Will houses ever become affordable again?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I kinda feel like we’ll have to keep any houses we inherit to pass on to our own kids. Stinks, as I don’t want to be a landlord, but I also don’t want my kids to be renters forever. In the European country that DH is from, the family house passes on to the oldest DC. As an American, this doesn’t sit well with me, so I don’t know what else to do.

Which part doesn’t sit well with you? Passing them on? The idea of inheritance? Passing it on to the oldest?

What else are you going to do with the properties? Either you pass them on or you sell them and pass on the estate to the children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have to admit that I did not predict prices would continue to increase even with the sharp increase in mortgage rates. It makes sense that people don’t want to sell and take on a higher rate now, but I am curious if others honestly saw that coming? Unfortunately, I didn’t!

I actually know quite a few people - mostly DINK couples - who sold their homes in 2022 with the intention of rebuying once interest rates went up and expecting prices to soften. They realized good gains on their homes, so they are sitting on a fat stack of cash and renting.

But they are also really anxious - they don't own and prices keep unexpectedly going up. Boomers - with their all-cash purchases - are actually crowding out younger buyers.

My big regret is that we didn't buy a vacation home during COVID at sub-3% interest. We should've picked up a pied-a-terre in NYC when the condo market declined there, or bought something up in New England for summer/winter use.

Boomers are not crowding out young buyers in this area. They are contributing to the problem by either giving their kids cash to buy or make substantial down payments. Or they will hold a mortgage at favorable rates. We are getting beaten out by young buyers with this type of parental help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


NO




How do you not understand this? Every capital city or assimilated has real estate prices that don't go down. Everywhere in the world.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we build more housing. Basically the great recession killed housing starts and they have never gotten back to where they were.

That won't affect the prices because if you build it, they will come. So many people want to live here, they just keep packing them in. Increasing supply from an economic principle should lower price but in reality for real estate in the DMV that won't happen and hasn't happened because more and more people just keep moving here. So more demand with more supply.

That was part of the missing middle argument, that home ownership is like a property ladder and in order to make those apartments and homes more affordable at the bottom of the ladder, we needed to increase supply in the middle and people move up the ladder, freeing cheaper housing, stabilizing prices. But that assumes a limited demand. In reality, there is just too much demand and it keeps increasing. Hence you can keep building gigantic $2 million duplexes and THs and people will STILL buy them. Prices will never go down here.

Missing Middle was allegedly about making housing more affordable but it was really about introducing different types of housing into single family neighborhoods. So you can rent a three bed apartment in a six plex and live next to a 1950s colonial with three bedrooms. The former will provide the clean and shiny that the latter lacks.

Maybe that was the argument where you live but it wasn’t the argument where I live in Alexandria.

Affordability was the initial argument for MM in Arlington but that was disproved. Alexandria “benefited” from Arlington’s experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our only true hope is if Biden is reelected. And even then it would require an enormous number of stimulus check sent to undo the rapid increase in prices. I have serious doubts that Congress has the fortitude to pass this.

Although I also do hope Biden gets reelected, honestly I don't think stimulus checks and pumping more money into the economy will solve the problem, hell I would argue that caused the problem in the first place.

During the pandemic, not only did the government pumped a lot of money into the economy. First of all the COVID stimulus checks, which rather than targeting those who lost their job, just gave everyone $$. Then they paused student loan payments (for far too long, I would argue the pause was unnecessary for most people). Last the foreclosure (and eviction I guess) moratoriums also ensured that supply stayed low. And last (granted this is out of the executive office's control), FED rates were kept low for far too long (making mortgages much cheaper than they should be, causing house prices to increase, and also causing the inflation in other sectors).

We don't need to government artificially pumping more money in, this will only make the problem worse.

If you look at the underlying components contributing the most to inflation today, it's housing and insurance. And the insurance portion is driven by the fact that natural disasters are becoming more frequent/severe and the cost to rebuild is so high (due to the high cost of real estate).

We are going to be stuck in this cycle for a while, until either more supply is quickly added (would require something like a Manhattan Project for housing) or we get a real recession with lots of widespread pain that forces the hand of investors to dump supply on the market.

Agreed either some increase in supply (through a government intervention providing incentives to build) or some form of a moderate recession that forces people to sell.

I guess another possibility is (and I do not know how realistic this is) is if Trump wins the next election (god I really hope he wont) and then moves certain federal agencies outside the DMV area. If those jobs move/leave the area, I could see it having a dent in the DMV market as well (increased supply and reduced demand). There are around 374k federal government employees in the DMV area (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU11479009091000001SA) which is a significant number. A reduction in that could have some serious (negative imo) ripple effects for the area.

He'll be gutting/eliminating agencies.

Dude is not getting elected, sorry. If Jan 6th never happened it probably would have been a cakewalk to winning, but it did, and moderates are hard passing on any MAGA candidate. Better start planning for a Biden term.

Really a Harris term. God help us all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our only true hope is if Biden is reelected. And even then it would require an enormous number of stimulus check sent to undo the rapid increase in prices. I have serious doubts that Congress has the fortitude to pass this.

Although I also do hope Biden gets reelected, honestly I don't think stimulus checks and pumping more money into the economy will solve the problem, hell I would argue that caused the problem in the first place.

During the pandemic, not only did the government pumped a lot of money into the economy. First of all the COVID stimulus checks, which rather than targeting those who lost their job, just gave everyone $$. Then they paused student loan payments (for far too long, I would argue the pause was unnecessary for most people). Last the foreclosure (and eviction I guess) moratoriums also ensured that supply stayed low. And last (granted this is out of the executive office's control), FED rates were kept low for far too long (making mortgages much cheaper than they should be, causing house prices to increase, and also causing the inflation in other sectors).

We don't need to government artificially pumping more money in, this will only make the problem worse.

If you look at the underlying components contributing the most to inflation today, it's housing and insurance. And the insurance portion is driven by the fact that natural disasters are becoming more frequent/severe and the cost to rebuild is so high (due to the high cost of real estate).

We are going to be stuck in this cycle for a while, until either more supply is quickly added (would require something like a Manhattan Project for housing) or we get a real recession with lots of widespread pain that forces the hand of investors to dump supply on the market.

Agreed either some increase in supply (through a government intervention providing incentives to build) or some form of a moderate recession that forces people to sell.

I guess another possibility is (and I do not know how realistic this is) is if Trump wins the next election (god I really hope he wont) and then moves certain federal agencies outside the DMV area. If those jobs move/leave the area, I could see it having a dent in the DMV market as well (increased supply and reduced demand). There are around 374k federal government employees in the DMV area (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU11479009091000001SA) which is a significant number. A reduction in that could have some serious (negative imo) ripple effects for the area.

He'll be gutting/eliminating agencies.

Dude is not getting elected, sorry. If Jan 6th never happened it probably would have been a cakewalk to winning, but it did, and moderates are hard passing on any MAGA candidate. Better start planning for a Biden term.

Nobody knows what is happening in November. Only the extremely foolish and the extremely confident (typically both) are bold enough to make predictions. You're definitely bringing what you want to believe to your prediction rather than something based on reality (neck to neck polling, national polling versus state by state electoral college polling). As it is, inflation is getting more stubborn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we build more housing. Basically the great recession killed housing starts and they have never gotten back to where they were.

That won't affect the prices because if you build it, they will come. So many people want to live here, they just keep packing them in. Increasing supply from an economic principle should lower price but in reality for real estate in the DMV that won't happen and hasn't happened because more and more people just keep moving here. So more demand with more supply.

That was part of the missing middle argument, that home ownership is like a property ladder and in order to make those apartments and homes more affordable at the bottom of the ladder, we needed to increase supply in the middle and people move up the ladder, freeing cheaper housing, stabilizing prices. But that assumes a limited demand. In reality, there is just too much demand and it keeps increasing. Hence you can keep building gigantic $2 million duplexes and THs and people will STILL buy them. Prices will never go down here.

Missing Middle was allegedly about making housing more affordable but it was really about introducing different types of housing into single family neighborhoods. So you can rent a three bed apartment in a six plex and live next to a 1950s colonial with three bedrooms. The former will provide the clean and shiny that the latter lacks.

Maybe that was the argument where you live but it wasn’t the argument where I live in Alexandria.

Affordability was the initial argument for MM in Arlington but that was disproved. Alexandria “benefited” from Arlington’s experience.

I know. But most people in Alexandria knew that would be the case when city council, the mayor and their fans were shoving the MM argument down our throat. That's what I've been posting all along. I think you are unnecessarily arguing with me, but that's ok. I still stand by the position that increasing supply does not bring down prices because the demand in this area is just too massive and will continue, whether you have $2 million townhomes or a bunch of ADUs in people's back yards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we build more housing. Basically the great recession killed housing starts and they have never gotten back to where they were.

That won't affect the prices because if you build it, they will come. So many people want to live here, they just keep packing them in. Increasing supply from an economic principle should lower price but in reality for real estate in the DMV that won't happen and hasn't happened because more and more people just keep moving here. So more demand with more supply.

That was part of the missing middle argument, that home ownership is like a property ladder and in order to make those apartments and homes more affordable at the bottom of the ladder, we needed to increase supply in the middle and people move up the ladder, freeing cheaper housing, stabilizing prices. But that assumes a limited demand. In reality, there is just too much demand and it keeps increasing. Hence you can keep building gigantic $2 million duplexes and THs and people will STILL buy them. Prices will never go down here.

Prices will stabilize with more supply IF you sharply tax investment properties/2nd homes. The issue is that people retain their cheap condo/starter home on the bottom of the ladder and rent it out. You need to force that supply back into the ownership market for the virtuous cycle to continue. Also need to ban LLC's from owning SFHs, townhouses, and individual condo units. If big money corporates like Blackrock want to own RE, they need to build or purchase large multifamily developments to rent out.

None of those things are going to happen in government. Stop with the fairytales.

Not sure why not. So many jurisdictions claim to have housing shortages and instead of dumb proposals like missing middle or thrive 2050, they could just dramatically increase property tax rates on investment properties and the housing supply would dramatically increase overnight. Kind of baffling actually except that no one actually really cares about housing shortages and instead the goal is to make developers rich.

What part of "it's not your money" do you not understand?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we build more housing. Basically the great recession killed housing starts and they have never gotten back to where they were.

That won't affect the prices because if you build it, they will come. So many people want to live here, they just keep packing them in. Increasing supply from an economic principle should lower price but in reality for real estate in the DMV that won't happen and hasn't happened because more and more people just keep moving here. So more demand with more supply.

That was part of the missing middle argument, that home ownership is like a property ladder and in order to make those apartments and homes more affordable at the bottom of the ladder, we needed to increase supply in the middle and people move up the ladder, freeing cheaper housing, stabilizing prices. But that assumes a limited demand. In reality, there is just too much demand and it keeps increasing. Hence you can keep building gigantic $2 million duplexes and THs and people will STILL buy them. Prices will never go down here.

Missing Middle was allegedly about making housing more affordable but it was really about introducing different types of housing into single family neighborhoods. So you can rent a three bed apartment in a six plex and live next to a 1950s colonial with three bedrooms. The former will provide the clean and shiny that the latter lacks.

Maybe that was the argument where you live but it wasn’t the argument where I live in Alexandria.

Affordability was the initial argument for MM in Arlington but that was disproved. Alexandria “benefited” from Arlington’s experience.

I know. But most people in Alexandria knew that would be the case when city council, the mayor and their fans were shoving the MM argument down our throat. That's what I've been posting all along. I think you are unnecessarily arguing with me, but that's ok. I still stand by the position that increasing supply does not bring down prices because the demand in this area is just too massive and will continue, whether you have $2 million townhomes or a bunch of ADUs in people's back yards.

If you limit supply, prices go up. Not sure why housing would be different from literally every other product people pay for throughout human history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our only true hope is if Biden is reelected. And even then it would require an enormous number of stimulus check sent to undo the rapid increase in prices. I have serious doubts that Congress has the fortitude to pass this.

Although I also do hope Biden gets reelected, honestly I don't think stimulus checks and pumping more money into the economy will solve the problem, hell I would argue that caused the problem in the first place.

During the pandemic, not only did the government pumped a lot of money into the economy. First of all the COVID stimulus checks, which rather than targeting those who lost their job, just gave everyone $$. Then they paused student loan payments (for far too long, I would argue the pause was unnecessary for most people). Last the foreclosure (and eviction I guess) moratoriums also ensured that supply stayed low. And last (granted this is out of the executive office's control), FED rates were kept low for far too long (making mortgages much cheaper than they should be, causing house prices to increase, and also causing the inflation in other sectors).

We don't need to government artificially pumping more money in, this will only make the problem worse.

If you look at the underlying components contributing the most to inflation today, it's housing and insurance. And the insurance portion is driven by the fact that natural disasters are becoming more frequent/severe and the cost to rebuild is so high (due to the high cost of real estate).

We are going to be stuck in this cycle for a while, until either more supply is quickly added (would require something like a Manhattan Project for housing) or we get a real recession with lots of widespread pain that forces the hand of investors to dump supply on the market.

Agreed either some increase in supply (through a government intervention providing incentives to build) or some form of a moderate recession that forces people to sell.

I guess another possibility is (and I do not know how realistic this is) is if Trump wins the next election (god I really hope he wont) and then moves certain federal agencies outside the DMV area. If those jobs move/leave the area, I could see it having a dent in the DMV market as well (increased supply and reduced demand). There are around 374k federal government employees in the DMV area (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU11479009091000001SA) which is a significant number. A reduction in that could have some serious (negative imo) ripple effects for the area.

He'll be gutting/eliminating agencies.

Dude is not getting elected, sorry. If Jan 6th never happened it probably would have been a cakewalk to winning, but it did, and moderates are hard passing on any MAGA candidate. Better start planning for a Biden term.

Nobody knows what is happening in November. Only the extremely foolish and the extremely confident (typically both) are bold enough to make predictions. You're definitely bringing what you want to believe to your prediction rather than something based on reality (neck to neck polling, national polling versus state by state electoral college polling). As it is, inflation is getting more stubborn.

We need to stop with the inflation talk. It's transitory and only started because of Trump anyway if you look at the numbers (remember how he botched COVID?). Biden got us the Inflation Reduction Act and we just need to be patient for those funds to be deployed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we build more housing. Basically the great recession killed housing starts and they have never gotten back to where they were.

That won't affect the prices because if you build it, they will come. So many people want to live here, they just keep packing them in. Increasing supply from an economic principle should lower price but in reality for real estate in the DMV that won't happen and hasn't happened because more and more people just keep moving here. So more demand with more supply.

That was part of the missing middle argument, that home ownership is like a property ladder and in order to make those apartments and homes more affordable at the bottom of the ladder, we needed to increase supply in the middle and people move up the ladder, freeing cheaper housing, stabilizing prices. But that assumes a limited demand. In reality, there is just too much demand and it keeps increasing. Hence you can keep building gigantic $2 million duplexes and THs and people will STILL buy them. Prices will never go down here.

Missing Middle was allegedly about making housing more affordable but it was really about introducing different types of housing into single family neighborhoods. So you can rent a three bed apartment in a six plex and live next to a 1950s colonial with three bedrooms. The former will provide the clean and shiny that the latter lacks.

Maybe that was the argument where you live but it wasn’t the argument where I live in Alexandria.

Affordability was the initial argument for MM in Arlington but that was disproved. Alexandria “benefited” from Arlington’s experience.

I know. But most people in Alexandria knew that would be the case when city council, the mayor and their fans were shoving the MM argument down our throat. That's what I've been posting all along. I think you are unnecessarily arguing with me, but that's ok. I still stand by the position that increasing supply does not bring down prices because the demand in this area is just too massive and will continue, whether you have $2 million townhomes or a bunch of ADUs in people's back yards.

I saw your post earlier about how supply is increasing demand and I think you got supply and demand confused. These are two separate independent effects. Is it possible that despite an increase in supply of 50 homes won't decrease the price because there's 1000 more people looking? Sure. But building the 50 homes isn't what's causing people to want to buy a home and not building the 50 homes is even worse.

Imagine a hypothetical situation where there's 1 home and 1 buyer, a 1 to 1 ratio. Now imagine where there's 1 home and 1001 buyers. Prices will rise as there's now a 1:1001 ratio. Now imagine there's 51 homes and 1001 buyers. Prices will be higher than the 1 home to 1 buyer situation, but lower than 1 to 1001 buyer situation, because there's now roughly a 1:20 ratio.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we build more housing. Basically the great recession killed housing starts and they have never gotten back to where they were.

That won't affect the prices because if you build it, they will come. So many people want to live here, they just keep packing them in. Increasing supply from an economic principle should lower price but in reality for real estate in the DMV that won't happen and hasn't happened because more and more people just keep moving here. So more demand with more supply.

That was part of the missing middle argument, that home ownership is like a property ladder and in order to make those apartments and homes more affordable at the bottom of the ladder, we needed to increase supply in the middle and people move up the ladder, freeing cheaper housing, stabilizing prices. But that assumes a limited demand. In reality, there is just too much demand and it keeps increasing. Hence you can keep building gigantic $2 million duplexes and THs and people will STILL buy them. Prices will never go down here.

Missing Middle was allegedly about making housing more affordable but it was really about introducing different types of housing into single family neighborhoods. So you can rent a three bed apartment in a six plex and live next to a 1950s colonial with three bedrooms. The former will provide the clean and shiny that the latter lacks.

Maybe that was the argument where you live but it wasn’t the argument where I live in Alexandria.

Affordability was the initial argument for MM in Arlington but that was disproved. Alexandria “benefited” from Arlington’s experience.

I know. But most people in Alexandria knew that would be the case when city council, the mayor and their fans were shoving the MM argument down our throat. That's what I've been posting all along. I think you are unnecessarily arguing with me, but that's ok. I still stand by the position that increasing supply does not bring down prices because the demand in this area is just too massive and will continue, whether you have $2 million townhomes or a bunch of ADUs in people's back yards.

I saw your post earlier about how supply is increasing demand and I think you got supply and demand confused. These are two separate independent effects. Is it possible that despite an increase in supply of 50 homes won't decrease the price because there's 1000 more people looking? Sure. But building the 50 homes isn't what's causing people to want to buy a home and not building the 50 homes is even worse.

Imagine a hypothetical situation where there's 1 home and 1 buyer, a 1 to 1 ratio. Now imagine where there's 1 home and 1001 buyers. Prices will rise as there's now a 1:1001 ratio. Now imagine there's 51 homes and 1001 buyers. Prices will be higher than the 1 home to 1 buyer situation, but lower than 1 to 1001 buyer situation, because there's now roughly a 1:20 ratio.

No, don't you get it? We built like 15 missing middle houses and prices didn't drop overnight to the point where McDonald's workers can afford a SFH in North Arlington, so obviously Missing Middle is a useless failure.

[Anonymous]

Until you get institutional investors out of real estate (buying SFH and townhouses) we wont have enough supply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our only true hope is if Biden is reelected. And even then it would require an enormous number of stimulus check sent to undo the rapid increase in prices. I have serious doubts that Congress has the fortitude to pass this.

Although I also do hope Biden gets reelected, honestly I don't think stimulus checks and pumping more money into the economy will solve the problem, hell I would argue that caused the problem in the first place.

During the pandemic, not only did the government pumped a lot of money into the economy. First of all the COVID stimulus checks, which rather than targeting those who lost their job, just gave everyone $$. Then they paused student loan payments (for far too long, I would argue the pause was unnecessary for most people). Last the foreclosure (and eviction I guess) moratoriums also ensured that supply stayed low. And last (granted this is out of the executive office's control), FED rates were kept low for far too long (making mortgages much cheaper than they should be, causing house prices to increase, and also causing the inflation in other sectors).

We don't need to government artificially pumping more money in, this will only make the problem worse.

If you look at the underlying components contributing the most to inflation today, it's housing and insurance. And the insurance portion is driven by the fact that natural disasters are becoming more frequent/severe and the cost to rebuild is so high (due to the high cost of real estate).

We are going to be stuck in this cycle for a while, until either more supply is quickly added (would require something like a Manhattan Project for housing) or we get a real recession with lots of widespread pain that forces the hand of investors to dump supply on the market.

Agreed either some increase in supply (through a government intervention providing incentives to build) or some form of a moderate recession that forces people to sell.

I guess another possibility is (and I do not know how realistic this is) is if Trump wins the next election (god I really hope he wont) and then moves certain federal agencies outside the DMV area. If those jobs move/leave the area, I could see it having a dent in the DMV market as well (increased supply and reduced demand). There are around 374k federal government employees in the DMV area (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU11479009091000001SA) which is a significant number. A reduction in that could have some serious (negative imo) ripple effects for the area.

He'll be gutting/eliminating agencies.

Dude is not getting elected, sorry. If Jan 6th never happened it probably would have been a cakewalk to winning, but it did, and moderates are hard passing on any MAGA candidate. Better start planning for a Biden term.

Nobody knows what is happening in November. Only the extremely foolish and the extremely confident (typically both) are bold enough to make predictions. You're definitely bringing what you want to believe to your prediction rather than something based on reality (neck to neck polling, national polling versus state by state electoral college polling). As it is, inflation is getting more stubborn.

We need to stop with the inflation talk. It's transitory and only started because of Trump anyway if you look at the numbers (remember how he botched COVID?). Biden got us the Inflation Reduction Act and we just need to be patient for those funds to be deployed.

This is ignorant and especially laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our only true hope is if Biden is reelected. And even then it would require an enormous number of stimulus check sent to undo the rapid increase in prices. I have serious doubts that Congress has the fortitude to pass this.

Although I also do hope Biden gets reelected, honestly I don't think stimulus checks and pumping more money into the economy will solve the problem, hell I would argue that caused the problem in the first place.

During the pandemic, not only did the government pumped a lot of money into the economy. First of all the COVID stimulus checks, which rather than targeting those who lost their job, just gave everyone $$. Then they paused student loan payments (for far too long, I would argue the pause was unnecessary for most people). Last the foreclosure (and eviction I guess) moratoriums also ensured that supply stayed low. And last (granted this is out of the executive office's control), FED rates were kept low for far too long (making mortgages much cheaper than they should be, causing house prices to increase, and also causing the inflation in other sectors).

We don't need to government artificially pumping more money in, this will only make the problem worse.

If you look at the underlying components contributing the most to inflation today, it's housing and insurance. And the insurance portion is driven by the fact that natural disasters are becoming more frequent/severe and the cost to rebuild is so high (due to the high cost of real estate).

We are going to be stuck in this cycle for a while, until either more supply is quickly added (would require something like a Manhattan Project for housing) or we get a real recession with lots of widespread pain that forces the hand of investors to dump supply on the market.

Agreed either some increase in supply (through a government intervention providing incentives to build) or some form of a moderate recession that forces people to sell.

I guess another possibility is (and I do not know how realistic this is) is if Trump wins the next election (god I really hope he wont) and then moves certain federal agencies outside the DMV area. If those jobs move/leave the area, I could see it having a dent in the DMV market as well (increased supply and reduced demand). There are around 374k federal government employees in the DMV area (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMU11479009091000001SA) which is a significant number. A reduction in that could have some serious (negative imo) ripple effects for the area.

He'll be gutting/eliminating agencies.

Dude is not getting elected, sorry. If Jan 6th never happened it probably would have been a cakewalk to winning, but it did, and moderates are hard passing on any MAGA candidate. Better start planning for a Biden term.

Nobody knows what is happening in November. Only the extremely foolish and the extremely confident (typically both) are bold enough to make predictions. You're definitely bringing what you want to believe to your prediction rather than something based on reality (neck to neck polling, national polling versus state by state electoral college polling). As it is, inflation is getting more stubborn.

We need to stop with the inflation talk. It's transitory and only started because of Trump anyway if you look at the numbers (remember how he botched COVID?). Biden got us the Inflation Reduction Act and we just need to be patient for those funds to be deployed.

This is ignorant and especially laughable.

What part? You need to try to keep up and ignore MAGA. These are recent articles about the situation.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2024/02/05/the-verdict-on-the-2021-2023-inflation--transitory-on-all-counts/?sh=6977cadace1c

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/08/16/fact-sheet-one-year-in-president-bidens-inflation-reduction-act-is-driving-historic-climate-action-and-investing-in-america-to-create-good-paying-jobs-and-reduce-costs/