Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks Obama.

You mean Bush?

It started with Reagan doubled defense spending back in the 80s. That's when all that crazy development happened around Tysons and Herndon.

Bush+Chenney did take it to an all new level with the creation of new departments and the neverending war efforts.

Not a single person on my block or any of my kids parents friends work for the Govt.

The estate sales and elderly in area were more likely to work for Govt.

Quite frankly I can't afford to work for Govt. Homes now cost 1.1-1.4 for a good home with good schools. College even for state schools if kid live on campus runs 35k a year. I need to save for retirement as no more pensions. A Dad with a SAH wife, 3-5 kids in the 1950s -1970s could pull this off working for Federal Govt.

In 2019 a man would need a 300 to 400k salary to pull it off.

More likely two incomes are needed of 150k to 200k each.

Or one spouse Govt and other higher paid job

Or have rich parents or grandparents or trust fund or go into eyeballs in debt keeping up.

Also give pension is not worth as much as who can retire early. 55 year old men are no longer retired with grown kids. They often have a kid in HS and two in college and a mortgage. They need 250k minimum salary just not to go under till retirement at 65.

So we go prices up so goes up salaries and longer we work. Pensions and medical and WFH are perks of Govt but you can't have 250k of expenses on 100k salary

Anonymous wrote:


As someone who has lived in several cities throughout the US, I found this quote highly suspect. DC to me has relatively low incomes- Government & non profit jobs don't pay well. After living in NYC, SF, Dallas & Houston, the general population made WAY more money. There is also a big difference between the district and Northern VA. NOVA is separate from DC. I only saw ONE publication that supports this claim- every other one was different.

It's census data that looks at median household incomes by metro area (including NOVA). My guess is that your perception of the "general population" is skewed by the people you know. There may not be the same number of really high earning people in DC as in NYC, etc., but that's a small sliver of the population in every metro area. Government jobs *do* pay well compared to the average job in many metro areas, which are things like retail, warehousing, etc.

Here's some data on median household incomes by metro. DC is almost $100k, which is second to SF: https://www.statista.com/statistics/234251/median-household-income-by-largest-metro-area-us/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


This is exactly it. The population in DC is growing and they aren't making anymore land, and most of the close in housing has already been built up. In addition, DC has one of the highest levels of education anywhere in the country, which draws lots of employers who require a highly educated workforce, which draws more people to the area.

Growing population and a wealthy one too. Average household income in DC is second-highest in the US after the Bay Area. That’s a lot of money to chase houses.

As someone who has lived in several cities throughout the US, I found this quote highly suspect. DC to me has relatively low incomes- Government & non profit jobs don't pay well. After living in NYC, SF, Dallas & Houston, the general population made WAY more money. There is also a big difference between the district and Northern VA. NOVA is separate from DC. I only saw ONE publication that supports this claim- every other one was different.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Target and Wal-Mart both have more employees than Amazon and have a larger physical presence than Amazon and they are headquartered in the south and in the Midwest.

Both of those have storefronts? And Walmart especially has been implicated in the complete destruction of small town groceries and businesses which can't compete against their pricing.

Leaving entire communities without local retail and necessitating driving dozens of miles to the closest exit with one. In effect, driving their own towns and communities to destruction simply by removing tax revenue from the base.

https://business.financialpost.com/news/retail-marketing/small-towns-devastated-after-wal-mart-stores-inc-decimates-mom-and-pop-shops-then-packs-up-and-leaves-they-ruined-our-lives

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happened-when-walmart-left

I am not a fan of either but they are both quite large and they both have their headquarters in supposed DEAD FLY OVER parts of the country.

Hmmm...of companies on the Fortune 500 list, here are some in the top 100 - United Health, Best Buy, CHS, 3M, and Target are in Minnesota, Berkshire Hathaway (#3) is in Nebraska, General Motors (10) and Ford, DuPont, and Dow Chemical are in Michigan, Exxon Mobil (#2), Valero, Tesoro, Conoco Phillips, Energy Transfer Equity, Phillips 66, American Airlines HQ, Sysco, and AT&T are in Texas, Cardinal Health (20), Proctor and Gamble (34), Marathon Petroleum, Nationwide, and Kroger are in Ohio, Express Scripts (22) is in Missouri, Bank of America, Honeywell, and Lowe's are in North Carolina, UPS, Coca-Cola, and Home Depot are in Georgia, Anthem is in Indiana, State Farm and Deere are in small town Illinois, Johnson Controls is in Wisconsin, HCA Healthcare and FedEx in Tennessee, Avnet in Arizona, Tyson Foods in Arkansas, World Fuel Services and Publix in Florida, Humana is in Kentucky...

I, too, thought these parts of the country were DEAD!!! Amazing revelation.

Seriously? This comment in today's day in age? Proof that DC has some of the most provincial minded people EVER...yuck. Start reading worldly publications!

Anonymous wrote:


This is exactly it. The population in DC is growing and they aren't making anymore land, and most of the close in housing has already been built up. In addition, DC has one of the highest levels of education anywhere in the country, which draws lots of employers who require a highly educated workforce, which draws more people to the area.

Growing population and a wealthy one too. Average household income in DC is second-highest in the US after the Bay Area. That’s a lot of money to chase houses.

Anonymous wrote:This does not directly affect me. I am just asking a simple question.

What is so special about the post 2000s DC area that has caused our cost of living to skyrocket beyond belief?

Me personally, I think the pre 90s DC area COL should have been more expensive because this area was a hell of a lot more fun then as opposed to right now. Things should be cheaper now.

Because AAs chose to burn down the city in the 60s so no one with a brain wanted to live here for a few decades?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huge shift in people living in suburbs to people living in cities or more urban areas. This happened across the country.

This. DC has benefited big time from being on the Acela corridor and having halfway decent transit.

Except that suburbs have grown faster than any urban growth in any American city. The region has grown. Look at the population of the US:

US population in 2000: 287 million

US population in 2018: 327.2 million

That's another 50 million people. And there's your answer for why DC is so expensive. At least one of them. The DC region has grown faster than the supply of housing can keep up.

A very good argument for stopping illegal immigration!

Anonymous wrote:Thanks Obama.

More like - “Thanks, Barry.”

Within Washington DC, Marion Barry and his corrupt, inept government acted like a drag on DC real estate prices for 15 years, say compared with Boston. Once Barry left the mayor’s office, and especially once Tony Williams (best DC mayor ever) came in, prices began to increase sharply.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Huge shift in people living in suburbs to people living in cities or more urban areas. This happened across the country.

This. DC has benefited big time from being on the Acela corridor and having halfway decent transit.

Except that suburbs have grown faster than any urban growth in any American city. The region has grown. Look at the population of the US:

US population in 2000: 287 million

US population in 2018: 327.2 million

That's another 50 million people. And there's your answer for why DC is so expensive. At least one of them. The DC region has grown faster than the supply of housing can keep up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One way to make housing more affordable is to increase density. Change zoning laws so that we have more condos/townhouses/duplexes, etc. instead of SFHs. Of course this means we will need to address infrastructure too (roads, schools, etc). If I was a savvy real estate entrepreneur, I would look into buying SFH property and replace it with multi-family units. (vs. the mcmansions that developers are building instead). It might be easier in neighborhoods that don't have an active NIMBY mentality.

100% this. It's such a shame that zoning restrictions mean that all the teardown activity in close-in suburbs goes into building huge houses instead of 2-unit or 4-unit dwellings. This would be such an easy way to increase density and help solve the affordability problem.

A number of recent academic studies have questioned whether this is actually true. They both found that upzoning does more to increase the amount of luxury residences than anything else.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/05/housing-supply-home-prices-economic-inequality-cities/588997/

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/01/zoning-reform-house-costs-urban-development-gentrification/581677/

That first study is, frankly, kind of crap. You can't say anything credibly just by looking at correlations across cities without taking into account other economic differences (e.g. industry and demographic composition) Also, I think it's well-acknowledged that many or most cities in the U.S. are still able to price new construction housing at close to marginal cost of construction. It's a handful of high-cost cities that have this problem. Including those low-cost cities without appropriate controls tells us nothing.

The second study appears to be well done and interesting. What the paper tells us is that land prices respond immediately to upzoning, but construction does not. It's possible that construction just takes longer. Chicago is not an especially high cost city, so it's also possible that current prices just aren't high enough to justify the construction yet, or that uncertainty is enough that it's better to what and see what becomes of the neighborhood before beginning a project. In both cases, we'd still expect the expected value of future construction to be priced into the land, which is what we see. But that doesn't automatically mean that the demand curve slopes upward. Indeed, even the author is cautious about drawing strong conclusions from it, saying that he believes that upzoning is probably still beneficial at metro scale.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One way to make housing more affordable is to increase density. Change zoning laws so that we have more condos/townhouses/duplexes, etc. instead of SFHs. Of course this means we will need to address infrastructure too (roads, schools, etc). If I was a savvy real estate entrepreneur, I would look into buying SFH property and replace it with multi-family units. (vs. the mcmansions that developers are building instead). It might be easier in neighborhoods that don't have an active NIMBY mentality.

100% this. It's such a shame that zoning restrictions mean that all the teardown activity in close-in suburbs goes into building huge houses instead of 2-unit or 4-unit dwellings. This would be such an easy way to increase density and help solve the affordability problem.

A number of recent academic studies have questioned whether this is actually true. They both found that upzoning does more to increase the amount of luxury residences than anything else.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/05/housing-supply-home-prices-economic-inequality-cities/588997/

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/01/zoning-reform-house-costs-urban-development-gentrification/581677/

PP. I think you're right. Perhaps we could encourage our local governments to do more to promote middle-income housing options? It's so lopsided right now. Close-in housing options are very high end and programs for very low end but nothing in between.

In 1998 I was paying 600 rent monthly for a turret apartment in Dupont Circle. By 2003 my building had been bought and sold and new owners wanted 2500 a month (in spite of "rent control.")

Enormous real estate boom of the late 90s made housing out of the reach of even middle class renters/families.

Anonymous wrote:This does not directly affect me. I am just asking a simple question.

What is so special about the post 2000s DC area that has caused our cost of living to skyrocket beyond belief?

Me personally, I think the pre 90s DC area COL should have been more expensive because this area was a hell of a lot more fun then as opposed to right now. Things should be cheaper now.

The government has been spending like drunken sailors since 2001. This is infusing a lot of money into the economy and has created a lot of inflation and have driven millions of people to the area.

This will be our children's albatross.