do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

i was thinking about this last night... DH and i live in what is definitely a "starter" home. its a ranch with 1 bathroom, 2 bedrooms and a decent amount of land. it would MAYBE be big enough for one kid, but probably not because we like having the second bedroom as an office. it was what we could afford when we bought it,its all we need right now, and to us it was much better than renting. we did a lot of work to fix it up and make it ours, and actually planned to add on to it..
BUT, all of our friends who are just married/getting married dont seem to want a "starter" home... they all say they want to wait and save up so that when they buy a house, its one they will stay in forever.
so do you think the idea of a "Starter home" is kind of going away? or is it just my snobby group of friends? LOL

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

we will hopefully be able to start looking in the coming months and we do not want a starter home we want a home we could love in forever if we want - which really just means we want 3-4 bedrooms and room to expand

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I think the idea of a starter home is going away just because LI is so expensive that most people making an avg. income see spending $450-$500K on a home as their lifetime home. I think nowadays, there's not much difference in price in the "starter" home vs. the slightly bigger home with room for expansion. Plus, I think our generation is doing things later in life, whereas 50 years ago, a couple may have gotten married and bought their starter home at age 20, now we're doing it at 30, and by 30 a lot of people want to be settled in the home they plan to spend the majority of their life in.
Just my opinion.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

most of my friends bought starter homes- I love my house in CT -it is a decent size ,in a really nice area with a good school district-it needed barely any work-only cosmetic aspects that didn't HAVE to be done-we can easily have a child in this house-but two would be tight- we would outgrow the house quickly with two---

it is NOT a home we would stay in forever- but by the time we would have saved enough money for a home that we will be in forever it would be a long time- with a starter home we were able to gain equity and save - we are married- we didn't want to rent- we aren't going to live with our parents-so the decision was easy for us...

ETA: we both have good jobs-I got married at 25-bought our house at 24- I think that has something to do with it-plus all my friends who bought their starter homes are in their 20s as well

Message edited 5/28/2007 12:36:25 PM.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I do. I think a lot of people that buy starter homes, never leave. and the prices of home these days.....I cant see buying a starter home for $300K + to me, thats a house that you are going to stick around in for a while!!

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I think it depends on how old you are and where you are in your life. For instance, DH and I are both 33 and we just bought our first home. We could afford a "regular" home so instead of buying something we would outgrow in 5 years we just went for it. I am sure if we got married younger, like in our 20's, (we were 31), we would have started out in a co-op/condo and then upgraded to a house.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Yeah, I think it does depend upon where you are in life and what you can afford. DH and I are in our late 30s and early 40s, plus we do have a co-op to sell, so we decided to go for the lifetime home.

I should add, the lifetime home is not that elaborate--3 bedrooms, 2 baths, but we think it will be big enough for us. If I was in my 20s though, earning less money, and had nothing to sell to start off with, I would go for the starter home.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I agree with a lot of the above posts. For us, we just got married in November. We considered buying a starter home (condo) before the wedding but knew the market was at its peak. We are glad we didn't buy b/c looking at the same condos now, the prices are lower. We wouldn't have made any money if we tried to sell it now. We decided to wait it out, save (our rent is really cheap) and buy a house that we will want to be in forever. My BF is 2 years younger and just bought her house. It is a starter 2-bedroom. So, some people are still doing it but I don't think it's as common anymore.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I think much also depends on how you define "starter home". When I look at listings for my current neighborhood, which is predominantly 3 bedrooms and 1.5-2 baths, the term "great starter" is used. But I don't know if I consider our house a starter. When we bought, we bought thinking we'd *like* to maybe upgrade, but we wouldn't *have* to upgrade because it has everything we think we'll need.

We also met, married and got into the house thing a little later than many. So I don't know if we would have gone into a co-op or condo first if we'd been younger, but we decided against that.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I don't think the idea is outdated in metropolitan areas where housing is more $. You kinda have to have one to some degree.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Yes and no. Around here, I think a starter home is the only choice for many young couples who are just starting out. That being said, many people (including my DH and I) are moving out-of-state because the prospect of buying a "starter" home for more than $400,000 is just too much to bear.

When we started looking at houses in Charlotte, we were open to the idea of finding a starter home. Little did we realize that we didn't have to, because we could afford our PERMANENT home NOW, and that's something that would have been impossible for us, had we bought on LI.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I think it depends on how you define "starter." We just bought a 3bed 1ba house and probably could be called a starter. It was what we could afford right now and is also a fixer. However the house does have room to expand and we could potentially live there a long time. We will see where life takes us and figure it out then.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Honestly, I never heard of the term "starter house" until I moved to NYC.

A move-in condition 1,600 - 2,000 sq ft. 3 or 4 bedroom/2 or 2.5 bath house back home (VA) in a good area with good public schools can still be had for $250K or less.

Message edited 5/29/2007 12:42:43 AM.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I personally always think there will be a need for starter homes, whether its for young couples, retirees, etc. I think the terms of a starter home simply means its priced low for the general area. We couldn't afford to go into our dream home, but we still wanted to own something and grow equity.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

I think this is totally just a preference; nothing outdated.

My DH is very handy, so for him, he would want nothing but a starter home b/c he wants to design it the way he wants. And that is exactly what we are doing.

Other people just can't be bothered with fixing anything up and would prefer move-in, almost perfect condition; where my DH actually finds joy in gutting and building. LOL

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

we skipped the starter home. The difference in price between the small starter homes and our forever home was so small (relatively), that we decided to suck it up and get the forever home. Plus, since the market is so unpredictable, we wanted a home that we could be happy staying in for many many years (so if the market drops, it won't be a big deal)

Closing costs are SOOO much too, that it was definitely made us want to avoid having to go through that over and over (I know it is paying for services, but it just feels like lost money!).

When we bought, I was 25, DH 27.

Message edited 5/29/2007 11:01:06 AM.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

i have friends that purchased a starter home a few years ago to gain equity with the idea that they would move before the kids would go to school (school distict was not the greatest), now they are having trouble selling.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

My dh and I bought a "starter" home for a few reasons, the first being he pays child support, we wanted to have a child, and we want to be able to live (i.e. buy a new car when needed, travel, buy new furniture) etc. We only have 5 yrs of child support left so when that it done, that is when we will move to a bigger house.

For us, it worked.

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

Re: do you think the "starter home" idea is becoming outdated??

We bought our "forever" house in the town that we wanted to live in.