Housing prices have gone insane
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Anonymous
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Annapolis poster may be harsh, but they are the ones with the most objectively true talking points. I live in Bethesda, but I have a second home on the water in an outer-burb (Lake Shore in Pasadena). Most of my colleagues live in Loudon County, Fairfax, Howard County, and certain parts of Anne Arundel. I would never commute to DC from Pasadena, even if it was just once a week, but commuting from Davidsonville is hardly any worse than commuting from Rockville, and the schools there are really good. I also agree that describing Howard and Anne Arundel as being "further out" in a general sense is also misleading because they're central to DC/Baltimore/Annapolis/Ft. Meade, and these days the vast majority of professional couples in the DMV are split between those areas for work, so a more central location is becoming increasingly important to most couples than being close to DC is. There are lots of vibrant areas with culture in "outer" burbs.
If my job was 100% WFH and my second home was assigned to Severna Park, Broadneck, Arundel, or South River HS, I would absolutely sell my Bethesda house and just make AA my permanent place to live. Sometimes I consider selling both houses and then buying a new waterfront home in one of the better school pyramids, but I don't want to chance the possibility of having to commute to DC from Severna Park. But most I know would be willing to do it, and already doing it. WFH will definitely dent home values in the inner-burbs, and I honestly don't care because I bought my Bethesda home awhile ago and didn't pay current day prices for it anyways. Their assessments of the culture in inner-burbs is spot-on, whether we like to admit it or not, but there are drawbacks to the culture in outer-burbs as well. Annapolis is very preppy and somewhat conservative (especially compared to MoCo), and there are two contrasting divides: There's the very rich and preppy waterfront group in the touristy areas, and then the poor communities of color that the city tucks away in the background. Even in the most exclusive areas of MoCo, I see people of different colors and nationalities, but AACo is so damn white that even BCC and WJ would be some of the county's most diverse high schools if they were in AACo. There are still a lot of problems with very blatant racism in Pasadena in 2020. Howard County is culturally similar to Montgomery County, but it is a bit too generic for me. Hopefully, AACo diversifies and becomes more progressive in the future. |
Anonymous
"Microsoft Will Let Employees Work From Home Permanently" https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlypage/2020/10/09/microsoft-will-let-employees-work-from-home-permanently/ If you work in tech you will understand how this works - in order to remain competitive for talent, every tech employer will need to offer work from home positions. The demand for talent is too intense to lose any % of the talent pool to competitors. |
Anonymous
| Sock puppet alert! |
Anonymous
| ^ Even the Feds will need to further embrace telework policies in order to keep a minimum level of technical talent, which is already a constant battle supplemented by expensive contractors (whose parent companies will let them wfh as contractors...). It will be similar to what the VA has to do to attract specialist physicians, etc. |
Anonymous
Is the commute from Fairfax really that bad? Wow, I thought it was supposed more doable. I have a handful of colleagues from there and they seemed to make it work. I have colleagues from other outer areas like Howard, Loudon, etc. Some of them probably live there only because they can't afford a more inner-burb, but I have others who can definitely afford an inner-burb home who do it and even they seem okay. It seems like the more road expansions that get built, the worse the traffic and commutes get. |
Anonymous
“Microsoft said it will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, but has said that managers will be able to approve permanent remote work if staff request it.” Yes we will all have days where we work at home doing admin work or answering some email or what not. But there will still be plenty of days in the office when meetings and real work happen. You are a crackerjack lone wolf developer, who never mentors less experience employees or interfaces with other systems sure you can burrow in at home. But most software is collaborative development, and GitHub and Slack are great once a design is in place but getting there requires innovation zoom can’t support. |
Anonymous
| Welp, I hope people started saving up crypto currency. |
Anonymous
| I would imagine it’s quite frustrating to buy a house far out for a “lifestyle choice,” but then end up feeling isolated and also missing out on all the appreciation that those with close-in properties have seen. We actually appreciate our location in a close-in suburb more, not less, since we started working mostly from home. It’s easy to run errands and we still feel connected in ways that wouldn’t be the case if we were in some far-out location. |
Anonymous
It got a lot worse once 66 became tolled and traffic spilled onto the other arterials. There would be the occasional morning (more often in summer) when things would move at a good pace. But a lot of the times it was stop and go. I lived near some major roads (not out in the middle of nowhere) and just sitting through several light cycles to get out of my neighborhood and onto the main road could tack on 5-10 min. Maybe some people don’t mind it or live closer in than I did. But I’ve found people wildly exaggerate their commutes around here. |
Anonymous
“I would imagine it’s frustrating to see people on a forum where 90% of the people come from closer-in overhype the value of living in an closer-in. I mean, we aren’t biased at all and our little cohort is totally objective and how everyone in the entire DMV thinks even though the statistics show the exact opposite.” “Outer-burbs” have seen 5-10% increases in median HHIs over the last 3 years, whereas most inner-burbs saw below 2% increases. People in outer areas aren’t “isolated,” you’re just ignorant and have never been to any of these places. You guys have no culture, you’re like any other gentrified northeastern suburb full of transplants. Greenwich, Wellesley, Bethesda, McLean, etc. They’re all the same and all extremely bland. This is why nobody likes people from inner-areas. It’s because you guys are over-pretentious and have an over-heightened sense of importance, and you make assumptions about “outer” areas you’ve never been to. Your validation for where you live almost entirely comes from whatever USNWR says and almost everything else you do in life depends on whatever Forbes says is the top 10 thing to do. You guys also live in your echo chambers and sound completely sheltered from reality, thinking you’re middle-class with $300k incomes, and you lack sympathy for others. That’s why you guys see these prices as normal, because you can afford them and it’s your houses appreciating to unrealistic levels. But screw everyone else, right? |
Anonymous
Several years from now, it will change. This is a kneejerk reaction.
"less than 50% of work week".. ."managers must approve"... meaning, it can be denied. |
Anonymous
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To the PP so aghast at home prices going up in the close-in DC area, are you also similarly upset about home appreciation in other expensive areas of the country? Even places like Austin, Denver, and Seattle are getting pricey. I know families who can’t afford the neighborhoods they want in those areas. What is special about the DC area that “something is wrong” if people can’t afford Bethesda, Arlington, McLean, etc? People who are priced out will move to the next area and then that area will become expensive and so on.
Washington, DC is a capital city and job center. Maybe telework will change things, time will tell. But there have been expensive cities since the beginning of time. Are you bitter about people making 300k+ a year living in small/old housing outside other large cities? Just because *you* don’t think it’s worth it doesn’t mean the market doesn’t think these homes are valued at this amount. I’m sorry you had to realize you’re a small fish in a big pond here and your dollar doesn’t go as far close-in, but if you’re so happy moving elsewhere why are you still lurking on a DC real estate board and gawking over the local school rankings/forums? Your postings don’t seem like the ramblings of someone who is all that happy. |
Anonymous
BCC and WJ for a large part of county are extremely diverse. Before I moved here my kids 1,000 person high school has tops 2 Indians, 3-4 Chinese and 2-3 Black kids. Judging from kids I see as I drive by in parts of country that is a scary school |
Anonymous
It’s the assumptions about “outer” areas that are annoying. There’s something very ironic about the people who have never met anyone with a HHI lower than $400,000 their entire lives and think that they’re middle class even though they’re in the top 5-10% claiming that those of us in outer burbs are the “isolated” ones. They admit that they stay put in their inner suburbs and that they never need to go anywhere, that’s the epitome of being isolated, and that’s why they have stupid and ignorant ideas of what other areas are like. DC is a job center, but there’s plenty of other job centers and vibrant urban areas in the region. I am unhappy about prices increasing to crazy numbers everywhere, and it’s not because people with $300k incomes can’t afford huge mansions on large lots. It’s because people here are acting like a $300k income is the poorest that someone can get, and they are blissfully ignorant about the fact that most Americans, even in the DMV region, makes incomes that are significantly lower than that, and these prices do a disservice to them. People now have to be in the top 10% to afford borderline section 8 housing in an inner burb. Someone in the percentiles far below could never dream of living in these areas in a million years. The comments in this thread reveal how diversity is desperately needed in some of these inner burbs. The people here sound so isolated from reality and come off as being very dense because of it. |
Anonymous
| Many people miss the forest for the trees in this discussion. DC area prices are capped by Fed salaries + mortgage rates + prior equity. There is too much land, and not enough private sector jobs to dramatically move the market independently. That's why you see such a fat middle distribution in prices with a very shallow long-tail (i.e. lots of houses up to $2m then sales drop off a cliff), compared to other cities. Rates can drop a bit, but new buyers tend to have less prior equity, so maybe that will balance out. People who think prices will appreciate 5%+/year don't understand that in cities where that happened the mass market of professional salaries were increasing by *double* that amount every year (SF, LA, NY). This dynamic is also what tends to help DC in recessions, because while there is a lower ceiling, there is also a higher floor with more stability. |