Buck Compton said:
I don't disagree with anything you said about the real estate and neighborhood dynamics…. No way it supports a 100k buy in.
But the bolded part is just so unbelievably out of touch with reality it's not even funny. There are a lot of people who make a lot of money and who have built wealth over time, but not like that. That's the 92nd percentile household income in the United States, so not "barely upper middle class". It's firmly upper middle and would quickly become upper class in the high 200s. 75th percentile is like $130,000. In fact, over half the country has a household income under $70,000 or so.
It's really not. You're just over analyzing it. Why would I nationally average the household income when i'm specifically referring to DFW ? Why should Paris Texas household income be averaged into DFW when it has zero correlation on what you can buy/do in DFW ?
I post in 2 different relocation forums for DFW and I remember pre-covid the "upper middle class" topic got brought up. The consensus for most (majority of the people who post in this forum do construction, census work, or real estate for a living) was 2-4x the household income which for Dallas and Collin County at the time would of been 160-320k being upper middle class.
Everything since then is like 30-40% more expensive so "250k barely being upper middle class" isn't much of a stretch.
A 4 person family living an upper middle class lifestyle (4 bedroom 1960s/1970s era house, club sports, entry level clubcorp membership, good not great school district, 2 decent cars, 1 or 2 trips a year, good 401k contribution, not putting off renovations or deferred maintenance) in 50+ year old neighborhoods in Central Plano or West Richardson which are far from posh is getting incredible hard to do on 200k.
I'm not out of a touch I'm just facing today's reality whether or not it's pretty.