Reply to Will DC housing prices rise if/when Fed cuts rates in September?

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "Will DC housing prices rise if/when Fed cuts rates in September?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No matter who is elected, people still need homes and the supply of houses is still very low.  High demand and low supply, plus interest rate cuts means higher prices.

[/quote]

Possibly true nationwide, but locally, there will be a dramatic housing price crash if Trump is elected.[/quote]

I seriously doubt that. [/quote]

Okay. This isn’t controversial or particularly political. But it is factual that he has pledged that if elected he will, from day 1, start cutting and laying off anyone he views as remotely political and he will be reducing head count massively across all agencies and be attempting to actually cut several agencies entirely. He also had said he will move large portions of some agencies and entire other agencies outside DC.

From a real estate investor perspective I don’t think it’s realistic that he will be able to cut entire agencies or move them entirely - too many lawsuits and union obstacles, but starting Jan 20 there will be a very significant (think 10% reduction) in federal employees in the dc area.

Maybe this is a good idea economically for the country but it’s going to knock a leg out from the dc housing market.

If he’s elected it might be a good idea to invest elsewhere, and with his interest in real estate he wants a good market, but it’s going to be very bad for the dmv. I’m always shocked that more real estate guys aren’t paying attention to this but it’s one of the clearer policy things he’s talked about.

[/quote]

The thing is that while the federal government remains the biggest employer in the region most of the growth in population in this area is linked to other sectors (tech and defense) that may work for the federal government but are not federal employees. There are also a lot of agencies that now contract out huge parts of their agency to private firms. Some of these jobs could be shipped out of the area as well but most would not -- they are too high level and the companies involved are too heavily invested in DC via physical investments. Also as long as high level decision makers remain in DC there will be limited impact on the massive shadow government and lobbying activity in this area.

Also the goverment has already shipped off a lot of low level and midlevel federal jobs that used to be in DC. That didn't even start under Trump. There have been other efforts to save money by shifting certain activities to places with lower cost of living and cheaper labor and real estate.

Unless Trump can successfully relocate Congress and the White House as well as the DOD the impact will be fairly minimal. The overall trend is not only for more growth in this region in the private sector but especially more higher paying jobs in these sectors. That is what has really driven up housing costs in DC in the last 20 years. It's not all the midlevel feds it's people in consulting and defense contracting and tech making large salaries. That's why a row house on Capitol Hill that cost 150k not that long ago now goes for a million. That's why upper NW and close in Bethesda are now pretty much unaffordable without 200-300k in income. That's why huge swaths of NoVa that used to be fairly affordable (lots of SFHs for less than 500k on big lots) are basically just million dollar tear downs or huge rebuilds going for 1.5m and up.

Republican administrations tend to contribute to this trend because of the push for privatization by the way. A lot of the current consulting and contracting infrastructure was built up during W's administration. A lot of it was linked to the huge contracts they handed out to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and also just heavy investment in defense spending and R&D. But it extended to many other agencies.

The housing market in DC is not going to experience a noticeable cooling if Trump manages to send a few thousand EPA workers to Alabama. Some of those workers might be relieved at the idea that they can keep their job but move to a place where they can actually afford a 3 bedroom house.

Trump sucks but he'd have to crater the economy writ large to tank DC's housing market and he might even bolster it via privatization efforts.[/quote]

Well, Trump already crashed the economy once (March 2020), so if you think he won’t let it crash again, I got a bridge to sell ya…[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics