As a father of 3 kids under 5, we bought our house 2.5 years ago and it has appreciated so much that had we saved every penny for the last 2.5 years we couldn't have afforded it today.

It doesn't matter how high performing your kids are if no good opportunities exist. So while we hope the world will allow our independent, high performance kids to succeed on their own, we're planning on having to provide unique opportunities via resources/connections ourselves to make that happen. Accordingly we're treating our house as something of a family estate, to be held in perpetuity and they can live in as long as it's good for them. It's not about keeping them as forever-children, it's about providing a base with a secure perimeter from which they can marshal their resources. For instance, we're right in the middle of two major metros. So if they land an unpaid/underpaid but prestigious internship in one of them, they won't have to worry about housing.