Blah...Blah...Blah...

Admit it. No one has a *ucking clue.

With many homeowners having very low interest rates or no mortgage, many homeowners would look to rent their homes at rates higher than their mortgage payments

Ultimately likely heading toward 4th Industrial Revolution and ubi.

This and AI are steps in that direction.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between weather concerns - wildfires/floods/etc. and rates still hover around 7%, where are you all going exactly that's going to be that much less than your current mortgage? I think that's been the biggest driver of low inventory everywhere. I would LOVE to leave this area but it's impossible to find another location that makes sense.

A family of 4, we pay roughly $1800k month for a 4BR/4 BA 3000 sq ft+ SFH located in a desirable neighborhood! I mean if we rented, we are paying more than this. It's unheard of. Even if we lived in a trashy place in a trashy neighborhood probably

I just don't think the math works to sell unless we were beyond desperate.

This is what the original post is referring to. If your cost of housing here is already less than rent and less than other medium to low COL places, then where are you going to go? In your situation 1800 is abysmally low and your next destination might as well be a trailer park, not anything to joke about, but let's face the truth. RE had gone up everywhere that's not a complete dump. Try to move to Richmond and see what 1800 gets you there, it used to be a cheap escape place for those disenchanted with DC, and TBH a lot of feds and contractors probably are living there now. Ditto, Baltimore. Nice suburbs of Baltimore will be so out of your price range.

What are your taxes like? If you’re paying $22K annually for your mortgage and you live in a big house in a desirable neighborhood your taxes are probably at least $16K on top of that. So you’re paying $40K with home insurance, which is $3300/month. Most people would be happy with that, but to keep the lights on, eat, and maintain car and medical insurance you or your spouse need to have at least a GS-15 equivalent job or you need to have money you can burn through.

Are you making an assumption that DC metro area will have no jobs at all and people won't be able to find any work even temporarily. Yes, a lot of people who rely on earned income for basic expenses (even if house is paid off it's still not free to live) and have no assets to live off of or alternative sources of income will be looking for jobs everywhere if they aren't tethered to DC for other reasons. People will find a job elsewhere they will move. It's a no brainer.

The “no jobs” scenario is needlessly hyperbolic. Trump and DOGE are trying to gut federal jobs; deeply cut federal spending with contractors; and sell off the vast majority of federal real estate in DC. How could this not negatively impact the economy, drive underemployment and unemployment way up, and impact residential real estate?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between weather concerns - wildfires/floods/etc. and rates still hover around 7%, where are you all going exactly that's going to be that much less than your current mortgage? I think that's been the biggest driver of low inventory everywhere. I would LOVE to leave this area but it's impossible to find another location that makes sense.

A family of 4, we pay roughly $1800k month for a 4BR/4 BA 3000 sq ft+ SFH located in a desirable neighborhood! I mean if we rented, we are paying more than this. It's unheard of. Even if we lived in a trashy place in a trashy neighborhood probably

I just don't think the math works to sell unless we were beyond desperate.

This is what the original post is referring to. If your cost of housing here is already less than rent and less than other medium to low COL places, then where are you going to go? In your situation 1800 is abysmally low and your next destination might as well be a trailer park, not anything to joke about, but let's face the truth. RE had gone up everywhere that's not a complete dump. Try to move to Richmond and see what 1800 gets you there, it used to be a cheap escape place for those disenchanted with DC, and TBH a lot of feds and contractors probably are living there now. Ditto, Baltimore. Nice suburbs of Baltimore will be so out of your price range.

What are your taxes like? If you’re paying $22K annually for your mortgage and you live in a big house in a desirable neighborhood your taxes are probably at least $16K on top of that. So you’re paying $40K with home insurance, which is $3300/month. Most people would be happy with that, but to keep the lights on, eat, and maintain car and medical insurance you or your spouse need to have at least a GS-15 equivalent job or you need to have money you can burn through.

Are you making an assumption that DC metro area will have no jobs at all and people won't be able to find any work even temporarily. Yes, a lot of people who rely on earned income for basic expenses (even if house is paid off it's still not free to live) and have no assets to live off of or alternative sources of income will be looking for jobs everywhere if they aren't tethered to DC for other reasons. People will find a job elsewhere they will move. It's a no brainer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between weather concerns - wildfires/floods/etc. and rates still hover around 7%, where are you all going exactly that's going to be that much less than your current mortgage? I think that's been the biggest driver of low inventory everywhere. I would LOVE to leave this area but it's impossible to find another location that makes sense.

A family of 4, we pay roughly $1800k month for a 4BR/4 BA 3000 sq ft+ SFH located in a desirable neighborhood! I mean if we rented, we are paying more than this. It's unheard of. Even if we lived in a trashy place in a trashy neighborhood probably

I just don't think the math works to sell unless we were beyond desperate.

This is what the original post is referring to. If your cost of housing here is already less than rent and less than other medium to low COL places, then where are you going to go? In your situation 1800 is abysmally low and your next destination might as well be a trailer park, not anything to joke about, but let's face the truth. RE had gone up everywhere that's not a complete dump. Try to move to Richmond and see what 1800 gets you there, it used to be a cheap escape place for those disenchanted with DC, and TBH a lot of feds and contractors probably are living there now. Ditto, Baltimore. Nice suburbs of Baltimore will be so out of your price range.

What are your taxes like? If you’re paying $22K annually for your mortgage and you live in a big house in a desirable neighborhood your taxes are probably at least $16K on top of that. So you’re paying $40K with home insurance, which is $3300/month. Most people would be happy with that, but to keep the lights on, eat, and maintain car and medical insurance you or your spouse need to have at least a GS-15 equivalent job or you need to have money you can burn through.

If you are low income and don't own any other assets outside of your home you will qualify for a deeply discounted RE tax in VA, I am sure it's the same in DC/MD. Also you would be eligible for unemployment after your severance runs out which should get you through a year even without significant savings. If you are unable to support yourself in any way at all and get any job whether outside of your industry or remote then you likely won't survive anywhere and should figure out how to get government assistance. The point is that NOWHERE is cheaper that's not a dump in a blighted urban area or some dilapidated rural home you can buy cash and hope they have tax assistance and you can get Medicaid and SNAP. With ZERO income coming you eventually end up on the streets if you can't procure free housing and can't get welfare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between weather concerns - wildfires/floods/etc. and rates still hover around 7%, where are you all going exactly that's going to be that much less than your current mortgage? I think that's been the biggest driver of low inventory everywhere. I would LOVE to leave this area but it's impossible to find another location that makes sense.

A family of 4, we pay roughly $1800k month for a 4BR/4 BA 3000 sq ft+ SFH located in a desirable neighborhood! I mean if we rented, we are paying more than this. It's unheard of. Even if we lived in a trashy place in a trashy neighborhood probably

I just don't think the math works to sell unless we were beyond desperate.

This is what the original post is referring to. If your cost of housing here is already less than rent and less than other medium to low COL places, then where are you going to go? In your situation 1800 is abysmally low and your next destination might as well be a trailer park, not anything to joke about, but let's face the truth. RE had gone up everywhere that's not a complete dump. Try to move to Richmond and see what 1800 gets you there, it used to be a cheap escape place for those disenchanted with DC, and TBH a lot of feds and contractors probably are living there now. Ditto, Baltimore. Nice suburbs of Baltimore will be so out of your price range.

What are your taxes like? If you’re paying $22K annually for your mortgage and you live in a big house in a desirable neighborhood your taxes are probably at least $16K on top of that. So you’re paying $40K with home insurance, which is $3300/month. Most people would be happy with that, but to keep the lights on, eat, and maintain car and medical insurance you or your spouse need to have at least a GS-15 equivalent job or you need to have money you can burn through.

I am the OP of the house that we only have like $1800 mortgage monthly on. Listen, I put out swear words annually for the property taxes we shell out But you know, it's the price of living in a really nice neighborhood DH is forever telling me LOL So yes, the taxes suck. The insurance is not too bad via USAA. Yes, daily living expenses like utilities and such does suck and yes, we have to really make what people consider top 5% of whatever HHI these days to do everything we want esp with 2 teens. HOWEVER, this is something we'd have to do no matter where we are in the US right? It comes down to OPs about panic selling and I will tell you there is no way we would sell. If our house got infested with termites, we'd tear it down and rebuild or something. The point is, we really can't ever move because we have so much equity in our place and moving anywhere only costs us more money than keeping our current home. So the answer is I don't think there will be much panic selling as I'm guessing most people are where we are if they have kids. Once our kids are out of the house, we want to get out of this country because it's simply way too expensive for what you get, but that's another post entirely...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between weather concerns - wildfires/floods/etc. and rates still hover around 7%, where are you all going exactly that's going to be that much less than your current mortgage? I think that's been the biggest driver of low inventory everywhere. I would LOVE to leave this area but it's impossible to find another location that makes sense.

A family of 4, we pay roughly $1800k month for a 4BR/4 BA 3000 sq ft+ SFH located in a desirable neighborhood! I mean if we rented, we are paying more than this. It's unheard of. Even if we lived in a trashy place in a trashy neighborhood probably

I just don't think the math works to sell unless we were beyond desperate.

This is what the original post is referring to. If your cost of housing here is already less than rent and less than other medium to low COL places, then where are you going to go? In your situation 1800 is abysmally low and your next destination might as well be a trailer park, not anything to joke about, but let's face the truth. RE had gone up everywhere that's not a complete dump. Try to move to Richmond and see what 1800 gets you there, it used to be a cheap escape place for those disenchanted with DC, and TBH a lot of feds and contractors probably are living there now. Ditto, Baltimore. Nice suburbs of Baltimore will be so out of your price range.

What are your taxes like? If you’re paying $22K annually for your mortgage and you live in a big house in a desirable neighborhood your taxes are probably at least $16K on top of that. So you’re paying $40K with home insurance, which is $3300/month. Most people would be happy with that, but to keep the lights on, eat, and maintain car and medical insurance you or your spouse need to have at least a GS-15 equivalent job or you need to have money you can burn through.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The largest employer in DC is restructuring to cut the workforce by half. The largest employer is also the largest leaseholder and also announced giving up millions of square feet of commercial space.
Idk if people just have their heads in the sand because they’re used to stability in this sector or if this is some form of hyper normalization to keep things steady - but I can’t fathom how wholesale RIFs and closures doesn’t hurt the DC market.
There is no other industry in this market to take the place of gov. Even GSK / pharma /life sci - which MoCo has hung their hats on - has waned and announced departures.

The issue is that for years people have said DC real estate can never drop and that it’s not like other locations.

Except black swan events do occur. The fires in Pacific Palisades, 9/11 and now, a huge reduction in the federal workforce. No place is immune and diversification is important. Whenever someone tells you that something can never be affected you should question it.

Who said prices would never drop and that DC is insulated? Prices did slump in DC metro during every recession. In DC proper markets are very local and dependent on what's around. Some areas just stagnated, while others went up 2x in price. And I think comparing this situation to natural disasters that wipe out entire towns is weird and it's not something anyone can predict or be shielded from regardless where they live.

Actually, I think it’s the opposite. Most of these natural disasters are predictable. State Farm dropped a lot of customers in the Palisades last year because that area is really high risk. (An aside: If CA let State Farm charge as much as they needed to charge to remain profitable they wouldn’t have dropped people, but they would have charged a lot more). Trump decimating commercial real estate and the fed workforce in the DMV is the real black swan event. It’s unprecedented historically, probably because it’s a really bad idea. The DMV was one of the most resilient markets during the Great Recession because of the federal government. What some of us are saying is that if this goes the way Trump and Musk are telegraphing the reorg won’t happen. The jobs are gone and the jobs of the contractors who supported many of the fed initiatives are also gone. Then the bakeries, the hairdressers, the therapists, the preschools, the dance studios, the gyms that all depend in one way or another on the fed/contractor spend are impacted. I hope in four years the administration changes and all the jobs come back (if they are lost), but most people can’t wait four years to get a new job and the job market will likely be saturated if the worst case scenario occurs. Is it reasonable to expect in four years that a democratic administration will go on a fed hiring spree? To some degree, yes. Also, what is the likely impact of the commercial real estate market semi-collapsing on the residential market? Blight? What is the impact on the loss of income tax revenue and corporate tax revenue on state budgets? Do the states raise taxes? How would that interact with the residential and commercial real estate markets?

Anonymous wrote:PP hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of people here "stuck" in INSANELY low mortgages and it would take a lot to get them to leave when they can cover their mortgage via driving Uber or UberEats, working retail, tutoring kids, etc.

It might have been this thread or another that someone said we'll see the "great hunkering down" for the next 15-25 years - my guess is high prices and low supply are here to stay (at least close in) until all the boomers die and Millennials retire and supply matches population better. Many boomers are planning to "age in place" too re recent studies/data so that further constricts supply.

I think Millennials will be stuck holding the bag though when they go to retire and sell in 2050-2060 and there's not enough buyers due to declining birth rates, US limiting immigration, etc.

Many millenials will inherit their boomer parents' home. That is our plan and that of most of our circle.

PP hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of people here "stuck" in INSANELY low mortgages and it would take a lot to get them to leave when they can cover their mortgage via driving Uber or UberEats, working retail, tutoring kids, etc.

It might have been this thread or another that someone said we'll see the "great hunkering down" for the next 15-25 years - my guess is high prices and low supply are here to stay (at least close in) until all the boomers die and Millennials retire and supply matches population better. Many boomers are planning to "age in place" too re recent studies/data so that further constricts supply.

I think Millennials will be stuck holding the bag though when they go to retire and sell in 2050-2060 and there's not enough buyers due to declining birth rates, US limiting immigration, etc.

Anonymous wrote:Between weather concerns - wildfires/floods/etc. and rates still hover around 7%, where are you all going exactly that's going to be that much less than your current mortgage? I think that's been the biggest driver of low inventory everywhere. I would LOVE to leave this area but it's impossible to find another location that makes sense.

A family of 4, we pay roughly $1800k month for a 4BR/4 BA 3000 sq ft+ SFH located in a desirable neighborhood! I mean if we rented, we are paying more than this. It's unheard of. Even if we lived in a trashy place in a trashy neighborhood probably

I just don't think the math works to sell unless we were beyond desperate.

This is what the original post is referring to. If your cost of housing here is already less than rent and less than other medium to low COL places, then where are you going to go? In your situation 1800 is abysmally low and your next destination might as well be a trailer park, not anything to joke about, but let's face the truth. RE had gone up everywhere that's not a complete dump. Try to move to Richmond and see what 1800 gets you there, it used to be a cheap escape place for those disenchanted with DC, and TBH a lot of feds and contractors probably are living there now. Ditto, Baltimore. Nice suburbs of Baltimore will be so out of your price range.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The largest employer in DC is restructuring to cut the workforce by half. The largest employer is also the largest leaseholder and also announced giving up millions of square feet of commercial space.
Idk if people just have their heads in the sand because they’re used to stability in this sector or if this is some form of hyper normalization to keep things steady - but I can’t fathom how wholesale RIFs and closures doesn’t hurt the DC market.
There is no other industry in this market to take the place of gov. Even GSK / pharma /life sci - which MoCo has hung their hats on - has waned and announced departures.

The issue is that for years people have said DC real estate can never drop and that it’s not like other locations.

Except black swan events do occur. The fires in Pacific Palisades, 9/11 and now, a huge reduction in the federal workforce. No place is immune and diversification is important. Whenever someone tells you that something can never be affected you should question it.

DOGE has a target to cut 75% of federal workers, not half. Already 10,000 are on admin leave or fired. And those workers are a small subset of the federal contractors, businesses and vendors who depend on government spending. Anyone saying this isn't a disaster for the DMV area isn't paying attention.

You are assuming all of them are here. Even government contracting is spread out and many workers already relocated during Covid and aren't coming back. So, yes, my estimate that when it comes to the impact to DC area specifically it will be only 50%, because the rest of the 25% already took themselves out of DC metro or hadn't been here in the first place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And don’t forget, AI is also going to reduce the need for actual people at desks. I’m very worried, sice I have most of my funds tied up in DC real estate.

It has already happened at my job. I work for a small company that does data pre-processing and we have developed (or purchased..I have no idea) some tools that do some of the tasks. As a result, my team went from 5 people to 3. Just 2 years ago, we were thinking about hiring more people. Instead we are down 2 people.

I cannot speak for fields that I do not work in, but some of us are at risk. My company has been very very quiet about it.

How is this unique to DC area? It's happening all over and in every industry. It's the same thing that happened to IT/tech sector with outsourcing and H1B labor importing for decades now. Except this time white collar jobs are reduced due to automation. Another thing I noticed happen on these premises is making each person take on more responsibilities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of my friends think there will be mass selling off homes in DC metro with huge percent of population becoming unemployed and not enough private industry jobs. For now I see homes still being built, not skipping the beat and there are no bargains, but I am worried about the future of this area despite being in private industry.

We are kind of trapped staying here and cannot sell. Family reasons and also having a cheap rate (like many others) and mortgage we can afford. Moreover, if selling off does happen where would you go? It's expensive everywhere, I can't find anything cheaper that's not a shi*hole. And if prices do tank a lot then this will become a low COL area and you can no longer cash out enough to buy anything in another metro area with a decent job market. I wonder how many people are going to be trapped in the same situation afraid to move for a sticker shock

Opposite. Too much hysteria assuming huge unemployment. If anything, there would be more demand as offices fill more will want to live closer in.

I wish I had access tho whatever it is you’re smoking.

Same! 😆

+1. I assume contributions like the one above are due to someone either not reading the news or refusing to engage with reality, kind of like when Trump was reelected and people didn’t think there would be discernible reverberations in the government.

GSA is terminating leases left and right. I assume commercial RE is at a standstill. Residential is a different market, but it’s going to be impacted. Arlington, Alexandria, Bethesda, Silver Spring, etc.

I am wondering what will happen to all these commercial buildings.. I think this may determine the future economy of DC (at least the city proper) and its RE market. I seriously doubt that they will just sit empty forever and fall into ruin.

They will knock them down and build data centers.

It's not very efficient use of that space, would be a big fail for he "efficiency" department Data centers usually go into rural areas and not into an expensive urban grid. Plus they are incredibly ugly and MAGA won't like the optics of the entire blocks of their capital so close to the WH and National Mall to look like a dystopian warehousing depot. They'd at least try to keep up appearances, and there are indications that they care