Is there going to be panic selling?

[Anonymous]

Remember that right now there is a severe housing *shortage* in the area. So if more people sell, it may become more of a balanced market between buyers/sellers, but not a bloodbath for owners (knock wood).

[Anonymous]

The people most at risk are those who bought in the last 2-3 years, have high interest rates and not much equity. Even a 5% downturn in home prices could be enough to make selling difficult with the transaction costs. Equally at risk are people who don't have much savings and can't weather the storm for 3-6 months while the chaos ensues.

We lived through 2008 and have over-saved our cash to never be that close to the edge again. If we both lost our jobs we'd be able to maintain our lifestyle for at least a year, probably two, without significant hits to COL (health insurance being the big wild card here). We are fortunate but I worry about all the people who don't have the same cushion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not nearly as expensive everywhere else. Lots of mid-sized cities that are way more affordable, especially in places that people on this board would call flyover country. Those places are safe, have good schools, and don't have nightmare commutes if you have to live far from your job. Broaden your horizons -- there's more to the world than the DMV.

Flyover country is in fact expensive for the people having the median job in those areas. Those places don’t have much professional work, so not sure your audience.

The NYT did a whole piece about how Kalamazoo MI is now too expensive for people working the average job in that area.

Also, go search local press in places like SD and ND and the cost of housing is a big issue.

Your advice above I guess works for somebody that made a ton of $$$s in the DMV and now can semi-retire or something.

FWIW, I'm from Kalamazoo and that article didn't ring true for me. I'm sure that the couple profiled in the article were telling the truth, but it didn't ring globally true at all.

OK. It was fairly well-researched and had many statistics about median home prices, median incomes and the surge in home prices over the last 5 years.

It's kind of silly to say the article didn't ring true for you unless you are in fact in the R/E statistics industry and understand at a granular level what is happening in the Kalamazoo R/E market. Here are some quotes from the article:

Kalamazoo County’s home prices have risen around 40 percent since the pandemic, and rent prices even further.

For all its housing price inflation, Kalamazoo is still so much cheaper than other parts of the country that it was recently named one of America’s most affordable cities for professionals. A darker way of putting it is that Kalamazoo is the final stop in the housing crisis. And that’s the problem with being a place where people move to feel richer: Those who get priced out have no place left to go.

What has happened in Kalamazoo and elsewhere is that many of these older, cheaper units have either fallen into uninhabitable disrepair or been sold to investors who rehab them and raise the rents. Rehabs like that are necessary — even Ms. Tackett-Denney will tell you that her place was a dump — especially in Michigan, where close to half the housing stock was built before 1970. But because so little has been built since 2009, there is less “new” old housing to replace places that are naturally affordable, and the market pushes renters into much more expensive homes.

The McGowens’ house is in White Cloud, a rural city of 1,500 about an hour north of Grand Rapids, where the few local businesses include a funeral home and a fireworks depot. There are no Starbucks or condominium towers. The housing crisis is here all the same.

Kalamazoo is a very affordable place to live. The NYT focusing on the anecdote of this one family that seemed to have financial issues aside from finding a house was misleading.

That was just a further example from the story...that even outlying towns from Kalamazoo are seeing prices increase and affordability plummet.

Kalamazoo is affordable if you have one of the few professional jobs or you moved their with a remote professional job. Clearly, on a median level, it's not particularly affordable.

Feel free to read the entire article if you want to be informed on it.

I read the entire article the day it came out.

You read the article...it talked about the median home prices, the significant increase in prices and the affordability for people on the median income...and you still are just sticking with your opinion that it's wrong.

Great to know. A first for DCUM.

[Anonymous]

the vast majority of my old neighbors never moved after retirement. Most gvt workers bought way before 2020 why would they be panic selling.

Even if someone put zero percent down as recently as Feb 2020 they have a huge amount of equity .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not nearly as expensive everywhere else. Lots of mid-sized cities that are way more affordable, especially in places that people on this board would call flyover country. Those places are safe, have good schools, and don't have nightmare commutes if you have to live far from your job. Broaden your horizons -- there's more to the world than the DMV.

Nice try but most of us are from.those places and we know why we left.

OK. The ivy league colleges are filled with kids from those places. And people there in blue collar jobs can afford houses that don't have nightmare commutes. They can even run their errands without running into long lines, lack of parking, and gridlock everywhere. I like this area too, but I am always surprised when people are too closed-minded to explore alternatives.

DP. Most people on blue collar jobs don’t feel financially secure. Hence Trump.

You mean kids who left those places? Hmm, I wonder why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The contract work isn’t going anywhere longterm. Elon and Bezos make a ton of money on contracts. Part of the plan is probably to take the federal workforce down to a skeleton crew precisely so contractors like AWS and SpaceX can eat up even more of the spending.

Yes in the defense space. Obviously this is not going away. Plenty of us work in other areas of the government and those are going away.

Yes in defense. But AWS still sells to USAID. That USAID contract is ending. DOE. DOL. NOAA. Pick your agency. That piece of contracting work is dropping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes a lot of us just got laid off at the major contractors this week.

Are you going to break your leases or sell and move elsewhere?

[Anonymous]

Would you really want a house owned by a government employee? If they can't get a decent job, what kind of house would they have?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not nearly as expensive everywhere else. Lots of mid-sized cities that are way more affordable, especially in places that people on this board would call flyover country. Those places are safe, have good schools, and don't have nightmare commutes if you have to live far from your job. Broaden your horizons -- there's more to the world than the DMV.

Not for me, I cannot afford to live in the middle and commute to see both families on both coasts. I cannot be spending our limited vacation time and airfare budget to visit DC. Some of us had been living here for generations. It's a real town like anywhere else, it's not some temporary work camp you are trying to pretend it is.

[Anonymous]

I think people are overestimating how many people will move closer in due to RTO. If you already have a stable mortgage, low interest rate and equity I doubt many Feds are looking to take on transaction costs, moving, etc. now. There will be a lot of unhappy commuting.

As for what is going to happen to the people already close-in I think that will depend on how deep these cuts really go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes a lot of us just got laid off at the major contractors this week.

Are you going to break your leases or sell and move elsewhere?

Half of them are already elsewhere..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people are overestimating how many people will move closer in due to RTO. If you already have a stable mortgage, low interest rate and equity I doubt many Feds are looking to take on transaction costs, moving, etc. now. There will be a lot of unhappy commuting.

As for what is going to happen to the people already close-in I think that will depend on how deep these cuts really go.

This is the great unknown that stresses people to no end. Are they really going to tear down every single fed agency, what will be left here? What will "government" even look like. I think the latter is a concern for the entire country.

[Anonymous]

I can see this happening but this area will never be considered low cost. Then we will have a surge in 4 years that will balloon the costs...again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not nearly as expensive everywhere else. Lots of mid-sized cities that are way more affordable, especially in places that people on this board would call flyover country. Those places are safe, have good schools, and don't have nightmare commutes if you have to live far from your job. Broaden your horizons -- there's more to the world than the DMV.

Flyover country is in fact expensive for the people having the median job in those areas. Those places don’t have much professional work, so not sure your audience.

The NYT did a whole piece about how Kalamazoo MI is now too expensive for people working the average job in that area.

Also, go search local press in places like SD and ND and the cost of housing is a big issue.

Your advice above I guess works for somebody that made a ton of $$$s in the DMV and now can semi-retire or something.

FWIW, I'm from Kalamazoo and that article didn't ring true for me. I'm sure that the couple profiled in the article were telling the truth, but it didn't ring globally true at all.

OK. It was fairly well-researched and had many statistics about median home prices, median incomes and the surge in home prices over the last 5 years.

It's kind of silly to say the article didn't ring true for you unless you are in fact in the R/E statistics industry and understand at a granular level what is happening in the Kalamazoo R/E market. Here are some quotes from the article:

Kalamazoo County’s home prices have risen around 40 percent since the pandemic, and rent prices even further.

For all its housing price inflation, Kalamazoo is still so much cheaper than other parts of the country that it was recently named one of America’s most affordable cities for professionals. A darker way of putting it is that Kalamazoo is the final stop in the housing crisis. And that’s the problem with being a place where people move to feel richer: Those who get priced out have no place left to go.

What has happened in Kalamazoo and elsewhere is that many of these older, cheaper units have either fallen into uninhabitable disrepair or been sold to investors who rehab them and raise the rents. Rehabs like that are necessary — even Ms. Tackett-Denney will tell you that her place was a dump — especially in Michigan, where close to half the housing stock was built before 1970. But because so little has been built since 2009, there is less “new” old housing to replace places that are naturally affordable, and the market pushes renters into much more expensive homes.

The McGowens’ house is in White Cloud, a rural city of 1,500 about an hour north of Grand Rapids, where the few local businesses include a funeral home and a fireworks depot. There are no Starbucks or condominium towers. The housing crisis is here all the same.

Kalamazoo is a very affordable place to live. The NYT focusing on the anecdote of this one family that seemed to have financial issues aside from finding a house was misleading.

That was just a further example from the story...that even outlying towns from Kalamazoo are seeing prices increase and affordability plummet.

Kalamazoo is affordable if you have one of the few professional jobs or you moved their with a remote professional job. Clearly, on a median level, it's not particularly affordable.

Feel free to read the entire article if you want to be informed on it.

I read the entire article the day it came out.

You read the article...it talked about the median home prices, the significant increase in prices and the affordability for people on the median income...and you still are just sticking with your opinion that it's wrong.

Great to know. A first for DCUM.

FFS. I know what I know about Kalamazoo, MI and I am "sticking with [my] opinion" that doesn't line up with that article because my opinion is correct and the article is misleading. I've had two cases (I'm an attorney) discussed in the NYT, and they got it wrong both times (WSJ messed it up too). Don't just swallow everything as presented in the media, especially lifestyle stuff that relies on social anecdote.

But your ignorance combined with arrogance is: "Great to know. A first for DCUM."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's not nearly as expensive everywhere else. Lots of mid-sized cities that are way more affordable, especially in places that people on this board would call flyover country. Those places are safe, have good schools, and don't have nightmare commutes if you have to live far from your job. Broaden your horizons -- there's more to the world than the DMV.

The issue is that if you currently own a home in the DMV and the market tanks, you may end up stuck. If the market falls apart, you might have to sell for a loss in order to leave DC. If you are 40 or 50 years old, have kids, and don't have any particular ties to another city, how do you even begin with that.

I'd happily move to any other city and if I was in my 20s or even early 30s, what you propose makes sense. But the people struggling right now are people who are locked into this region for various reasons and not in a particularly mobile time in our lives.

this. right now DC is an HCOLA, but if prices tank even 30% it will become very much the same as these other flyover cities given you compare neighborhoods with the same socio economic dynamics. In other words you will be exchanging a more centrally located city with better amenities and better weather for a 2nd or a 3d tier city and may not even premium neighborhoods.