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There are $300k brand new townhouses in Plano, and there are $150k single family homes in Grand Prairie, Arlington, Garland, and on and on. There are so many lies and nonsense in these threads.
Maybe we can use data to back up what we are saying vs. calling each other names ?
I think a previous poster who said more and more townhomes are being built is right, I am seeing things start to change. Plano city council looks different today because of the outrage over the way builders influenced the city council into approving more apartments.
So - do we have high-density housing ? Absolutely.
With as much choice as we do with SFH ? No way.
And I filter than down to the one I will buy there are 0! 78 seems like a huge number for 1 family to look for in city of 80 sq miles. That's 1 per sq mile. How's that for filtering?
I it worried about the amount. I’m worried about well they will be kept up over time. When these apartments get older and new management don’t keep them up is when the lower income and crime come in. As some else said, this may be ok in the city, but in Frisco for example it’s not.
On a side note, why are they putting apartments up on 380? Just why? Don’t tell me cost because they are just expensive as the ones closer in.
This is the number one reason people tend to bring up as to why they oppose apartments. The problem is that this applies equally to SFH, yet no one cares about that. You can drive through plenty of sub divisions of single family houses where the homes are in disrepair, weeds growing in the yard, cars up on blocks etc. The solution is strong city code enforcement. Some cities really excel in this (Richardson is a city that is really up on code enforcement as I listen to my boss complain constantly about it) and far too many other cities dont give a crap, and the results are there for all to see. The same applies to apartments. Strong city code enforcement will keep the apartments from going down hill.
When I moved to Dallas back in 2005, I lived in the Village, which at the time was the largest apartment complex in the country. A very large part of those apartments were super old, yet well taken care of. That old complex was in my opinion the best part of that section of Dallas that I lived in. Lots of young professionals, who supported the businesses that were around there. So it is possible to have apartments and not be the end of the world.
I think Great Schools has caused a lot of harm because they are perpetuating the notion that a nebulous concept like a "good school" can be boiled down to a 1-10 numeric rating. What they are measuring, more than anything, is the strength of the student body. Test scores are a good measure of the students who attend the school, not necessarily the quality of the education offered at the school. Student body strength matters, but it is hardly the only factor.
Low income students tend to do worse on tests, for a variety of factors that are tough to disentangle. Maybe it's that parent income correlates with parent IQ and IQ is highly heritable, so low income students tend to have lower IQs. Maybe it's that low income families have fewer resources to devote to education or didn't grow up in an environment that values education, thus they don't have the same school-relevant skills that rich parents do. Anyway, my point is that low income students tend to do worse on tests, so if a school has more low income students, its Great Schools rating is likely to be lower, even if nothing about the education quality has changed.
I get why parents want their kids to be around smart kids. But I also think there's major value in being around a broad range of kids from a socioeconomic perspective, and having a few low income kids in a class isn't going to change the education a kid receives....but it might help him or her develop a better worldview and greater empathy/understanding/friendship with different kinds of people.
The factors that contribute to low income students performances on standardized tests are not tough to disentangle.
And I filter than down to the one I will buy there are 0! 78 seems like a huge number for 1 family to look for in city of 80 sq miles. That's 1 per sq mile. How's that for filtering?
Ha ha.
True. But there are 9 times as many single family homes in that same square mile.
So lets go back one step. There are an insane number of apartments under construction. Do we agree ?
Now anecdotally - I don't have data here - I get the feeling that young couple / families are reluctant renters and would rather own. So why aren't they buying homes ?
The most common answer - Homes are unaffordable.
But they are not - as you pointed out yourself, there are so many affordable options.
So what's going on?
We do have so much land still available here in N Texas. If millennials are priced out of homes here in N Texas, the situation much more bleaker than I imagined...
My theory is that its due to a disconnect between the type of housing stock available and what the younger generation is looking for. What's available in the 300 and under price range is older homes with huge yards and thats not what the younger generation wants anymore.
I could be wrong. I don't have any data here - just a theory. But I am definitely interested in hearing what others think could be the reason.
We do have so much land still available here in N Texas. If millennials are priced out of homes here in N Texas, the situation much more bleaker than I imagined...
My theory is that its due to a disconnect between the type of housing stock available and what the younger generation is looking for. What's available in the 300 and under price range is older homes with huge yards and thats not what the younger generation wants anymore.
I could be wrong. I don't have any data here - just a theory. But I am definitely interested in hearing what others think could be the reason.
Well partially just affordability, I can only speak for our little households situation (DINKS, early to mid 30's), but we're significantly better off than both the median, and average for our peers. We have no student loans, something a lot of people our age has, we make decent money, but nothing crazy and spend relatively conservatively and have excellent credit.
Those should all spell out that it should be simple to buy for us, and while we could get approved for absurd amounts, buying responsibly is another story entirely, and houses in the price range where we'd be responsible (ie, have enough money left over each month to save in a 401k at an ok rate (by no means maxing it), and have some additional funds left over to go into rainy day funds etc) would all need significant work.
I think that for many who are like us (begrudgingly renting) it boils down to this:
We do not want to live far away from our jobs, time is one of the resources we have the least of and wasting it commuting negates the value of owning.
The housing near most larger and emerging employers is expensive. (All of Dallas north of I-30, Richardson, Plano, Frisco, Addison and even NW Garland)
We began our adult lives during or right after the recession, that's made us conservative when it comes to housing and savings. We don't want to overbuy, not have a solid down payment ensuring equity or be stuck losing our house if one or more earners lose their job, so emergency savings tend to be considered crucial.
The housing that is affordable in attractive employment areas all requires pretty significant upgrading, which again, in part goes back to conservative budgeting. I'm not interested in paying $400/mo in electricity to cool a house because the insulation is inferior and it leaks air like a sieve.
I don't mind a yard, in fact I'd be really happy to have one so I can grow my own food, but a house from the 60's-80's that has had no structural upgrades to bring it up to modern building standards doesn't seem like something that would be any better than living in these human holding boxes we're currently in (apartments)
That link certainly doesn't disentangle them. In fact, it presents no data. It just gives a list of a few factors that the author thinks play a role, nothing more.
A couple of those are nonsense. Simply taking the test multiple times is not likely to raise scores significantly, and that factor alone certainly has little explanatory power when talking about the rich-poor achievement gap. Also, a pretty small percentage of students -- rich or poor -- get extended time. Neither of these factors are doing any heavy lifting on this question.
I was talking about actual, statistically-sound analysis. It's easy to list a lot of factors that could play a role (I listed some myself), but it's another thing to actually be able to assign causation based on data.
I'm glad you went to the trouble of Googling "Why rich kids do better on SAT" and copied and pasted the first link, but I work in this field professionally and have spent many, many hours thinking about this stuff.
Well partially just affordability, I can only speak for our little households situation (DINKS, early to mid 30's), but we're significantly better off than both the median, and average for our peers. We have no student loans, something a lot of people our age has, we make decent money, but nothing crazy and spend relatively conservatively and have excellent credit.
Those should all spell out that it should be simple to buy for us, and while we could get approved for absurd amounts, buying responsibly is another story entirely, and houses in the price range where we'd be responsible (ie, have enough money left over each month to save in a 401k at an ok rate (by no means maxing it), and have some additional funds left over to go into rainy day funds etc) would all need significant work.
I think that for many who are like us (begrudgingly renting) it boils down to this:
We do not want to live far away from our jobs, time is one of the resources we have the least of and wasting it commuting negates the value of owning.
The housing near most larger and emerging employers is expensive. (All of Dallas north of I-30, Richardson, Plano, Frisco, Addison and even NW Garland)
We began our adult lives during or right after the recession, that's made us conservative when it comes to housing and savings. We don't want to overbuy, not have a solid down payment ensuring equity or be stuck losing our house if one or more earners lose their job, so emergency savings tend to be considered crucial.
The housing that is affordable in attractive employment areas all requires pretty significant upgrading, which again, in part goes back to conservative budgeting. I'm not interested in paying $400/mo in electricity to cool a house because the insulation is inferior and it leaks air like a sieve.
I don't mind a yard, in fact I'd be really happy to have one so I can grow my own food, but a house from the 60's-80's that has had no structural upgrades to bring it up to modern building standards doesn't seem like something that would be any better than living in these human holding boxes we're currently in (apartments)
Very smart of you to be conservative in your spending outlook. When it comes to housing, I've seen far too many people rush into mortgages that leave them house poor, or relying on credit cards because now their salaries dont cover enough.
With that being said, I will say that honestly I dont believe the housing prices will drop enough any time soon, and if they do drop, it will be because of another 2008 type recession, which means that homes will be the least of our problems. I was in your age range when we bought our house. We had to make peace with the fact that we wont be close to the office. i commute between 35-55 minutes a day one way. And I'm at peace with it as just the price I had to pay to get a house. Unless your earning power climbs substantially, you are probably going to have to compromise on one of your criteria. For us it was commute. For you it might be something else, but sitting on the sidelines hoping the prices drop back down to 2010 levels is probably not going to work out well. just my two cents.
When I moved to Dallas back in 2005, I lived in the Village, which at the time was the largest apartment complex in the country. A very large part of those apartments were super old, yet well taken care of. That old complex was in my opinion the best part of that section of Dallas that I lived in. Lots of young professionals, who supported the businesses that were around there. So it is possible to have apartments and not be the end of the world.
Yep, and the Village is still going strong today. I have several friends who live there or have lived there. I also know people who are my parent's friends who back in the day did a stink in Dallas and also lived in the Village.
We had to make peace with the fact that we wont be close to the office. i commute between 35-55 minutes a day one way. And I'm at peace with it as just the price I had to pay to get a house. Unless your earning power climbs substantially, you are probably going to have to compromise on one of your criteria. For us it was commute. For you it might be something else, but sitting on the sidelines hoping the prices drop back down to 2010 levels is probably not going to work out well. just my two cents.
We have no illusions that housing costs will drop to anywhere close to 2010 era, nor that our earnings will go up significantly before my spouse completes her degree, so the compromise is that we accept that ownership remains out of our reach.
More likely than not, we'll end up moving out of the metroplex once she's done at UTD.
The larger point though, is that the increases in apartment building is an obvious response to a generation who's a decade behind the curve on home ownership, with limited ability to enter in the near term. We all have to live somewhere, and there's a lot of employers in DFW.
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