Our Gain, DCPS Suckers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DC families have only stayed because they are underwater on their homes. Once it rises, absent a good school, the middle class will flee DC again.

Don't be such a silly.

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/DC-Washington/Capitol-Hill-home-value/r_121685/

People may be underwater in the greater Dumfries-Manassass metropolitan area, but most middle-class DC folks have plenty of equity in their houses..even those who bought during the bubble.

Wrong. Instead of cherry picking your stats, why don't you cite the chart for Washington, DC as a whole:

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/DC-Washington/r_41568/

It's not just the "greater Dumfries-Manassass metropolitan area" that is underwater, but Washington, DC as well.

You'll probably want to dig a bit further into that chart. The areas that were hard-hit by the suburban housing bubble are a) the well-heeled areas of DC where households are likely to be both wealthy, and have access to the good public schools (JKLM), or b) the ungentrified areas of DC east of the river, and in the far NE. The middle-class parents who bought homes in places like Capitol Hill and elsewhere even in the "bubble years" are unlikely to be seriously underwater. That's because most of the (relatively small decrease) in home values in DC proper have taken place in ungentrified neighborhoods where new residents with children are unlikely to have settled. Even in your cherry-picked example of Petworth, someone is unlikely to be underwater unless they bought between late 2005 and mid 2009. The strong neighborhoods like Capitol Hill have only increased in value since the peak of the peak. Pretty much anyone who bought at any time other than a six month period in 2006 has made money. And the rents have gone up sufficiently that those people could rent their houses tomorrow and cover their mortgage and maintenance.

You're fantasies of nervous "underwater" parents wishing they could leave is just wishful thinking. Which, come to think of it, is a bit sad.

These aren't "fantasies." We know many such parents personally. They are underwater and wishing that they could leave for a much better school district, but are forced instead to apologize for DCPS and "boost" it on forums such as this in the hope that the system will actually improve, or at least appear to have improved enough to attract another middle class home buyer to purchase their home for more than they paid for it during the boom years. Perhaps you are another example of this, which, come to think of it, is quite sad.

Moreover, your arguments don't refute the fact that the chart cited clearly shows that DC property values have declined. In fact, the chart doesn't even show the full extent of the decline, since it only goes back to early 2007, whereas the peak prices were around May 2006. The only "cherry picking" was by the PP who tried to cite Capitol Hill and certain other neighborhoods as examples of areas where prices hadn't declined as much, if at all. My point was that for DC as a whole, the prices have declined, and the chart proves that.

Name the neighborhood. My guess is that you know people in either Columbia Heights or Petworth who bought in, what? 2006? 2007? Either that or they're in the "suburban" neighborhoods west of the Park. I feel sorry for your personal acquaintances, but they're outliers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

For example. We live in a house in DC that has doubled in value. Not exactly underwater.

Anecdotes don't refute overall truths. No one said that certain houses, or even certain neighborhoods in DC, haven't held their value or even gone up in some cases (which is also true for some of the closer in suburban areas). But for DC overall, property values have gone down since the boom, as proven in the chart cited previously. You can also look at the Case Schiller data and other data points if you still don't believe this for some reason.

Look at your chart again. It shows a period roughly from mid-2005 until early 2008 in which, if you'd bought you'd have lost a money. "DC overall" is just slightly less irrelevant to the question of "middle-class parents with school-age children" than the Case-Schiller index, which is essentially meaningless in this context.

The "gentrification zone", which is where almost all of the new middle-class residents who have elementary aged children are, has outperformed both the rich suburban areas of DC, and the old, ungentrified areas. Those bring down the overall DC figures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DC families have only stayed because they are underwater on their homes. Once it rises, absent a good school, the middle class will flee DC again.

Don't be such a silly.

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/DC-Washington/Capitol-Hill-home-value/r_121685/

People may be underwater in the greater Dumfries-Manassass metropolitan area, but most middle-class DC folks have plenty of equity in their houses..even those who bought during the bubble.

Wrong. Instead of cherry picking your stats, why don't you cite the chart for Washington, DC as a whole:

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/DC-Washington/r_41568/

It's not just the "greater Dumfries-Manassass metropolitan area" that is underwater, but Washington, DC as well.

You'll probably want to dig a bit further into that chart. The areas that were hard-hit by the suburban housing bubble are a) the well-heeled areas of DC where households are likely to be both wealthy, and have access to the good public schools (JKLM), or b) the ungentrified areas of DC east of the river, and in the far NE. The middle-class parents who bought homes in places like Capitol Hill and elsewhere even in the "bubble years" are unlikely to be seriously underwater. That's because most of the (relatively small decrease) in home values in DC proper have taken place in ungentrified neighborhoods where new residents with children are unlikely to have settled. Even in your cherry-picked example of Petworth, someone is unlikely to be underwater unless they bought between late 2005 and mid 2009. The strong neighborhoods like Capitol Hill have only increased in value since the peak of the peak. Pretty much anyone who bought at any time other than a six month period in 2006 has made money. And the rents have gone up sufficiently that those people could rent their houses tomorrow and cover their mortgage and maintenance.

You're fantasies of nervous "underwater" parents wishing they could leave is just wishful thinking. Which, come to think of it, is a bit sad.

These aren't "fantasies." We know many such parents personally. They are underwater and wishing that they could leave for a much better school district, but are forced instead to apologize for DCPS and "boost" it on forums such as this in the hope that the system will actually improve, or at least appear to have improved enough to attract another middle class home buyer to purchase their home for more than they paid for it during the boom years. Perhaps you are another example of this, which, come to think of it, is quite sad.

Moreover, your arguments don't refute the fact that the chart cited clearly shows that DC property values have declined. In fact, the chart doesn't even show the full extent of the decline, since it only goes back to early 2007, whereas the peak prices were around May 2006. The only "cherry picking" was by the PP who tried to cite Capitol Hill and certain other neighborhoods as examples of areas where prices hadn't declined as much, if at all. My point was that for DC as a whole, the prices have declined, and the chart proves that.

Name the neighborhood. My guess is that you know people in either Columbia Heights or Petworth who bought in, what? 2006? 2007? Either that or they're in the "suburban" neighborhoods west of the Park. I feel sorry for your personal acquaintances, but they're outliers.

What do you mean by "name the neighborhood"? We know parents from many different parts of the city that are underwater. Again, the facts that I have demonstrated show that they are not "outliers." Where are your facts demonstrating that property values in DC are now higher than at the peak of the boom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For example. We live in a house in DC that has doubled in value. Not exactly underwater.

Anecdotes don't refute overall truths. No one said that certain houses, or even certain neighborhoods in DC, haven't held their value or even gone up in some cases (which is also true for some of the closer in suburban areas). But for DC overall, property values have gone down since the boom, as proven in the chart cited previously. You can also look at the Case Schiller data and other data points if you still don't believe this for some reason.

Look at your chart again. It shows a period roughly from mid-2005 until early 2008 in which, if you'd bought you'd have lost a money. "DC overall" is just slightly less irrelevant to the question of "middle-class parents with school-age children" than the Case-Schiller index, which is essentially meaningless in this context.

The "gentrification zone", which is where almost all of the new middle-class residents who have elementary aged children are, has outperformed both the rich suburban areas of DC, and the old, ungentrified areas. Those bring down the overall DC figures.

You can twist the facts all you want with discussion of a "gentrification zone" (whatever and wherever that is supposed to be) or "middle-class parents with school-age children" (again, where are the stats or proof for your assertions?), but you haven't refuted the underlying fact that DC prices have declined. In fact, you proved my point, as there are a lot of people who bought "from mid-2005 until early 2008" who lost money, especially since the number of home sales was at its highest during that period. The actual data is irrefutable, so I don't understand why anyone would argue against it, unless they are trying to artificially inflate the value of their underwater home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The main decision maker, Jason Kamras, is a Princeton grad. The chancellor is a Georgetown grad and the former Chancellor, who with Henderson and Kamras devised the IMPACT evaluation system, has Cornell and Harvard degrees.

Not exactly "barely literate."

Are you really that dense? The issue isn't whether the people who devised these tools are illiterate. It's whether those who are tasked with using them in practice are stupid and incompetent.

The teacher put her superiors on notice that there was a problem and they not only ignored her warnings, but fired her. You might almost ask if her firing was akin to a retaliatory discharge. The sheer idiocy does indeed validate the decision that so many have made to leave DC for superior public school systems elsewhere. It may change for the better eventually, but the pace of improvement is very, very slow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many DC families have only stayed because they are underwater on their homes. Once it rises, absent a good school, the middle class will flee DC again.

Don't be such a silly.

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/DC-Washington/Capitol-Hill-home-value/r_121685/

People may be underwater in the greater Dumfries-Manassass metropolitan area, but most middle-class DC folks have plenty of equity in their houses..even those who bought during the bubble.

Wrong. Instead of cherry picking your stats, why don't you cite the chart for Washington, DC as a whole:

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/DC-Washington/r_41568/

It's not just the "greater Dumfries-Manassass metropolitan area" that is underwater, but Washington, DC as well.

You'll probably want to dig a bit further into that chart. The areas that were hard-hit by the suburban housing bubble are a) the well-heeled areas of DC where households are likely to be both wealthy, and have access to the good public schools (JKLM), or b) the ungentrified areas of DC east of the river, and in the far NE. The middle-class parents who bought homes in places like Capitol Hill and elsewhere even in the "bubble years" are unlikely to be seriously underwater. That's because most of the (relatively small decrease) in home values in DC proper have taken place in ungentrified neighborhoods where new residents with children are unlikely to have settled. Even in your cherry-picked example of Petworth, someone is unlikely to be underwater unless they bought between late 2005 and mid 2009. The strong neighborhoods like Capitol Hill have only increased in value since the peak of the peak. Pretty much anyone who bought at any time other than a six month period in 2006 has made money. And the rents have gone up sufficiently that those people could rent their houses tomorrow and cover their mortgage and maintenance.

You're fantasies of nervous "underwater" parents wishing they could leave is just wishful thinking. Which, come to think of it, is a bit sad.

These aren't "fantasies." We know many such parents personally. They are underwater and wishing that they could leave for a much better school district, but are forced instead to apologize for DCPS and "boost" it on forums such as this in the hope that the system will actually improve, or at least appear to have improved enough to attract another middle class home buyer to purchase their home for more than they paid for it during the boom years. Perhaps you are another example of this, which, come to think of it, is quite sad.

Moreover, your arguments don't refute the fact that the chart cited clearly shows that DC property values have declined. In fact, the chart doesn't even show the full extent of the decline, since it only goes back to early 2007, whereas the peak prices were around May 2006. The only "cherry picking" was by the PP who tried to cite Capitol Hill and certain other neighborhoods as examples of areas where prices hadn't declined as much, if at all. My point was that for DC as a whole, the prices have declined, and the chart proves that.

Name the neighborhood. My guess is that you know people in either Columbia Heights or Petworth who bought in, what? 2006? 2007? Either that or they're in the "suburban" neighborhoods west of the Park. I feel sorry for your personal acquaintances, but they're outliers.

What do you mean by "name the neighborhood"? We know parents from many different parts of the city that are underwater. Again, the facts that I have demonstrated show that they are not "outliers." Where are your facts demonstrating that property values in DC are now higher than at the peak of the boom?

New to this argument, but here's our experience. We bought in Eckington in 2004. Back then, you could hear gunshots on a regular basis and we'd all exchange information about it on the neighborhood listserv. By 2007 or so, our house had doubled what we paid for it, but that sunk when the housing bubble collapsed. Now it's only valued $175K more than what we paid. We'd like to see the neighborhood school do well, because it improves our property value for families, but the neighborhood continues to attract young couples, hipsters, grad students, and young professionals regardless. Regardless, we're in one of the sought-after charters, and there's no need to boost our local school. Long story short? We're not going anywhere: huge house in a constantly improving area, easy access to our great charter school, new amenities to the neighborhood coming, metro-access, etc. etc. etc.

Don't buy the argument that people bought into gentrifying areas and are desperate. We bought into one and are thrilled.

[Anonymous]

Love how someone is using anecdotal info and "most people" (along with cherry picked data) to refute anedoctal info.

We bought in '01 in Mt P/Columbia Heights. Maybe "everyone" has kids just a few short years after marrying/buying houses, but "most" people around us with kids in early childhood elementary (K and younger) are sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of value. We're maybe 100K off from peak - but still sitting on 300K in potential profit, and houses here, while rarely offered, are snapped up quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The main decision maker, Jason Kamras, is a Princeton grad. The chancellor is a Georgetown grad and the former Chancellor, who with Henderson and Kamras devised the IMPACT evaluation system, has Cornell and Harvard degrees.

Not exactly "barely literate."

Are you really that dense? The issue isn't whether the people who devised these tools are illiterate. It's whether those who are tasked with using them in practice are stupid and incompetent.

The teacher put her superiors on notice that there was a problem and they not only ignored her warnings, but fired her. You might almost ask if her firing was akin to a retaliatory discharge. The sheer idiocy does indeed validate the decision that so many have made to leave DC for superior public school systems elsewhere. It may change for the better eventually, but the pace of improvement is very, very slow.

Do you really need to be that insulting to make a point?

The people putting the tools into practice are underlings to the Ivy league geniuses who invented them. The "superiors" who fired the teacher were not her direct supervisors, they those very geniuses who invented the system. The data made them do it. There was nothing the principal could do.

This whole episode is the direct result of the reform that Michelle Rhee brought to DCPS in 2007. She was supposed to improve the system, but the reform brought to us by the supposed best and the brightest has made it worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Love how someone is using anecdotal info and "most people" (along with cherry picked data) to refute anedoctal info.

We bought in '01 in Mt P/Columbia Heights. Maybe "everyone" has kids just a few short years after marrying/buying houses, but "most" people around us with kids in early childhood elementary (K and younger) are sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of value. We're maybe 100K off from peak - but still sitting on 300K in potential profit, and houses here, while rarely offered, are snapped up quickly.

I love how certain people here seem to fail at basic reading comprehension. I used facts (the chart of real estate prices for all of DC for the past five years) to refute the "cherry picked" data that one poster was using to claim that DC real estate prices had not fallen after the bubble (citing data only for one neighborhood). It is you, along with the others here who are trying to "boost" their DC property values (including one who thinks that buying in an area "with frequent gunfire" is a great investment, nevermind the children, since they'll learn to duck the stray bullets), that are using anecdotal evidence (in fact, just one single property!) in a vain attempt to refute the demonstrated facts. Truly, the stupidity of some people is just astounding.

[Anonymous]

I know this thread has strayed off but I grew up with the teacher in this story and she and her family are just wonderful people. Our little town is very proud of her.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, it has strayed way off the subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread has strayed off but I grew up with the teacher in this story and she and her family are just wonderful people. Our little town is very proud of her.

She has a lot of courage -- and should prepare for a lot more attention, both positive and negative.

All the best to her.

[Anonymous]

Many DC families have only stayed because they are underwater on their homes. Once it rises, absent a good school, the middle class will flee DC again.

I live in the city - part of the actual city, not one of those in-the-city-but-has-much-more-in-common-with-a-suburb" neighborhoods. I have no idea how anyone could dispute with the sentiment behind this statement. For families with kids, school quality is among the most, if not THE most, important consideration when deciding where to live. If people can't find quality schools in DC, they'll find other options, including moving. And I have no doubt that there are people who are unhappy with their school situation who wish they could move but are underwater.

But the point the prior post misses, and the point that many in the suburbs don't seem understand, is that there are many more good school options now than there were 15 years ago. This increase is due to both charter schools and certain improved DCPS schools. Are ALL DCPS schools good options? No, of course not. But that's not really the issue when deciding if DCPS (or a charter) is an option, is it? My kid can only attend one school at a time. As long as I'm satisfied that her school is a good option and meets her needs, that's all that matters with respect to my decision to stay in DC. (I don't mean to suggest that I don't care about other kids in DC - I do - but the horrendous quality of many schools in Wards 7 and 8 isn't relevant to my decision about whether to stay in DC or decamp to the burbs.)

I get equally frustrated with the suburbanites who believe that all DCPS schools are bullet-ridden hellholes where no kid can get a great education (you're just not paying attention, and do seem like you have an axe to grind), and the city-dwellers who prattle on about how they live in the city because of easy access to museums (please, it's not like the Kennedy Center asks where you live when they sell you tickets, and while I'm sure some tiny number of you do go down to the mall with little Jasper and Dakota to check out a different museum every weekend, the vast majority of us don't take advantage of SC "culture" any more frequently than our suburban neighbors. We're too busy with soccer practice, swimming lessons, tee ball, home repairs, grocery shopping, maybe squeezing in a few hours of work.)

[Anonymous]

Thought I'd add our story to the growing list of 'anecdotal' city homebuyer success stories. We bought our rowhouse in east Columbia Heights in '02 for under 200K. Drug dealing, trash on our street, etc. Today, half the houses on our street have turned over, five in the last two years for over 400k, the latest sold a few months ago for over 500K. We've got a preschooler and a toddler, with our oldest in a DCPS school a five minute drive away with a waitlist in the hundreds and working the various lotteries available here in the city just in case we get lucky again and can upgrade further. No doubt it's taken some effort to make life work here, and we have long since gotten over our choices not making sense to everyone. The wealth and position of strength we're operating with now is something we attribute directly to giving this city a chance. Not saying it's perfect or that we wouldn't ever change where we live -- but it won't be out of desperation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The main decision maker, Jason Kamras, is a Princeton grad. The chancellor is a Georgetown grad and the former Chancellor, who with Henderson and Kamras devised the IMPACT evaluation system, has Cornell and Harvard degrees.

Not exactly "barely literate."

Are you really that dense? The issue isn't whether the people who devised these tools are illiterate. It's whether those who are tasked with using them in practice are stupid and incompetent.

The teacher put her superiors on notice that there was a problem and they not only ignored her warnings, but fired her. You might almost ask if her firing was akin to a retaliatory discharge. The sheer idiocy does indeed validate the decision that so many have made to leave DC for superior public school systems elsewhere. It may change for the better eventually, but the pace of improvement is very, very slow.

Actually it is Jason Kamras, creator of IMPACT and head of "Human Capital" who decides which teachers are fired.