Rushern Baker's Proposal to take over PGCPS

[Anonymous]

Chavez poster here. Thanks for all the helpful suggestions. I did connect with a few families in the neighborhood this weekend. Our numbers are really low.

I took a few minutes to walk around the school grounds and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The school really needs a corporate partner. Realistically, this project will take years before it is attractive to the new families moving to the neighborhood. Chavez needs tons of love.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PG county resident here. I sincerely hope that this measure will help the school system.

I bought my house in my twenties. After being in the house for 12 years, I feel trapped in a crappy school district and with a house that I cannot sell. I have done major improvements with quality work but the uptick in market values, after the houseing bubble, have not reached my neighborhood yet.

I think it will be a long time before the county recovers from the burst of the housing bubble, especially since it looks like they are starting to build again which will only keep down prices of existing homes. I feel trapped as well but trying to navigate as best as I can.

Generally I would not be in favor of such a measure, but after seeing the horrible options for superintendent, I am more than happy that they are holding the school board to the fire. Hopefully we can now get a decent option.

I'm not sure where you are in the county, but I would really hesitate to make generalizations about the housing market in the *entire* county. We bought a house last year, and we actually had a lot of trouble getting a house because there were multiple bids on *every* house we tried for. And this was in PG.

I know people in Anne Arundel County and Montgomery County who are still underwater (i.e. the uptick in values hasn't helped them), but no one assumes that is county wide. It is highly individual and even very neighborhood specific.

I would also ask, have you actually tried to sell your house? Before we bought last year, we had a house to sell, and I didn't think we'd be able to sell it. But we put it on the market, and we had a contract in 3 weeks for a decent price. It wasn't in PG, but it wasn't in a hot area either.

That's the thing, you don't know if you can sell until you try to sell.

I also don't think that the new construction will be as detrimental as you say. Again, when we looked last year, we actually mainly looked at older homes. First of all, the neighborhoods we liked (more established, stable) were older communities. Second of all, the taxes on an older home of the same size are significantly lower than new construction. It makes a difference. And again, this was in PG.

Not to be snarky, but I hate when people make overarching generalizations about real estate. In this area (including PG), real estate is uber local, meaning neighborhood by neighborhood, (even in MOCO).

Just my thoughts. Since I bought last year, more houses in the neighborhood came onto the market (I think the sellers saw that things were moving), and there has been a lot of activity. This includes families.

Sometimes negativity can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you live in an area and you constantly say in public forums that you feel trapped and can't sell your house, well, then, guess what, people read that, it scares them and then you really can't sell your house.

I'm not saying you should deceive people. But don't take your individual situation and assume it's like that for the entire county. As I said, we thought we would have no problem finding a house for a certain price in the PG neighborhoods where we were looking. But we looked from January until March last year, and even in winter, there were multiple bid situations on more than a couple of houses! And these houses weren't cheap by any means. They were above the average for the county.

That aside, I was skeptical of Baker. But I think this move with the schools is a good one. And I'm actually pretty impressed that he managed to get a modified version of it passed on the state level. It shows me he means business. I'll be following the search for a new superintendent.

[Anonymous]

Of course it will be neighborhood specific. Your older more established neighborhoods have people who likely bought their homes before the real estate bubble. They can afford to sell now versus waiting for additional increase in the equity of their home. Newer neighborhoods that were built DURING the bubble years are having a much harder time. The builders in these areas exponentially increased the costs of the homes during the bubble and many hurt the equity by drastically reducing the prices at the burst of the housing market to get rid of their remaining lots.

It is not that there are not buyers for those homes, because these are great neighborhoods. But if you purchased a home at the height of the market, the likelihood is that the value has not completely recovered from the levels back in 2006 and 2007. For a buyer now, that is a dream. And yes there would be multiple offers because you are getting a home that you likely would have been priced out of 6-7 years ago.

A good indicator is not whether you purchased an expensive home above average for the county today, it is whether you were able to purchase that home at a price that was close to its value during the height of the market. That is how you can tell if we have recovered or not.

My neighbor recently sold their home and had multiple offers. It doesn't change the fact that the sales prices was almost $150K less than the price I paid for my home during the housing bubble. There have been numerous foreclosures that have impacted the housing prices and that is not my personal view, that statistically is correct that yes PG has had the highest number of foreclosures in the state.

I think if you are entering the market now you are in a great position to get an amazing home at a great price. If you are a longtime homeowner you can sell with the comfort that you will not have to bring money to closing. If you purchased in a new construction neighborhood at the height of the market, and if your neighborhood suffered a lot of foreclosures as a result of the crash, then you probably have not recovered your value.

And yes I do think additional residential construction would be detrimental to the area. We do not need more residential homes. We need to improve our tax base and to do that we need commercial investment into our county. That should be the focus of the planning committees.