DC Area Housing Bubble?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah and I'm waiting for this magical bubble to burst. LOL All of you seem so certain. Get real.

Hence the point of my post. It’s people like you that seem so certain that there isn’t a bubble or the market isn’t overheated.

So smug and all knowing.

Could be a bubble or maybe not. I'm not moving from my small house a mile from my office unless I win the lottery or double my salary. Same sentiment from at least twenty fri new.

This is us (Millennials who just bought our first house). We are 1.5 miles from our offices in downtown DC. We ain't going anywhere and our neighborhood is in the midst of a flurry of housing development. We do not want a commute. They aren't building any more land in our SFH neighborhood and the zoning doesn't allow big apartment buildings in our immediate blocks.

Short of a nuclear weapon detonating in DC, I don't see how there is a massive downturn (separate from a larger nationwide downturn). The GOP has zero desire to military spending - this is what really drives the DC economy. They will cut entitlements first, which has bigger reverberations throughout the rest of the country than here.

Here is more data on the DC housing market. The data show we have re-inflated, but much more gradually than in the 2006-2008 period. Prices today are more in line with the previous 30 years' trend.
https://districtmeasured.com/2017/05/30/dcs-median-home-price-3-times-more-than-median-family-income-in-1991-is-now-5-times-more/

Ah....”they arent building any more land in my neighborhood”..... i figure some idiot was going to bring this up.

What this chart didn't tell you is that in early 1990s, the mortgage rates were around 10% while in year 2016, they were less than 4%. So the housing affordability is very different even with the same income....

You seem to think interest rates have something to do with home prices. They don’t.

Let's put it in this way:
1. Assume you could pay the same $1,000 for monthly mortgage in 1990 and 2016, when the interest rates were 10% and 3.5% respectively. For a 30 year loan, the house prices you could support with that same monthly payment are 113k and 222k for years 1990 and 2016 (assuming 100% financing for illustration purpose). This means that adjusted for interest rates, houses were twice as affordable in 2016 as in 1990, even given the same income.
2. Now in that chart, we should divide that 2016 house price by 2 when comparing to the 1990 price, which will make the house price growth rate even lower than the income growth rate. And Remember we haven't even taken into consideration of population growth during the past 30 years.
Conclusion: DC housing market is UNDERPRICED now relative to year 1990.