A starter home is simply your first home, and a first home can reasonably be a seven, ten, or even fifteen year commitment. We would push back on the premise. A starter home was never meant to be a two or three year purchase you flip out of, so the longer-horizon advice just puts a name on what a starter home should have been all along. The data has moved that direction too. Average homeownership tenure has stretched past a decade, up from the roughly five to seven years common a couple of decades ago (per industry and NAR figures, which shift over time). First-time buyers are also older than they used to be, typically mid-thirties now, which means most people will make two or three total moves in a lifetime. One of us lived in that first home for twelve years and expects to be in the current one at least ten. So read "starter home" as relative to the person. Buy something you can genuinely see yourself in for the long haul, make sure the payment fits, and the label takes care of itself.