How do we find home in Maryland with challenging housing market and high mortgage ?

[GNCamry99]

How do we find home in Maryland with challenging housing market and high mortgage ?
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Thanks for your replies to my threads.

I find housing market and high mortgage not in favor for home buyer these days

What are ways, we can find a affordable home in Maryland, who is earning 80K and closer to retirement ?

I'm trying to narrow down where exactly to start looking. My job need access to DC occasionally. I am a professional working remote these days.

Not really a city or suburbs kinda person, so I'd like to be in a more rural location. Up to an hour's drive or train ride to D.C. is fine and with lower crimes.


I prefer to avoid the political drama.

I am living in Maryland , but I feel the people here are getting compressed, they’re getting angrier and angrier at one another.

Weed users in Maryland not bothered about non smokers and their health. Lawmakers are not having any concern for this. Non Weed user find hard time living in legalized weed use in Maryland


How do we find affordable home ?

Are there any web resources to use for this purpose ?

Thoughts? Advice?

[skeddy]

Martinsburg West Virginia.

[Flamingo13]

Boonies somewhere or a state you can afford - NOT a house obviously.

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by GNCamry99

How do we find home in Maryland with challenging housing market and high mortgage ?

The answers to those questions are pretty much what they have always been.
They aren't hidden or at all complicated. But they do get expensive.

Weed users... How do we find affordable home?

Low rent apartments tend to attract X and Y.

Thoughts? Advice?

Good luck threading your needle.

[westsideboy]

Originally Posted by GNCamry99

How do we find home in Maryland with challenging housing market and high mortgage ?
================================================== ===================


Thanks for your replies to my threads.

I find housing market and high mortgage not in favor for home buyer these days

What are ways, we can find a affordable home in Maryland, who is earning 80K and closer to retirement ?

I'm trying to narrow down where exactly to start looking. My job need access to DC occasionally. I am a professional working remote these days.

Not really a city or suburbs kinda person, so I'd like to be in a more rural location. Up to an hour's drive or train ride to D.C. is fine and with lower crimes.


I prefer to avoid the political drama.

I am living in Maryland , but I feel the people here are getting compressed, they’re getting angrier and angrier at one another.

Weed users in Maryland not bothered about non smokers and their health. Lawmakers are not having any concern for this. Non Weed user find hard time living in legalized weed use in Maryland


How do we find affordable home ?

Are there any web resources to use for this purpose ?

Thoughts? Advice?

This would be the killer, I think. Anywhere within a one hour commute of D.C., itself is going to be pricey. If you really want an affordable house in a rural area, you can find it, but you would have make that "occasional" trip to the office much longer.

Consider how often you would have to go into the office, and what it would take to make that happened if you lived 2 or 2.5 hours away, meaning hotel room? One long day to suffer through?

If you don't go looking of political drama, I doubt it comes to find you. Even with people getting "angrier and angrier" most people just go about their daily business like it was 2015, save places where protests, riots, marches happen, etc. etc. which you don't seem to have any interest in.

[ersatz]

Originally Posted by GNCamry99

How do we find home in Maryland with challenging housing market and high mortgage ?
================================================== ===================


Thanks for your replies to my threads.

I find housing market and high mortgage not in favor for home buyer these days

What are ways, we can find a affordable home in Maryland, who is earning 80K and closer to retirement ?

I'm trying to narrow down where exactly to start looking. My job need access to DC occasionally. I am a professional working remote these days.

Not really a city or suburbs kinda person, so I'd like to be in a more rural location. Up to an hour's drive or train ride to D.C. is fine and with lower crimes.


I prefer to avoid the political drama.

I am living in Maryland , but I feel the people here are getting compressed, they’re getting angrier and angrier at one another.

Weed users in Maryland not bothered about non smokers and their health. Lawmakers are not having any concern for this. Non Weed user find hard time living in legalized weed use in Maryland


How do we find affordable home ?

Are there any web resources to use for this purpose ?

Thoughts? Advice?

Are you willing to consider small older houses and fixer uppers? If so, there are very affordable homes in Accokeek. Accokeek is somewhat rural but still (normally) within an hour's commute of DC. As the crow flies, Accokeek is only around 25 miles from DC but rush hour traffic crawls up and down Rt 210. I visit the Accokeek area often, as Piscataway Park is one of my favorite local parks. I also like to buy farm produce and Chesapeake crabs in Accokeek. The drive to the park along Bryan's Point Road is lovely.

If you want to get an idea of the market in Accokeek, look at recently sold homes https://www.realtor.com/realestatean...-recently-sold to see if this is for you.

[ion475]

To the west - basically anywhere west of Frederick Co gets cheaper. Western and northern FredCo also has some pockets that are not as pricy.

To the south (SoMD)...good luck, that whole area is getting expensive.

There is always Eastern Shores. Most of that area is still fairly affordable.

[Threestep2]

If you are close to retirement why buy a house now instead of when your situation has changed? With 80k while fully employed what will your financial situation look like in the future?

[RayHammer]

Originally Posted by Flamingo13

Boonies somewhere or a state you can afford - NOT a house obviously.

Boonies are not cheap. They are in fact quite expensive. The reason housing is "cheap" in the boons is because all other factors come at great cost.

I'm not making an argument about quality of life or one's desire to live in a certain community or school district, attend a certain church, having "better" neighbors, etc., but in terms of math alone commuting is very expensive.

A lot of people will make the argument that simply not commuting far is a huge quality of life increase, and that long commute are both a physical and mental drain in addition to a financial waste.

Imagine a 45 minute one way commute (and a lot of people do a heck of a lot more than that), or 90 minutes every day, perhaps even 4 days per week. Consider these things:

• What are your wages "lost" by sitting in your car?
• What if those "lost" sitting-in-car wages were instead translated into overtime?
• How many miles are you racking up on the odometer every day (thus requiring a new vehicle sooner as well as depreciating the current vehicle's value significantly)?
• What's gas cost?
• How much extra maintenance are you having to do to your car?

• Is it worth it all to save maybe a couple hundred bucks a month on a mortgage?
• Conversely, is the slightly bigger house at the same price worth the effort?

Imagine that commute over the course of 10 years. You've racked up enough miles that you've needed to go through a whole additional car versus someone who simply lived close. At even $30,000 a car (a light estimate these days) you've spent $3k/year....now add the maintenance and extra oil changes to it. An additional 1k/year or 1.5k/year on average?

And then gas. That type of commuter is filling up every three-ish days at $35 a pop even for a commuter car, and much worse for a truck or jeep. That's $12/hr. of your after-tax wage lost daily. Then imagine instead of driving you were working overtime every day for 1.5 hours. How much is that opportunity cost? So you and the guy who just worked 1.5 hours of overtime have spent roughly the same amount of time outside the home....and the guy getting overtime didn't spend extra on gas or beat the crap out of his car.

Then there's the house. You've sunk 10 years worth of mortgage payments into your house in the Boons. And maybe the price went up a little, but the house near the job market appreciated much, much more than that. Even at the same percentage increase, the "close proximity to jobs" house went up much, much more in raw dollar terms, and that appreciation is tax-free to the owner.

[GNCamry99]

Thanks for weighing in and suggestions.


Are there any places/community today in MD becoming developed one few years down the line?


(eg, Ashburn VA 8 years ago, Fredrick 8-10 years ago, Urbana MD 8-10 years ago )


Thanks again.