Who in the world would buy or sell a house in the DMV right now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just wrapped up a bidding war with three cash offers and two offers with over 50% down payments on a $1,370,000 house. My clients sold and another agent's clients bought and four other people want to by.

OK, but that doesn't really count. The true effect hasn't been felt yet. There are a whole group of people wanting to buy that are delusional and not seeing the forest for the trees just yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bought one today.

We did lower our budget for the house by quite a bit given all of the instability. We preferred to be financially conservative about things. But we wanted to buy and we found a house we love and we bought.

We own another home that we are renting out. When the tenants leave in June, we are most likely selling. Keeping our options open with that one, though. It's worth at least 400k more than the one we bought.

One of my rentals (SFH in Manassas) has a lease expiring in April. I thought I'd keep it forever, but could use the cash for other things (400K equity). And even if values do not fall, they will likely flatline. During the 2008 crash, Prince William County got hit very hard and was the last to recover -- it took many years. Might be time to get out of that one and keep the closer in ones. We will see.

[Anonymous]

I just watched two homes in Lake Barcroft, and one in Ravenwood go under contract in less than a week in 22044 which is a great zip zip code, but controversial for many because the Justice school pyramid is has a lot of ESOL. Clearly there are people who want to be close to DC, Amazon, Tysons, and other close-in areas who feel confident dropping $1.1-$1.6M.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just wrapped up a bidding war with three cash offers and two offers with over 50% down payments on a $1,370,000 house. My clients sold and another agent's clients bought and four other people want to by.

OK, but that doesn't really count. The true effect hasn't been felt yet. There are a whole group of people wanting to buy that are delusional and not seeing the forest for the trees just yet.

[phone]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just watched two homes in Lake Barcroft, and one in Ravenwood go under contract in less than a week in 22044 which is a great zip zip code, but controversial for many because the Justice school pyramid is has a lot of ESOL. Clearly there are people who want to be close to DC, Amazon, Tysons, and other close-in areas who feel confident dropping $1.1-$1.6M.

Well, twitter is professing doom and gloom for DC and enjoying their fellow Americans losing their jobs so far. I think they expect fed tax refunds and no more federal taxes hoping all that's needed for this to happen is "drain the swamp", e.g. having fellow Americans lose their jobs and having to relocate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just watched two homes in Lake Barcroft, and one in Ravenwood go under contract in less than a week in 22044 which is a great zip zip code, but controversial for many because the Justice school pyramid is has a lot of ESOL. Clearly there are people who want to be close to DC, Amazon, Tysons, and other close-in areas who feel confident dropping $1.1-$1.6M.

Well, twitter is professing doom and gloom for DC and enjoying their fellow Americans losing their jobs so far. I think they expect fed tax refunds and no more federal taxes hoping all that's needed for this to happen is "drain the swamp", e.g. having fellow Americans lose their jobs and having to relocate.

Musk laying the foundation and speeding the transition of replacing human in the workforce AI and the likes. Those who’re gloating because they’re private sector and therefore safe have no idea what’s coming. Your ignorance maybe comforting to you right now but it won’t last, in fact, the government sector maybe the safest place to be long term. This is to say we will all be affected, financially, socially and otherwise. It does not matter whether you’re in the DC area or not.

Incidentally, I visited my hometown recently, I nice midsize city with a nice outdoorsy lifestyle but a lot less job opportunities. The housing market is as pricey as the DMV. A home I sold 20 years ago for 340k recently sold for 1.4K with no improvements that I can see. A 2500sf, including the basement. Cost of building materials is the same everywhere, home prices reflects that. My midsize city does not have decent transportation, food and art scene. For fun, there’s an underground swinging scene I learned and of course prescription drugs. I think a likely consequence of the fast transformation that’s currently afoot here is the eventual brain drain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just wrapped up a bidding war with three cash offers and two offers with over 50% down payments on a $1,370,000 house. My clients sold and another agent's clients bought and four other people want to by.

Okay but us contractors are getting laid off in droves. I expect in a few months people will be selling their homes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who want to buy and sell?

I know Musk dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb (ten of them?) right into the heart of the Feds but most of us are not feds. However, I will be watching what unfolds with interest.

hello? The loss of employment will extend far beyond feds (contractors, NGOs, etc. etc)

Exactly. A contractor friend was telling me how much $$ in contracts Deloitte relies on.

A friend of mine is a partner at Deloitte and said that they aren’t expecting to take a big hit- many of their fed contracts are for years, and they aren’t getting signs of pull out on their negotiated contracts which are about to be signed. Who knows, though, maybe he was touting the party line for external pr.

[Anonymous]

Speculators. I would absolutely buy a house or two if I am getting it at a bargain price in desirable neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If someone is not getting a mortgage, and they don't care about the value of their house going down, then it's fine. Otherwise, if anyone works for the federal government, it's particularly reckless. And even for private sector employees, there's no safety because decreased public sector employment will adversely affect most private sector businesses.

There hasn’t been a safety net for private sector employment in decades. People in the private sector, especially those far removed from the fed and gov’t contractors, have learned to live with this. Some can afford the risk and buy on the dip.

The “safety net” in our economy is federal spending. The US turned on the spigots to Citibank etc in 2008 to juice the flow of money so people would spend and businesses would have customers. What do you think PPA was? Federal spending is the engine that keeps the economy, and hence the private sector, running.

[Anonymous]

I have a family member at Amazon and I definitely would not be buying a house right now if I worked there is all I’ll say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are returning to work in DC in droves. They are looking for close-in homes near DC. After 5 years of working out of the house and moving away, people are returning and moving back.

He is firing 1/2 the federal work force and moving the rest. There are 4 time the number of contractors vs federal employees. Those people are gone. There will be a huge glut of housing as people are forced to sell.

That isn't happening. I'm saying that as a T voter. There will be at most 10% downsizing of the federal workforce.

It'll be 10% of the Federal workforce but significantly more contractors in conjunction. The main savings will come from programs getting cancelled - and then that will ripple over to contractors getting let go.

I thought that the point of firing fed employees was to increase the number of contractors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a family member at Amazon and I definitely would not be buying a house right now if I worked there is all I’ll say.

?? Amazon isn’t reliant on the government. If anything, they will be lobbying for tons more govt business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are returning to work in DC in droves. They are looking for close-in homes near DC. After 5 years of working out of the house and moving away, people are returning and moving back.

He is firing 1/2 the federal work force and moving the rest. There are 4 time the number of contractors vs federal employees. Those people are gone. There will be a huge glut of housing as people are forced to sell.

That isn't happening. I'm saying that as a T voter. There will be at most 10% downsizing of the federal workforce.

It'll be 10% of the Federal workforce but significantly more contractors in conjunction. The main savings will come from programs getting cancelled - and then that will ripple over to contractors getting let go.

I thought that the point of firing fed employees was to increase the number of contractors

The point is to save money. They are not going to cut $1m worth of fed employees to then spend $1m on contractors. It’ll be more like $750k, and they’ll also drive the contractors to do more with less. Private sector will take the deal- because what’s the alternative? That means then some contractors get cut, some get squeezed, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a family member at Amazon and I definitely would not be buying a house right now if I worked there is all I’ll say.

?? Amazon isn’t reliant on the government. If anything, they will be lobbying for tons more govt business.

Amazon has publicly stated they plan to aggressively pursue lay offs. “Flatten the mgmt layer” or so they say. That’s why they pursued RTO so hard.