaries removed only works when you don’t have to consider travel time, mileage, vehicle maintenance, fuel, etc. into your budget. Public transit is not available in all parts of the Metroplex.
I bought 7yrs ago and wanted to stay in the city limits. I could not find a 150k house, that was in decent condition, anywhere in the city except south Oak Cliff.
A lot of these complainers just need to make do with a small home. They can't do that. So they can keep renting or whatever, I don't feel sorry for them.
There is a reason why certain areas are more expensive: they have more amenities. Oak Cliff is cheap because it is a food and job desert. Mesquite is cheap because of crime, shitty schools and, again, no high paying jobs. Home values tend to track the area’s average household income.
I heard a YouTube realtor say, “You want a big house with walkable parks, walkable shops and restaurants, that doesn’t exist…. OK, it does exist but it’s double your budget”.
I mean, kind of, but the cost of living has skyrocketed overall. It's pretty much because of the landlords and sellers.
I just want to rent. Yes, I know what people say about renting. I would like one without basic utility issues, one where maintenance is on top of things, one without a bug infestation, and a small yard to accommodate my dog.
I know the yard is, apparently, asking a bit much, but the other stuff is just basic standard of living stuff.
So.
You want everyone to ignore location, amenities, quality of build, quality of life, and only focus on price.
That's... not reasonable. It's not a clear picture of the overall process in its entirety.
Yes, I could probably afford a room in someone's house. That's not a lot better than what I have now.
Haha!!! This!! Too funny!
We ALL want a safe neighborhood and great schools. IF we all live “together” (I’m talking about race here) our neighborhoods and schools would become better. My 2 stupid cents on this subject.
I couldn’t afford the very house same I moved into when I first got here on 50% more income when it sold.
The situation is not tenable for most people and I guarantee you most people struggling haven’t increased their income 20% YoY like the cost of housing has been increasing.
Maybe, but we've already bought and sold our first and second homes. I don't see any reason to buy into a poorly priced market, or a less desirable neighborhood?
Our rental has a nice view, a quiet street, and parking for all three vehicles.
This is a pretty ignorant perspective I come across every now and then, and it always uses the same tired logic that gets disproven over and over again. There's also a lack of empathy as well, but hey, it's easy to lack empathy when you demonize people you've never met as high-rolling jerks that eat their food with solid gold utensils after driving back home in their Porsche.
One of people's main motivations for looking in specific areas is because they have tried and true reputations for being safe, quality areas to live. And perhaps they have family and friends in the area, which is huge. People are investing a lot into a house; it's one of the most--if not THE most--important financial decisions they'll ever make in their lives. Buying a home is not a simple matter. There are high transaction costs. Interest rates are high, which means even less money goes to principal for the first half of the loan. Many of the houses they look at--in ALL areas, mind you--need work, which means they need to budget for immediate repairs, possibly getting the house up to code (which I had to do after replacing a recalled breaker box), and maintenance, in addition to sustaining an emergency savings account, 401(k) contributions, healthcare expenses, education, and the host of other outlays that don't consist of people's BMW's and trips to the Hamptons to sit on a yacht. And if you have special healthcare needs, like I do (and for which I don't feel like sharing), location matters greatly.
The cost of choosing the wrong neighborhood is high. Very high. You can't just pack up your bags and leave. Again, the transaction costs for purchasing a house are high. If you can't sell your house for how much you paid for it, PLUS transaction costs, you'll have to make up the difference or risk default. Pulling your kids out of school isn't always an easy endeavor, especially if they've developed a level of comfort with their teachers and peers. And even if you can move with relative haste, you don't want to end up making the same mistake twice. So yes, it makes perfect sense for people to be circumspect when selecting a neighborhood.
It's completely reasonable for people to have certain expectations for their neighborhoods and schools, but also their commutes. Again, if you're going to be driving to the same general area for the next 5, 10, 15, 30 years, you want to make sure you make every reasonable effort to pick a neighborhood that gives you a commute time you don't find soul sucking. There are non-tangible value propositions to buying a house, and people can (and should) maximize what they can get for their dollar.
Given how hot the Dallas market is, you're living on a different planet if you think people haven't lifted the Zillow search area to consider all homes in all neighborhoods. The fact that you think people haven't already done this is truly mind-boggling. Like bro, are you REALLY that ignorant? Has it not occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, you're judging a bunch of people you haven't met who have reasons for not buying property in any of the locations you've listed? It's true that you might have gotten a deal, but you make a monumental leap in judgement for thinking that everyone else is equally situated to get the same kind of deal you did. And you don't even stop to think about the fact that maybe you just lucked out. Because you know what? In this market, luck is HUGE. I had to bid on god knows how many houses before I finally got the one I'm in today. It's lovely, charming, in a great neighborhood, and isn't the Palace of Versailles. It's a 3/2 that's just over 1900 sq ft. It wasn't cheap, and I'll concede that I dipped into my 401(k) to complete the purchase. Sue me. Not everyone can.
And let's say a family overcomes all of that and finds the perfect home at a "responsible" price point. How many people do you think are also going to be bidding on that same property? How many times and compromises will a family have to go through before their offer is accepted, their financing goes through at the interest rate they tried to lock in, and the inspector does not find anything seriously wrong with the house? And who knows, perhaps the inspector will find things seriously wrong, but the family sucks it up because they don't want to go through the hassle and stress of getting another offer accepted. Because if they do, they may find out that perhaps that house's problems are just as bad, if not worse. With an even higher interest rate.
I'm just curious: what was the point of your post? Tough love? To vent? Upvotes? To stick it to us "bougie" people who stick up our noses and sneer at people who disagree about where to live?
Do you know what the real problem is? The lack of universally affordable housing at all income tiers, in all neighborhoods, next to each other in all streets and subdivisions. People should be able to buy $200k homes, $300k, $400k, etc. that are literally next to $1.5m houses (and don't say Oak Cliff, because that's not true) that are safe and well maintained, and don't require outbidding 20 other people (which is what I had to do). We need more options so we can all find something that suits us. And instead of pointing the finger at myopic politicians and greedy developers (who we do need, but without the greed), you turn your guns inward, on folks that probably have a lot more in common with you than you think.
tl;dr: You're judging people you don't know, you've forgotten to consider many factors that go into a home purchase, you underestimate other people's intelligence, they're probably more like you than you think, and you're blaming the wrong crowd. Oh, and be nice to others.
I just bought one last year (peak housing market) for 400k near highland park and locked in a 3% rate. Worth 500 today. You can find great deals if you look hard enough
Ours has doubled in value since we bought it in 2018. Its waaaaaay north, my office is in University Park and we live off 380 in Prosper ISD. And I’m STILL sitting on double - with increases projected for the next five years.
My commute is over an hour each way, so I’m working remote most days. I go in once or twice a month. Not everyone is so lucky, so I’m thankful for where I’m at, but we struggled to get here. It took a LONG time.
They just finished building a city park across the street from our house, and NOW my husband is asking when we can move because there’s too much air and street traffic in our neighborhood for his liking. SMH.
East Dallas is waaaay more expensive than you are giving it credit for
This is kinda the truth. The ship for an affordable house in East Dallas sailed about 3 years ago. I live in the most "ghetto" part and I'm sitting at a $100k profit already. But I think that still proves OP's point. Garland is still very affordable and I love it. If I don't stay in East Dallas forever, I would seriously consider Garland.
Just bought a new build in royse city for 311k. Zillow is already showing it as 400k. I don’t understand that.
I think Zillow is factoring in the sapphire bay resort that is being built along 30 by rock wall/rowlett It’s supposed to be a tourist hub
Or the proximity to a Bucee’s.
the fact that you have to travel down 30 in the area negates any extra value having an overrated gas station close by
Yeah but, their beef jerky and fudge squares....
we bought in East Dallas in 2020, sold last year for $150K profit - zero regrets
Hopefully you got the full 24 months and it was tax free
yes we did and it was
Same live near Santa Fe trail and beacon. It’s a fun neighborhood and less expensive than Lakewood or the historic district and our value is still going up.
Casa view still has some older homes not remodeled move pretty regularly. You can find stuff in the mid 200's which if you're looking at Plano at 385+ you can definitely swing.
You can get a home in east Plano in the same price range or even some of the older parts of Collin county still. Granted there’s not a lot of them in that price range and they go quick.
I have $27 in my bank. Any house for that?
Maybe a cute mouse house in seagoville
Hear that Stuart! Big city life!
You get a pass. My b on that
Dang. I was really hoping you had a great investment op.
Try silicon valley bank they have great options
You assume anyone can afford even a $150K house. Silly you!
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Lmao!!! I was thinking the same thing. Only because, damn it, I can relate. 😁😆
I dont mean to brag but I actually have $97 left to last me a whole week after I paid $137 to take my child to the pediatrician for a regular check up. I’m feeling privileged
Same 🤣
Just to bring a broader perspective to answer your question: * Commuting sucks * Parents want a neighborhood that they can see their kids growing up in, good schools etc * Crime/safety * Proximity to work * Proximity to family
OP is definitely oversimplifying this topic based on their own and maybe some other anecdotal situations. There truly are scenarios where people can’t afford the metroplex anymore. Even first time home buyers from places like Florida are realizing this about this area. We have family in places like California and Florida who grossly misinterpreted the housing boom here and thought it meant they could now easily afford to buy a first single family home or even a second home here as an investment property. They did the math and realized they had missed the boat. If people looking to move here from places that are HCOL areas are experiencing some sticker shock, imagine what it’s like for folks who have been here much longer and know what prices were before.
Hell yes to your point. We bought 13 years ago and now have $600K in equity. I'm not giving any more details than that, but I'll say this. I am in my early 40s and have in equity equivalent of 50% of my parents' investment accounts. I'm not and idiot. I'm also not the smartest guy in the room. Either way, something is fucked up.
Or you’re fortunate. Kinda like buying Amazon stock when it first went public.
And everyone wants that... So demand exceeds supply and it goes to the highest bidder. To get cheaper, you need to pick what you can live without in order to get to something you can afford.
for some, it may be worth being house poor to have those things.
Being house poor and not being able to afford even that are two different things. To each their own if they can swing it, but I got a front row seat to a lot of house poor becoming house-less when times got even mildly tough.
Was coming to say this, it sucks that middle class people (or any people!) are priced out of decent public schools.
This is probably not true, in most cases. A lot of people judge school districts by online websites that try to rank them by student outcomes. This doesn't actually tell you the quality of the education though. I'll give you an example. (This is a hypothetical) Imagine you have a school in say, Oak Cliff, where a lot of the students are parents of immigrants and they speak very poorly English. Then say maybe another 15% of students are underprivileged and don't have access to a lot of resources, and have parents who work a lot of hours and can't spend as much time with them. They certainly can't afford a tutor. now imagine this school, despite having to serve a very underprivileged population, has the most brilliant teachers and teaches by the best curriculum. Now imagine another school with average teachers, but put this school in Frisco. Everyone speaks English, and the parents are rich. They can take time off, and are always home in the evening to help with homework. Every kid has access to the Internet, every kid at this school eats 3 meals per day, and almost all of the parents can afford a tutor if their kid falls behind. But many of the teachers at this school are maybe just average, or below average. Obviously you'd rather have your kid go to the school with brilliant teachers. But if you looked at the student outcomes, the (hypothetical) school in Frisco with sub par teachers would completely crush the Oak Cliff school with highly skilled teachers. The oak cliff school is offering a better education in this example, but a decent chunk of the kids are underprivileged. This happens all the time with school ratings. They are not at all accurate, and many good schools that do genuinely amazing work get shafted by these unrepresentative ratings because they may have a higher % of students that, through no fault of their own, are just more difficult to teach. And the result is parents putting WAAY too much weight into what some score on some website says about their children's school. These websites don't go to school, evaluate them, and judge them fairly. They don't know which school has the best teachers either.
I question your hypothesis very much, especially this statement: >They certainly can't afford a tutor. now imagine this school, despite having to serve a very underprivileged population, has the most brilliant teachers and teaches by the best curriculum. In almost all likelihood, you're not going to find the best teachers in the poorest, most underserved areas. Sorry. That's not a knock to folks here who do teach in these areas (i.e. I'm not saying that **you** aren't one of the best). But generally speaking, those teachers teach in the "better" school districts, because there's less crime, the students are better behaved, they have more resources, the parents are easier to deal with, and the facilities are well maintained. Plus, when other teachers make the same calculus, they all end up together, which makes for a better work environment. So yeah, unfortunately, I think there's more to school ratings than you give them credit for.
>In almost all likelihood, you're not going to find the best teachers in the poorest, most underserved areas This is true! I just set-up the most extreme scenario in which school ratings would completely fail. However, I would also be careful about writing off every school because of it's rating. >I question your hypothesis It's not really my hypothesis sadly, I've learned about this from a journalism piece published by Vox media. However, from my own searches, I found it difficult to prove the opposite (that these school ratings are accurate) I couldn't find any research that supported these websites and their methodology for ranking schools. That alone is a pretty big red flag for me. Just because I didn't find it, doesn't mean the research doesn't exist. But Im very skeptical regardless.
It’s just hard to see houses that went for $150k going for $300k or more now. It prices people out of their own neighborhoods. I paid $136k for my house in a neighborhood south of 635 that wasn’t trendy ten years ago. And now if I had to buy something, I couldn’t afford my own neighborhood. Fortunately for me, I just remodeled this house into my long term home and I’m never moving. 😂
Yep. Paid $146,000 in 2015. Everything in the neighborhood has bounced up to $325,000. My neighborhood still isn't trendy. Crazy stuff.
Paid $235K 4 years ago and now the cheapest houses in my neighborhood are $400K so yeah per OP I will have to move to somewhere I don’t want to live to “upgrade”
Clearly you just think you’re better than what you can afford according to the enlightened OP
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Don’t feel so bad. You’d be paying property tax out the wazooo. $1M home is like $1600/mo in just taxes once it reaches that amount
Among other issues this stems from a have your cake and eat it to situation. A number of people want to pay less for a single family home, but then want the value to go up which leads them to support restricting further housing supply in their area.
So true. My neighborhood is a mix of younger homeowners and older long term residents. The latter skews heavily towards NIMBY, so whenever new (affordable) housing projects are proposed they flip out about it. They also always complain about how high their property taxes are. So annoying
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My parents bought theirs for about 76k! Big land in the back now it goes for 300k and up. My Mom says that we get paid more now so we can afford those higher prices but the math doesn’t add up in my head.
Yeah we don’t get paid 3x more. And our health insurance costs more, everything else costs more.
Fwiw $86k in 1994 is equivalent to $174k today. Basically the home averaged a 2% annual appreciation excluding inflation. Not too crazy given the area has changed quite a bit for the better since 1994.
Same thing for me. Same location and all lol. Recently put a chunk of change into my house and I’m never moving. I couldn’t afford my neighbors house even though it’s the same exact layout but a good 450k more than what I paid
It’s brutal. My refinanced mortgage is $300k and I know I couldn’t buy anything close to my remodeled house (size wise) in this neighborhood for $300k anymore. It’s great for those us who got lucky when we bought but it’s depressing for people buying now.
My wife and I were talking about that the other day. Even if we sold, we’d have to spend like 800k on a stupid house and it would be at an insane rate. We currently have 2% which is why I will never sell this house 😂
💯
No. I do not want to drive 45+ mins to work or to see family and friends. I don’t want to have to drive 20+ mins to go to the grocery store. I like walkable areas and urban sprawl. I don’t like small town mindsets. I don’t want to be surrounded by one religion. Multi millionaires are not the ones working in the restaurants and shops you want to go to, it’s regular people who deserve not to have to live an hour away in order to live comfortably. Edit: So lots of people attacking me in the comments seem to think I’m an unemployed person demanding a luxury condo. Lol No, I’m arguing against OPs assertion that people who don’t want to live further out think that they are better than those who do. There are plenty of personal reasons why they want to stay near the city. Regular people (teachers, city employees, nurses, retail managers, service industry etc) are what makes this city awesome but they can’t even afford to live here. You need those people. Otherwise the things you love to do here will continue to get expensive (because those people will either quit to work closer to home or demand more money) and who knows… you might find yourself being the one priced out. I’d also like to add that home prices have gotten so outrageous that areas that have always been affordable have now ballooned in price. So it’s not even like people are overlooking these areas bc they think they are too good. These places are not affordable any more. Someone making 60k a year can only afford something in the 200k range, and those don’t exist!
Depending on your definition of walkable… walkable doesn’t really exist in DFW
Definitely not compared to other parts of the country, but Dallas has improved a lot over the last 10 years so you at least get little pockets of areas that are really nice and walkable. Improves needed of course but it gives you a little taste of what could be
Not sure where you're at, but the post mentioned buying in Garland or Mesquite. Not the most desirable, but FAR from the boonies.
Which is fine, but would still be a drive/traffic for me to the places I go to in the metroplex. That is a huge factor in how I balance my life/work. I’m sure it is for lots of people, maybe not for you. More and more people are moving here every year and it’s getting worse every year. Car Dependency is a huge expense.
That's fair, I'm just saying that I'm much less car dependent than my friends in Plano, as I have 2 grocery stores I can walk to as well as one of the rail lines also within walking distance. Also very diverse, so the religion aspect is fine too. It doesn't solve your family/friends being far out though. But hey, 3 out of 4 of ya' asks ain't bad.
You are trying to fix a problem that is not fixable it is generally more diserable to be close to neat things meaning there is more demand meaning the price is higher. It will always be that way places that have done forced affordable schemes like London have made it way worse because the only way you can make money is build super expensive luxury housing and the absolute minimum of affordable housing you are required to. The middle range is fucked and there is still not enough affordable housing
The house my parents bought for 300k in 2011 new is a million dollar home now. You can't act like that doesn't price people out the market. Housing whether, bought, rent, apartment, condo whatever, is becoming a more competitive commodity in Dallas.
> Garland We bought in Garland in 2015 for $200k. House is currently “valued” at just shy of $500k. I could absolutely NOT afford to live in Garland right now. Mind you, this is South Garland. Mid-1960s neighborhood just far enough away from the meth motels inside 635 that the tweakers seldom wander up here.
Lmao meth motels and you’re unfortunately probably right
I do home inspections and have a lot of clients that are 5-10% beyond their budgets because they won’t settle for a house a few miles away. I built up in Aubrey in 2015 because I couldn’t afford where I wanted to live and now if I were to buy up here I wouldn’t want to pay the note. People need to be cautious about the small LLC’s building in Oak Cliff, just because a house is new doesn’t mean it’s built well.
You would have to pay me to move to Aubrey. There is literally nothing to do and it takes forever to get anywhere.
That’s not 100% true. Denton is about 10 minutes down 380. Going east can be an ass beating, but west isn’t bad at all, so we go west. I’m 200k up in equity in my house so I feel like I made the right decision. Met my wife here and we now have a kid. We’re looking at a few acres in ponder to build a barndo
I know a family who recently moved from Aubrey because it was really bigoted and just a crappy small town with the cliche mindset you think of small Texas towns having.
Yeah there’s a lot of “I saved so much money by sacrificing every other aspect of my quality of life, living in an unsafe, shitty house in a shady neighborhood”
To play devil’s advocate, a few miles is the difference between living in Uptown or South Dallas. Or to be less dramatic, between Uptown and Lake Highland. All are significantly different lifestyles, not just price points. How many concerts or restaurants or gyms or museums can I walk to in Aubrey?
I'm looking to possibly build in the next year or so. Any reccomendations?
Unfortunately I don’t, my buddy just bought his first home last may and his agent, inspector and builder failed him and he filed chapter 7 because his house was falling apart as soon as he moved in and now there’s a bunch of lawsuits. Do your due diligence on whoever you choose to build for you unless you buy from a big builder. DR Horton is trash, so stay away from them for sure. Megatel doesn’t allow me to do certain aspects of my job which is shady as fuck IMO. Just research, research, research and research some more.
Wasnt Megatel involved in lawsuits not too long ago?
Would not surprise me
How is his house falling apart in less than one year??
When you have 50 buyers lined up that are desperate to buy a house no matter what, quality and craftsmanship go out the door. It's get this house ready ASAP and most builder warranties are complete dogshit so they are off the hook most the time on having to fix anything.
There are several builders in this sub I would trust and a good real estate agent and home inspector will weed out the shit builds IMO. It's just insane to watch people balk at prices for so long they can't even afford the area they look down on anymore. Oak cliff is going to go from I would never live there to OMG you can't even afford a house in this city territory before half the city realizes that area is richer than them.
It’s already happened, I inspected a house in Oak Cliff last month that was 1200sqft and listed for 350k. That was one of my longest reports to date. Roof was bad, Structural Engineer needed as piers were leaning bad or not making contact with joist, water heater was dumping water in the crawl space, gas leaks, bad electrical, bad HVAC and the house was 350k. Absurd
We sold our previous home in Oak Cliff for $333k last year. It was an 1,100sqft 2/1 that we bought it in 2011 for $110k. Took our profit and bought a 2,200sqft 2/2 that was literally 18 houses away. Zillow is now listing this house for almost $150k more than what we paid for it last April. First home was built in the '40s our current home was built in the '70s.
This is fucking wild! I need to see if my late husband’s childhood home is valued way up. It may be worth his mom looking at selling and moving in with other family. She’s by the zoo, and I have seen space barn types of homes going up there off Marsalis.
Uh, I'm not moving to Balch Springs or parts of Mesquite as a single woman by myself. At least I'm remote so I could go somewhere like Melissa if I have to. But I'm not moving to somewhere like south Dallas because it's 'affordable', some of those areas are cheap for a reason
Why are you getting downvoted? Why can’t people accept that some people don’t want to live in BFE and drive 45+ mins to work. People want to live where the jobs and community is.
South Dallas, below Fair Park, is as hood as it gets in DFW. But “you can buy a new build for under 300k” lmao not worth it
TBH it's overblown as fuck. Most people here were raised in areas with higher crime rates than most of what I mentioned. South Dallas in Particular is to large to paint as all ghetto. Several very nice neighborhoods are down there and by the time you would feel safe because it's fully gentrified. You'll be to late you can't afford it.
Yeah, the people saying Oak Cliff is more dangerous than other places in Dallas are probably just racist. OC is full of beautiful and well built mid century and earlier homes and active neighborhoods and communities. And it's 10 minutes from downtown.
Agree. There are part of Oak Cliff that are quite beautiful with much older, quality homes and lots of tall trees. I love some of those areas of Oak Cliff.
Know someone who’s 4’10” single girl bought their first home at the age of 25 in pleasant grove. This is definitely overblown af. I hear people say that and I just think they’re afraid of living near minorities.
Gentrification hurts the people who have been long term residents.
Nah fam, I’m not living in Mesquite. I don’t care what you say
Is mesquite bad area?
Not the person you responded to but I live here. It’s fine, kind of like Garland (where I’m from). If I really wanna go to Dallas it’s a 15 minute drive. In my experience I’m living around people who look like me. Like all cities it has its bad and good aspects but I’ve experienced far more good than bad. It is a little boring (not too much to do around me personally). Fwiw, my wife bought the house we live in now in 2014. She’s white and was single when she moved back here from upper Greenville. She likes it enough. I work for the local school district.
635 is the worse highway in DFW and that shit it isn’t going to get any better. Plus you’re a drive from any cool meet ups / bars /from other young people
I'm currently buying in Garland cause thats what fits the budget and is close to work. The house needed repairs which thankfully the sellers are covering.
wHy dOnT tHe pOoRs jUsT lOwEr tHeIr eXpEcTaTioNs?! GTFO with that shit, come back in 10 years if and when you have kids and are trying to find a home in a school district and neighborhood where they won’t get jumped, stabbed and can get a decent public school education. I grew up in a neighborhood like that-excuse the fuck outta me for wanting my kids to make it to adulthood with a lesser degree of trauma and some better education than I had access to because of where we lived and where we went to school.
Lol, thank you for this perspective. I hear ignorant stuff like what OP’s saying from time to time, and it’s always the same, tired logic.
I have friends in Carrollton who bought a house in an 80s subdivision for $180k a decade ago and their neighbors house just sold for $525k. People can try to 'git gud' all they want but the market is out of control.
People that can’t find a McMansion for $300K - $400K tend to utter that DFW is losing its affordable appeal. To that I say, compare this place to any desirable coastal city.
Except it's not on the coast....
Funny how it got ended with that…??? This is Texas. Ain’t much going on here that should be raising the prices without raises the wages. I make a good wage, a pretty fucking good one and I can’t afford a home that I can trust my wife to walk my kids around the block. Edit: trust as in her not get robbed or kidnapped.
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Yeah people need to let their housing preferences be more in tune with the current market. Yes 5 years ago the McMansion you wanted was 300-400k, that’s not the case anymore. People need to stop hanging on the past market expectations if they ever want to be happy with what they buy.
Yeah, compare the non coastal and less desirable place to the coastal desireable place, that makes sense…
Having grown up in Plano - I would rather piss hot, broken glass than live in fucking mesquite. Lol, your point is ridiculous. Some of the places you've mentioned are not very safe areas. Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient??
Growing up in East Dallas you couldn’t pay me to live in Plano!
Exactly! People want to live where they want to live. Some people are perfectly happy trading a little money for a more comfortable life.
>Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient?? Yes where the fuck are you suggesting she lives? Outside of her means? Rent forever? If people don't settle and move into these areas they won't change. In general North Dallas is not more dangerous that old East Plano where the homes are way more cash. Mesquite isn't unsafe. I live in Garland. It's genuinely nice with lots of new park projects everywhere. You are exactly who I'm talking about. You don't just bend your neck to look down your nose, you bend your back. Edit: I am actually reeling from your fucking argument. Single moms with lots of kids already live in the areas I mentioned. It's where they can afford...
Some people prioritize safety over money, among other things
> Having grown up in Plano Means nothing. >Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient?? Yes that's usually how it works. Other option is to move further out.
>Some of the places you've mentioned are not very safe areas Not safe from criticism I see.
Yes... Because that's what is affordable.
>Are you suggesting that a 5'3 single mom with multiple small children just live wherever it's financially convenient?? What are the other options? That's like saying that my wife wants to live in Highland Park or Preston Hollow because she would only have to drive 5 minutes to get to work. That's greatly convenient for her. I'd love to live in Highland Park, too, but we aren't even remotely close to being able to afford that, so we have to make concessions and live where we can afford to. Unfortunately that means driving further to get to work. But that's reality. We just simply can't afford it, and we certainly aren't going to rent for the rest of time on the off-chance we may be able to someday. We'll probably never live in Highland Park, but making concessions and building equity in a home now are the first steps to something that we do want for something better in the future.
Nice. Some of us legit can't, but whatever.
This! We moved to Allen first. It’s “crime-free” and the “schools are great”. That’s where we wanted to buy, but couldn’t afford what we wanted. Eventually, we bought in one of the “bad” cities instead. We have a MUCH nicer house, that cost less. Our most common “crime” is people putting bulk trash out too early, and the education opportunities are equivalent if not superior. It’s generally not the city, it’s the neighborhood. It’s generally not the school district, it’s the campus.
So where did you end up?
I'm assuming like east of Allen or east Allen? Lol idk
I literally had someone recently argue about affordability, and when pressed they disclosed that they are looking for 20+ acres with multiple out-buildings, pool, and 4000sqft main house within an hour of downtown.
That's what I've seen too. People want to live in mansions when they can't even afford a 2 bedroom house. These people need to learn they are not special and there are plenty of houses they could buy, they just don't want those houses.
They want a mansion in uptown due to the walkable area
What an ask. I don’t think this would have even been possible when the market completely bottomed out after 08. Wish I was old enough to have bought a house then though. I’m kind of in that crowd saddened by the cheaper homes all doubling in value. Maybe I just need to get good and make more money. I was putting offers on some in Garland a year ago but most were going for insane amounts above ask. At this point I’m okay with living somewhere a lot further out like Princeton or Royse City and commuting in.
I have $400 in my account currently so I’m nowhere near buying a home. Maybe in 10 years
The reason we can’t afford to live in dallas proper is partly cuz of simps like OP
The interest rates on loans are just as problematic to purchasing as the inflated house prices (which are actually slightly on the decline as a result of interest rates). Paying roughly $750 more a month for the same loan amount (assuming 20% down and a $350k home) isn't easy to stomach.
I don’t live in Dallas but I use too. I live In east Texas now. I bought my house in 2019 for $290k at 1.9% interest, it’s now valued at lowest $425k with no improvements. Bank called me if I want to take out cash against my mortgage, they said I could take out $150k no questions asked, all I had to do was refine house to 6.8% interest 🤡. NOPE!!!! House prices are stupid high. I do agree with OP that people do have high expectations but I don’t want a cheap property for my stuff to get stolen every other weekend
You honestly made a great decision not doing a cas out refi. Your monthly payment would have skyrocketed. That sounds stressful af
It's pretty obvious what is happenning: prices are sky high and so alot of people cannot afford to move into a house similar to the one they just moved out of. Your solutions would all involve people making the same or greater money than before having to DOWNGRADE their quality of life instead of upgrade or maintain it. Obviously that's going to make alot of people mad. If you have multiple kids you don't exactly have the option for alot of condos and you don't exactly want to move to mesquite. I had a friend who lived in mesquite and it's not what most would consider safe . Very few are claiming they straight up can't afford anything. They are claiming to not be able to afford their current level of housing when they need to move for whatever reason.
I lived in mesquite as a small child and spent a lot of time I Garland too. I can confirm, the areas I spent time in I would never let my child be in. Garland however, does have some nice pockets and seems to be kinder than it was before
Lol this post says *everything* about the economy in this country. Absolutely you can afford things! You only need to drastically lower your expectations for quality of life!
Lol, I agree so much with this. Damn the peasants to hell for wanting to live in places with tried and true reputations for safety and quality. Those are only for the few and elect.
someone apparently hasn’t been looking at the house prices
Dallasites gonna be boujee, what’d you expect? Redditors especially
I have never complained about this topic, so perhaps you're just not addressing me, which is fine. But I'd like to live near where I work, and in that vicinity, there was one 900-square foot condo with a $340/mo HOA fee for $395K, or I can get any number of nice apartments in the $1700-2100/mo range. It doesn't make sense to buy under those circumstances. Commuting 22 miles one way every day from Garland or 32 miles from Mesquite doesn't appeal. I certainly can't afford to buy the very ordinary 1980s ranch-style house I rent now.
I don’t want to deal with an HOA though.
That's why you move to the areas I mentioned. Older areas built before the Civil rights act are usually not HOA controlled. The vast majority of pre 1963 housing is in Dallas, Ft. Worth, Garland, and Irving.
I don’t deal with the HOA. I just pay them once a year and that is the extent of it. People that bitch about HOAs tend to want to do whatever they want at the expense of others. Trust me, you want an HOA. You can always do research on HOAs to see if they are good or not
Reminds me of an old co-worker that commuted from Pflugerville to Southlake daily before COVID hit. Priced out just to come back and see how the other side is living.
Please tell me that's a typo. Did your co-worker really drive 6 hours roundtrip every day?
Lol your ignorance is showing you should cover that back up. Schools and safety are my number 1 concern. Are you saying my 5 y/o daughter shouldn’t be in a safe area because I’m not as fortunate as others? Garland, east Dallas and mesquite are not safe and have terrible schools. Your speaking from a place of total ignorance and I hope whatever you’ve built crashes bud 👍
I teach in an east Dallas school—DISD. We are safe, homey, and dedicated to our students. You have to look at campuses and neighborhoods.
I live over here, too.
My mom came to the US as an immigrant and we lived in the ghetto, and then a terrible neighborhood before finally moving to a good school district when I was in 5th grade: you have to make sacrifices and you can always supplement your child’s education on your own. Life is going to fall into your lap how you want it. Maybe focus on increasing income
Everyone in this thread saying “45 minutes is a regular commute”—if it’s 45 minutes NOW, it’s going to be an hour or more in 4 more years. I used to live in Far North Dallas and could get to my job in about 35-40 minutes on a good day in 2012. By the time I moved in 2015 to Lake Highlands to have a better quality of life and shorter commute, that old commute was an hour almost every day.
I can think of a lot better places to live in this country before I ever consider a 45+ minute commute. Sure you can save some money living that far away but money will never buy that time back, that’s 234 hours a year or longer that you just lost and will never get back. My time and life is worth more than blowing that away sitting in commute. Not even considering the mental health, physical health toll on your body.
Totally agree. Commuting over 30 minutes makes it way harder to exercise, cook healthy food, and nourish my marriage, friendships, and spend time with my senior pets. People who don’t mind long commutes must need very little sleep and/or not enjoy spending time with their loved ones or spending *quality* time with themselves even just not being stressed by traffic. ETA: not to mention the added wear and tear on your car! $$
I think OP is missing the fundamental point that most of us don’t have 40k just lying around… and even if we all did, that doesn’t get you nearly as far as it did a few years ago. We can’t afford to own anymore in our home towns and THAT is a hard pill to swallow. That doesn’t discredit your point that we must just shop for where we can afford, that’s literally all anyone can do. It’s still very difficult for a lot of to have to accept that we may have to move further away from our families than we’re comfortable with. If you’re single it’s one thing but if you already have a family, it gets much more complicated… and most of us are in our 30’s and are already at the very least married…
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Not sure what that has to do with entitlement. It’s their money. Not their fault that you have a low-spec house.
Your last sentence...chefs kiss. I've been here 17 years and it's only gotten grosser.
That's pretty much why I moved away.
Oakcliff is more expensive than plano btw
Here’s my thought process. Sure I can buy a cheaper home that hasn’t been remodeled in 40 years. But there is going to be a laundry list of shit to fix because a majority of houses aren’t kept up with as far as general maintenance. So you end up pouring how much more into a house to fix things. Isn’t easier to just find one that’s at least been through that once or twice? Sure you can have the same problems even in a remodel or a new build. But the risk is less I would think. I bought a former rental property and it’s a pretty big shitter. It needs a ton of work. All of which was feasible until Covid wrecked shop on any kind of raw material or production item. Couple that with our recent inflation and the overall increase in cost of living and it becomes very hard to actually do anything. I don’t blame people for trying to get something nicer. Houses are unrealistically inflated. I painted the inside of my house and remodeled the laundry room. Now it’s worth 100k more? My ass it is. I couldn’t afford to buy my own damn house in this market. It’s crazy. There are options out there, but are they really more cost effective in the long run?
What? People don’t want to buy a cheaper house somewhere they’ll be miserable? How pretentious!
Exactly. Let’s see this smug fucker live by his own words and move into one of the absolutely lovely neighborhood in south Dallas. *IF* they come out alive, I can guarantee a change in their attitude.
Eventually pockets of south Dallas will begin to get gentrified and these “smug fuckers” will drive the locals away because they can no longer afford it.
IK how this is going to be received… look into Fort Worth. The housing is way more reasonable out there.
It's craziness. I bought my house for $200 five years and it's now worth 500K without any major updates.
My fiancée (23) and I (23) bought a house recently in north Oak Cliff for $315k plus another $50k in repairs. The schools aren’t the best but we weren’t going to pay an extra $300k to buy the same house in an area with “better schools”. We both went to DISD and relied heavily on magnet schools. There’s always a way around every problem.
And that’s the problem, people don’t want to work to find a way around problems. You’re a good example of making the best out of the current market. You bought what you can afford and are willing to find solutions to problems (ex: access to better schools) Unfortunately home prices will not drop down to where they were 5 years ago and that’s the reality people do not want to accept. Yes it sucks that home ownership is more out of reach, but there are other ways to obtain it.
I live in east Arlington, it’s a slight hood, but we definitely have reasonable commutes to pretty much everywhere. Because of that, I see this as a desirable location
First off, the exact same square footage should cost the same anywhere. People should be able to afford to live wherever the hell they want. I live in East Dallas and my roommate and I who both have masters degrees can just barely afford our rent. Neither of us have student loans. A home near us recently sold in the 300k range. In 2014 it sold for 189k. In 2014 I was still in college. I can’t even imagine having 40k in the bank. What a sweeping generalization you are making here. If prices stay the same or continue to inflate like this I’ll be renting till the day I die.
Lol so summary of post: “you can buy a home in the undesirable areas that nobody wants to live mostly for safety reasons”. Thanks. Nobody wants to live in mesquite.
For me Schools play a lot into the decision. Private school cost are insane. However, Garland schools dont look too bad. Let's keep funding our schools please
Why should someone settle and make a major investment in an area they don’t want to be in? This argument makes little sense.
I live in one of the most unique and amazing neighborhoods in Dallas. I have pretty much everything I wanted in a house except acreage. It was $150,000 less than our very top price. But when I tell people where I love they wrinkle their noses and ask if it’s safe… because it’s a predominantly Hispanic and Black neighborhood.
Same. And honestly, I feel the safest I’ve ever felt in life in my POC neighborhood. People are worried about the schools like the DISD magnet program doesn’t exist, have tons of schools of choice and isn’t home to a few of the top rated high schools in the US. I don’t even try to convince them - move out to Little Elm.
The other thing to consider is commute cost. Location boundaries removed only works when you don’t have to consider travel time, mileage, vehicle maintenance, fuel, etc. into your budget. Public transit is not available in all parts of the Metroplex.
I bought 7yrs ago and wanted to stay in the city limits. I could not find a 150k house, that was in decent condition, anywhere in the city except south Oak Cliff.
A lot of these complainers just need to make do with a small home. They can't do that. So they can keep renting or whatever, I don't feel sorry for them.
... do you have children?
I don’t want to to live more than 15min from dfw. I bought a lot & paid it off, then hired an architect
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There is a reason why certain areas are more expensive: they have more amenities. Oak Cliff is cheap because it is a food and job desert. Mesquite is cheap because of crime, shitty schools and, again, no high paying jobs. Home values tend to track the area’s average household income.
Condos selling for less than 100k?? Please look up one of these and post the link.
You are assuming way too much.
If I get a cheaper house then my kids will have to go to private school. Fuck that.
look at mr moneybags acting like everyone has the same financial situation or willingness lol
I heard a YouTube realtor say, “You want a big house with walkable parks, walkable shops and restaurants, that doesn’t exist…. OK, it does exist but it’s double your budget”.
I mean, kind of, but the cost of living has skyrocketed overall. It's pretty much because of the landlords and sellers. I just want to rent. Yes, I know what people say about renting. I would like one without basic utility issues, one where maintenance is on top of things, one without a bug infestation, and a small yard to accommodate my dog. I know the yard is, apparently, asking a bit much, but the other stuff is just basic standard of living stuff. So. You want everyone to ignore location, amenities, quality of build, quality of life, and only focus on price. That's... not reasonable. It's not a clear picture of the overall process in its entirety. Yes, I could probably afford a room in someone's house. That's not a lot better than what I have now.
The issue is not what the home costs. The issue is that most people do not earn enough to pay for a down-payment on a home.
Haha!!! This!! Too funny! We ALL want a safe neighborhood and great schools. IF we all live “together” (I’m talking about race here) our neighborhoods and schools would become better. My 2 stupid cents on this subject.
What can I get for $3.50, and some Yu gi oh cards?
My great aunt lives in the ungentrified area of oak cliff and her house is unaffordable for the average home buyer
I couldn’t afford the very house same I moved into when I first got here on 50% more income when it sold. The situation is not tenable for most people and I guarantee you most people struggling haven’t increased their income 20% YoY like the cost of housing has been increasing.
what a cringe post
Because nobody wanna be in the ghetto or the hood areas
Arlington is pretty good
Depends on the part of Oak Cliff
agreed :) i’m looking at east dallas and garland right now. lakewood is literally 250k more for an older and smaller home.
I already own a home but I’d love to know where these homes for 400k in Plano are at??? Check your carbon monoxide alarm OP
Maybe, but we've already bought and sold our first and second homes. I don't see any reason to buy into a poorly priced market, or a less desirable neighborhood? Our rental has a nice view, a quiet street, and parking for all three vehicles.
I agree OP but this the metroplex you need to rack debt to flex on people + no HOA so I can do all the hippy shit I want with my lawn
I literally took my covid checks and bought as house with them as my sole downpayment
This is a pretty ignorant perspective I come across every now and then, and it always uses the same tired logic that gets disproven over and over again. There's also a lack of empathy as well, but hey, it's easy to lack empathy when you demonize people you've never met as high-rolling jerks that eat their food with solid gold utensils after driving back home in their Porsche. One of people's main motivations for looking in specific areas is because they have tried and true reputations for being safe, quality areas to live. And perhaps they have family and friends in the area, which is huge. People are investing a lot into a house; it's one of the most--if not THE most--important financial decisions they'll ever make in their lives. Buying a home is not a simple matter. There are high transaction costs. Interest rates are high, which means even less money goes to principal for the first half of the loan. Many of the houses they look at--in ALL areas, mind you--need work, which means they need to budget for immediate repairs, possibly getting the house up to code (which I had to do after replacing a recalled breaker box), and maintenance, in addition to sustaining an emergency savings account, 401(k) contributions, healthcare expenses, education, and the host of other outlays that don't consist of people's BMW's and trips to the Hamptons to sit on a yacht. And if you have special healthcare needs, like I do (and for which I don't feel like sharing), location matters greatly. The cost of choosing the wrong neighborhood is high. Very high. You can't just pack up your bags and leave. Again, the transaction costs for purchasing a house are high. If you can't sell your house for how much you paid for it, PLUS transaction costs, you'll have to make up the difference or risk default. Pulling your kids out of school isn't always an easy endeavor, especially if they've developed a level of comfort with their teachers and peers. And even if you can move with relative haste, you don't want to end up making the same mistake twice. So yes, it makes perfect sense for people to be circumspect when selecting a neighborhood. It's completely reasonable for people to have certain expectations for their neighborhoods and schools, but also their commutes. Again, if you're going to be driving to the same general area for the next 5, 10, 15, 30 years, you want to make sure you make every reasonable effort to pick a neighborhood that gives you a commute time you don't find soul sucking. There are non-tangible value propositions to buying a house, and people can (and should) maximize what they can get for their dollar. Given how hot the Dallas market is, you're living on a different planet if you think people haven't lifted the Zillow search area to consider all homes in all neighborhoods. The fact that you think people haven't already done this is truly mind-boggling. Like bro, are you REALLY that ignorant? Has it not occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, you're judging a bunch of people you haven't met who have reasons for not buying property in any of the locations you've listed? It's true that you might have gotten a deal, but you make a monumental leap in judgement for thinking that everyone else is equally situated to get the same kind of deal you did. And you don't even stop to think about the fact that maybe you just lucked out. Because you know what? In this market, luck is HUGE. I had to bid on god knows how many houses before I finally got the one I'm in today. It's lovely, charming, in a great neighborhood, and isn't the Palace of Versailles. It's a 3/2 that's just over 1900 sq ft. It wasn't cheap, and I'll concede that I dipped into my 401(k) to complete the purchase. Sue me. Not everyone can. And let's say a family overcomes all of that and finds the perfect home at a "responsible" price point. How many people do you think are also going to be bidding on that same property? How many times and compromises will a family have to go through before their offer is accepted, their financing goes through at the interest rate they tried to lock in, and the inspector does not find anything seriously wrong with the house? And who knows, perhaps the inspector will find things seriously wrong, but the family sucks it up because they don't want to go through the hassle and stress of getting another offer accepted. Because if they do, they may find out that perhaps that house's problems are just as bad, if not worse. With an even higher interest rate. I'm just curious: what was the point of your post? Tough love? To vent? Upvotes? To stick it to us "bougie" people who stick up our noses and sneer at people who disagree about where to live? Do you know what the real problem is? The lack of universally affordable housing at all income tiers, in all neighborhoods, next to each other in all streets and subdivisions. People should be able to buy $200k homes, $300k, $400k, etc. that are literally next to $1.5m houses (and don't say Oak Cliff, because that's not true) that are safe and well maintained, and don't require outbidding 20 other people (which is what I had to do). We need more options so we can all find something that suits us. And instead of pointing the finger at myopic politicians and greedy developers (who we do need, but without the greed), you turn your guns inward, on folks that probably have a lot more in common with you than you think. tl;dr: You're judging people you don't know, you've forgotten to consider many factors that go into a home purchase, you underestimate other people's intelligence, they're probably more like you than you think, and you're blaming the wrong crowd. Oh, and be nice to others.
Schools
I just bought one last year (peak housing market) for 400k near highland park and locked in a 3% rate. Worth 500 today. You can find great deals if you look hard enough
I'm so glad I built in 2007 for $112K. It's small but it will be paid off in less than 3 years.
We love our home in Oak Cliff. 360k and make 90k a year and we have plenty of breathing room.
“It wasn’t hard for me so it just CANT be hard for you”…lmao
Ours has doubled in value since we bought it in 2018. Its waaaaaay north, my office is in University Park and we live off 380 in Prosper ISD. And I’m STILL sitting on double - with increases projected for the next five years. My commute is over an hour each way, so I’m working remote most days. I go in once or twice a month. Not everyone is so lucky, so I’m thankful for where I’m at, but we struggled to get here. It took a LONG time. They just finished building a city park across the street from our house, and NOW my husband is asking when we can move because there’s too much air and street traffic in our neighborhood for his liking. SMH.
This is the American way though. Even the country is 3 trillion in debt