I think the bubble is popping.

[Anonymous]

Lmao...the only tech in this region is pretty much for projects and ideas specifically aimed at killing people, or for new ideas on how to spy/monitor people. I guess if you don't give a crap it doesn't matter. Biotech in this region is very weak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone in tech (real tech) that I know wants to work in NYC, not DC.

Oddly, everyone in real tech I know live in CA and don’t want to live in DC but love the idea of sending their kids to TJ so they are moving to Fairfax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone in tech (real tech) that I know wants to work in NYC, not DC.

I grew up just outside NYC but honestly haven't met a single person in DC since I moved here twenty plus years ago who wants to work in NYC.

[Anonymous]

Just coming here again to note that the most expensive end of the market is down now.

I see that in Bethesda in the 4-5M range, there are significant price reductions.

However I agree with PPs that low to mid range housing will continue to go up (not as rapidly as last year, though), because there is a fundamental shortage of these homes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Just coming here again to note that the most expensive end of the market is down now.

I see that in Bethesda in the 4-5M range, there are significant price reductions.

However I agree with PPs that low to mid range housing will continue to go up (not as rapidly as last year, though), because there is a fundamental shortage of these homes.

Yeah I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions between the $5 million market and people buying homes in the $500-800k range. I do take issue with OP's idea that the "bubble is popping." That would mean prices falling across the board, fairly quickly and significantly. And that's just not what we're seeing. More like "the air slowly being released from the market." Prices may stabilize, but they're highly unlikely to drop to any great degree - not in the DC area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Just coming here again to note that the most expensive end of the market is down now.

I see that in Bethesda in the 4-5M range, there are significant price reductions.

However I agree with PPs that low to mid range housing will continue to go up (not as rapidly as last year, though), because there is a fundamental shortage of these homes.

Yeah I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions between the $5 million market and people buying homes in the $500-800k range. I do take issue with OP's idea that the "bubble is popping." That would mean prices falling across the board, fairly quickly and significantly. And that's just not what we're seeing. More like "the air slowly being released from the market." Prices may stabilize, but they're highly unlikely to drop to any great degree - not in the DC area.

I mean two GS15 households can swing a $1.2M house, and those are considered pretty low prestige jobs around here. As long as people value schools and commute, most places will be fine. $5M homes represent such an odd slice, and more of that value will be in the build itself not the location.

[Anonymous]

Yawn, various permutations of this post come weekly every year in late summer to winter. It would be interesting to see the tally.

[Anonymous]

To be honest- I’m really just curious to see where my “the bubble is coming” friends end up.

I really doubt they will find their SF dream home in the 700k range here now.

[Anonymous]

What is real tech? What is fake tech? Like fake news?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone in tech (real tech) that I know wants to work in NYC, not DC.

Oddly, everyone in real tech I know live in CA and don’t want to live in DC but love the idea of sending their kids to TJ so they are moving to Fairfax.

Didn't TJ eliminate their merit/test based admissions last year so it's pretty much anybody with a 3.5+ (>50% of all students in the district) is lotteried in now? Won't that kill the special sauce within a few years?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is real tech? What is fake tech? Like fake news?

By real tech I meant Silicon Valley style software development (where the $$$ is) not IT type jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is real tech? What is fake tech? Like fake news?

By real tech I meant Silicon Valley style software development (where the $$$ is) not IT type jobs.

Not real or take. Just commercial versus public. It’s not like the ML used to sell more ads is much different than the ML used to detect cyber attacks by the NSA. Just ads command a lot more money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some desperate buyers who could not outbid are having hope. Please dont even think about it. Prices are not coming down. Stop looking if you cannot afford.

+1

Stop wasting realtors time. Even the ones at redfin.

If you were hoping to find a 700k SFH but they are now selling at 900k-1.1 mill- either change your kids school, buy a townhome instead, or continue renting at 3-4K a year and stop thinking a bubble is going to happen in the DMV.

Amazon hasn’t even hired all of its people yet. Neither has Microsoft or Facebook for this area. Micron is still working on its factory in Manassas. AWS is still actively hiring. The market isn’t bursting any time soon- some fixer uppers might come on the market in the next few months, but you won’t find any gems. People are holding off until next spring. Or renting out their homes.

But my realtor friends are tired of you wasting their time with the whole “oh, we’re just looking” bs.

Inventory is not going to just suddenly explode here. Real estate is not like going to Costco or something. There is only so much land. And only so many people who are willing to part with it. Just looking around is just wasting everyone’s time.

And if you are watching HGTV- the reality is that this area is not Waco TX. This area is turning into SF or Seattle. The faster you realize that, the faster you can join the rest of us in the real world.

I wasn't even going to respond to this but let me ask a couple qs.

Why would microsoft, fb, aws come to nova to work when they have so many better options for location? Most of these tech jobs will be filled by locals or early career folks who could care less about buying a family home in DC.

You need a TS clearance to even apply for all of the tech jobs in microsoft so a majority of the people flooding in can't even apply there. Facebook is in DC and offered a fully remote option for all levels so even if someone would want to come to DC, you think they will want to buy a house and settle down here?

Sounds like you're a realtor who's salty about reality.

DP here.

First, Amazon and Microsoft already have commitments to the area. They are trying to get a better let into government contracting among other things and it's easier to lobby and support from closer by. So they have set up regional HQ in the area and are staffing up. It will be slow and steady over several years, but that's happening.

In addition, independent of AHQ2 and MS, the population of the DC metro area continues to grow. The population has more than doubled over the last 40 years and grows 1+% annually. With a population currently over 6.2M that means that more than 60K additional residents are added annually. 60K more people coming in than leave the area annually. These people have to live somewhere. And many of the newcomers come in with high salaries. As these folks come in, the also push and compete for the higher end housing making those area more in demand. As people then get priced out of the first tier of housing, some of the them will get pushed to the second tier of housing making that more in demand and keeping prices up and so on. The housing market is not likely to correct anytime in the near future due to the fact that more people are moving into the area. And new housing is not keeping pace. The only place that new housing is close to keeping pace with the population increase is the farther out exurbs.

Only Amazon is hiring for non-gov projects so like I said, aws and microsoft hiring here isn't going to magically contribute greatly to the 1% of your estimate because a majority of these hires will come from the existing DMV residents with clearances. The population growth is true but I don't get how you can assume that the newcomers will have high salaries. I'd say it's a safe estimate that a majority of the people moving to the DMV are usually coming from lower COL areas not places like NY, SF or Seattle. If prices do keep increasing as they are, it'll be hard to attract people to move here especially since they can get a remote job and buy a 3k sq ft house for 300k. I think Microsoft hiring in the DMV has minimal impact to the DMV housing market because it's so hard to find people engineers who want to work for a government contract. These tech companies are also hiring elsewhere in lower COL areas and remote.

It's easy to read headlines of articles and assume the housing market will only go up and up. What those articles fail to mention is that finding tech talent is one of the major challenges that the companies face. If you can get into these companies, you will have your choice of location and for 20-35 year olds (which a majority of these jobs will go to), I don't see how Virginia or Maryland will be there first choice. Even if they do come here, they will certainly not be buying these high end homes that you mention and likely just rent an apartment until they move away to a better company. Have you even heard of the employee attrition rates for aws?

Proportionally, the largest segment of the influx of people to the Washington DC metro area are people coming for political reasons: lobbyists, lawyers, people coming for higher end government positions. They are disportionately larger than almost any other segment. In most other segments of the population, you have a pretty even migration in and out of the area. People in the poverty to middle class don't tend to migrate proportionately more in or out. So you have people in the under middle class range that will move as life dictates for them, but proportionally, this segment does not grow or shrink. The upper middle classes and higher tend to be bigger drivers of the population growth. If you look at the income range of the top 1%, top 5% and top 10% of the region over time, you'll see that the income ranges grow significantly faster than the COLA and inflation would predict. The area is becoming more and more wealthy and the number of people that are over $X amount (whether $100K, $200K, $300K, etc) in any given decade grows more than exponentially.

Even when the people are coming from lower COL areas, they are coming because they are not coming for lateral pay. Most of the people that move to this area from outside the area are coming here for higher salaries than they have where they are coming from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone in tech (real tech) that I know wants to work in NYC, not DC.

Oddly, everyone in real tech I know live in CA and don’t want to live in DC but love the idea of sending their kids to TJ so they are moving to Fairfax.

They are moving to Virginia from CA just for a chance for their kids to go to TJ? This seems just like an anomaly not a herd of tech people coming just for TJ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some desperate buyers who could not outbid are having hope. Please dont even think about it. Prices are not coming down. Stop looking if you cannot afford.

+1

Stop wasting realtors time. Even the ones at redfin.

If you were hoping to find a 700k SFH but they are now selling at 900k-1.1 mill- either change your kids school, buy a townhome instead, or continue renting at 3-4K a year and stop thinking a bubble is going to happen in the DMV.

Amazon hasn’t even hired all of its people yet. Neither has Microsoft or Facebook for this area. Micron is still working on its factory in Manassas. AWS is still actively hiring. The market isn’t bursting any time soon- some fixer uppers might come on the market in the next few months, but you won’t find any gems. People are holding off until next spring. Or renting out their homes.

But my realtor friends are tired of you wasting their time with the whole “oh, we’re just looking” bs.

Inventory is not going to just suddenly explode here. Real estate is not like going to Costco or something. There is only so much land. And only so many people who are willing to part with it. Just looking around is just wasting everyone’s time.

And if you are watching HGTV- the reality is that this area is not Waco TX. This area is turning into SF or Seattle. The faster you realize that, the faster you can join the rest of us in the real world.

I wasn't even going to respond to this but let me ask a couple qs.

Why would microsoft, fb, aws come to nova to work when they have so many better options for location? Most of these tech jobs will be filled by locals or early career folks who could care less about buying a family home in DC.

You need a TS clearance to even apply for all of the tech jobs in microsoft so a majority of the people flooding in can't even apply there. Facebook is in DC and offered a fully remote option for all levels so even if someone would want to come to DC, you think they will want to buy a house and settle down here?

Sounds like you're a realtor who's salty about reality.

DP here.

First, Amazon and Microsoft already have commitments to the area. They are trying to get a better let into government contracting among other things and it's easier to lobby and support from closer by. So they have set up regional HQ in the area and are staffing up. It will be slow and steady over several years, but that's happening.

In addition, independent of AHQ2 and MS, the population of the DC metro area continues to grow. The population has more than doubled over the last 40 years and grows 1+% annually. With a population currently over 6.2M that means that more than 60K additional residents are added annually. 60K more people coming in than leave the area annually. These people have to live somewhere. And many of the newcomers come in with high salaries. As these folks come in, the also push and compete for the higher end housing making those area more in demand. As people then get priced out of the first tier of housing, some of the them will get pushed to the second tier of housing making that more in demand and keeping prices up and so on. The housing market is not likely to correct anytime in the near future due to the fact that more people are moving into the area. And new housing is not keeping pace. The only place that new housing is close to keeping pace with the population increase is the farther out exurbs.

Only Amazon is hiring for non-gov projects so like I said, aws and microsoft hiring here isn't going to magically contribute greatly to the 1% of your estimate because a majority of these hires will come from the existing DMV residents with clearances. The population growth is true but I don't get how you can assume that the newcomers will have high salaries. I'd say it's a safe estimate that a majority of the people moving to the DMV are usually coming from lower COL areas not places like NY, SF or Seattle. If prices do keep increasing as they are, it'll be hard to attract people to move here especially since they can get a remote job and buy a 3k sq ft house for 300k. I think Microsoft hiring in the DMV has minimal impact to the DMV housing market because it's so hard to find people engineers who want to work for a government contract. These tech companies are also hiring elsewhere in lower COL areas and remote.

It's easy to read headlines of articles and assume the housing market will only go up and up. What those articles fail to mention is that finding tech talent is one of the major challenges that the companies face. If you can get into these companies, you will have your choice of location and for 20-35 year olds (which a majority of these jobs will go to), I don't see how Virginia or Maryland will be there first choice. Even if they do come here, they will certainly not be buying these high end homes that you mention and likely just rent an apartment until they move away to a better company. Have you even heard of the employee attrition rates for aws?

Proportionally, the largest segment of the influx of people to the Washington DC metro area are people coming for political reasons: lobbyists, lawyers, people coming for higher end government positions. They are disportionately larger than almost any other segment. In most other segments of the population, you have a pretty even migration in and out of the area. People in the poverty to middle class don't tend to migrate proportionately more in or out. So you have people in the under middle class range that will move as life dictates for them, but proportionally, this segment does not grow or shrink. The upper middle classes and higher tend to be bigger drivers of the population growth. If you look at the income range of the top 1%, top 5% and top 10% of the region over time, you'll see that the income ranges grow significantly faster than the COLA and inflation would predict. The area is becoming more and more wealthy and the number of people that are over $X amount (whether $100K, $200K, $300K, etc) in any given decade grows more than exponentially.

Even when the people are coming from lower COL areas, they are coming because they are not coming for lateral pay. Most of the people that move to this area from outside the area are coming here for higher salaries than they have where they are coming from.

The case with those positions have always been the same for as long as DC was our Capitol, it will forever attract those high earners at a steady rate. It's a natural economic demand that has nothing to do with influx of tech people.

That was exactly my point with the lower col people moving. Lower COL people will move here and might make 100% more. They will go from 50k to 100k if they're lucky. They're not going to magically go from making 60-80k to 200k+ just by moving to DC, then every person will do that. Just because they move here doesn't mean it will start a frenzy for luxury homes that are 2M+.