patrick.net

Hi camping

I pretty sure it's open enrollment. You can register for any school in the district but there are limited spots.
I was just making the point that some of the schools here are pretty good.

your right the area close to Milikin it's hard to find old fixer uppers.

toothfairy and camping,

you ought to give some long consideration to the concepts of "good education" versus "attending schools with high standardized test scores".

Since you apparently are not in position to just plunk down whatever cash it takes to buy-in to whatever school enrollment area, learning what's behind the standardized test scores might not be such a waste of time.

A colleague of mine, (Asian immigrant) did not live in the Milikin neighborhood but won her child a slot in the enrollment lottery. She was thrilled but took him out after the first year, because she learned for herself that high standardized test scores did not correlate with high education opportunity which their lower-scoring neighborhood school also had, with the side benefit of attending class with neighborhood children and less hassle getting to/from school each day.

I personally would be very satisfied with Carly's package.

Troy says

Thing is, for the past 100 years buying the starter home got you into the game as prices appreciated.

This chart is asking prices or selling prices? Either way, I don't buy it, even when you take out the bubble years of 2002-07. The average starter home you might live in for 5-7 years (anybody please give a statistic here). In 5-7 years, you are only paying interest on a mortgage--you're lucky to get your downpayment back after transaction costs. Add to this that starter homes are perpetually in not-the-most-desirable neighbourhoods, which means while national prices may be going up, your starter home may not necessarilly track that inflation, dollar-for-dollar. "National" charts are good at normalizing pricing differences among regions and classes of housing.

I'd rather sock my money away in investments and wait for a long-term house to come along--you know, one I might live in long enough to start paying down interest (or even because I had an outsized DP to eat up a lot of the initial principle). My rent has not gone up on 8 years. I've moved from NYC to LA, lived in ever nicer buildings/apts (6 of them, to be exact), and yet house prices have gone crazy in that same time period. . . .

Philistine,

"starter home" is real estate industry condescending doublespeak, overtly implying the expectation of "trading up" (more transaction charges!).

Yeah, and the Reallywhores are really P.O.ed that somebody beat them to the equally condescending, doubletalking, "retirement home."

sybrib says

Philistine,
“starter home” is real estate industry condescending doublespeak, overtly implying the expectation of “trading up” (more transaction charges!).

Real estate BS-speak, exactly. It used to be that for the most part people bought a decent house within their means, and lived there for 30 years, paying it off, and maybe retiring someplace with the equity they built by PAYING IT OFF (and some appreciation roughly at the level of inflation). 'Trading up' happened as often as not when, as they advanced their careers, they had more income and could afford more house if they chose to. I watched this growing up. My parents moved us around the same small town to somewhat better houses over time, mainly as they advanced careers. I know the numbers and as this was pre-bubble years the equity was small. Many of my school friends parents had the same house through the entirety of their school years, until they retired.

The 'trading up' phenomenon, (more specifically bay area house flipping) occured during a BUBBLE. The bubble has POPPED and will continue to deflate. Then, stagnation.