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Why would people living in starter homes be driving such expensive cars? In that house price range the cars tend to be pretty modest. Maybe a base luxury car at best, but certainly nothing high end. Who buys a car costing more than 5-10% of what their house costs? That's insane, especially for the typical first time buyer moving in to a $600K- fixer upper.
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Originally Posted by mkarch
Still, $600K-$800K homes are not in range where people have much disposable income to spend on a high end or near exotic car. Once you get up to $1.5M a $85K Tesla is a little more reasonable, costing around 5% of the house, so it's basically like someone in a $600K house driving a Prius.
You crack me up. In my area 800k will buy you a 4,300 square foot (+ finished basement) 4 bedroom, 7 bath brick home, on over 2 acres of manicured lawn, Viking, Sub Zero, and Wolff appliances, 1300 bottle wine room, 4 car garage, 6 stool English Pub, home theater, workout room, and butlers pantry. Built in 1997.
This might be a cheap starter home in your circles, but here it shows you have definitely arrived.
For a couple of years, there was a house near me that was being rented by a bunch of young Indian guys who worked in IT and in finance. Among the cars scattered around the driveway of that VERY modest-looking house were a Bentley Continental, some sort of Maserati, and a BMW 7-series. The cars looked really out of place in comparison to the house.
The wealthy live on country lanes, often cul de sacs, that you never drive down and probably don't even know about. Go to google maps of a high-end zip code, look at aerial view. See all the luxurious estates, none of them visible from a well-traveled road.
For what it's worth, there are a lot of people of modest wealth who choose cars over houses for theiir show of opulence or choice of comfort. I pay $539 a month rent, a lot of my neighbors are Section-8, and there is a new-looking Mercedes in my parking lot every day.
Coroico, Boiivia, is the town at the end of the infamous "road of death". When I was there, there was a Ferrari parked on the street, in a common-looking neighborhood, that looked like it hadn't been driven in a while.
The wealthy live on country lanes, often cul de sacs, that you never drive down and probably don't even know about. Go to google maps of a high-end zip code, look at aerial view. See all the luxurious estates, none of them visible from a well-traveled road.
That's what I figured.
However, in this area - 700K gets you 4600Sq/ft with a 3 car garage and a huge swimming pool. Is that still a starter home?
To be honest, I was expecting to get responses like - They live in the smaller homes but own expensive cars. I totally did not expect the opposite.
The reason why I say that is because even when I look up houses in this area that start at 1 million, there are so few! It's almost like there aren't any. (At least when I am on Zillow or Trulia).
Some folks don't believe in flashing their wealth or money around.
Also, they may be putting a lot of money into the house, and less to spend on cars. It probably makes sense to do that as cars depreciate and real estate appreciates.
Also, if you live in a climate where they put salt on the roads in winter, it's not worth it to keep a fancy car or use it as a daily driver. A lot of folks will keep a beater for winter driving, or a "station car" to drive to the rail station where they ride the Main Line into Center City (if you're in the Philly area).
However, in this area - 700K gets you 4600Sq/ft with a 3 car garage and a huge swimming pool. Is that still a starter home?
It depends. Price wise, yes. However the areas that appeal to first home buyers spending $700K generally do not have large homes at low prices like that. Seems more like a retirement house for someone that accumulated a lot of toys and no longer needs to work.
Hey guys, I'm new here and figured most of you would know about how people/operate and function with these high end vehicles.
I live in the NorthEast outside of Philly in a nice area. In an hours time I will see G-Wagons, Porsches (Not just a Cayenne. Cayenne Turbo/Turbo's!), Tesla's, AMG's, ect, ect. Oh and of course the influx of Maserat's lately !
Now close to me we have fairly large sized houses. Pricing on the ones I'm thinking of start around 600K and go up to about 800K.
I literally NEVER see anything other than a Honda, Toyota, Ford, ect. in the driveway.
Maybe a middle of the road BMW or Lexus. Not once house has an exotic.
I've gotta ask. Where the hell do these people reside?
I know it sounds like a bizarre question but it gets you thinking. "I've never seen an exotic or high end car in one driveway around here. EVER!".
It seems that the common thought process is that they live in a smaller home with a nicer car, but there are also houses tucked into the woods and off the main roads that are simply mansions! And even then they usually have middle of the road Chevy's !
Just thought I'd ask to calm my curiosity !
I don't consider the cars you mentioned to be exotic cars. They're high end mass market cars. Maserati has a $700/month lease deal (no money down). You can lease a Tesla for $500/month which is about the same as the small Lexus SUV.
I live in a neighborhood where houses range from about $500K-to a few million. There are mix of cars in people's driveways. I think it just depends what is important to people. Some people love cars, have money and spend heavily on them. Others don't really care about cars and spend on other things.
We don't drive super expensive cars. My husband drives a Dodge and I drive a small Lexus SUV. My next door neighbor spends more on cars because he loves cars. I have to say that nobody on my block has a car that costs over $100K.
Still, $600K-$800K homes are not in range where people have much disposable income to spend on a high end or near exotic car. Once you get up to $1.5M a $85K Tesla is a little more reasonable, costing around 5% of the house, so it's basically like someone in a $600K house driving a Prius.
I think it depends on the metro. Where I live $600K gets a pretty decent move up home. Fixer uppers in decent neighborhoods are in the $250-$300K range. I see more luxury nameplates in the $600-$800K neighborhoods than in the luxury neighborhoods (around $1 mil).
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In that house price range the cars tend to be pretty modest. Maybe a base luxury car at best, but certainly nothing high end. Who buys a car costing more than 5-10% of what their house costs? That's insane, especially for the typical first time buyer moving in to a $600K- fixer upper.
