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Washington, D.C.: The New Boomtown
WSJ via finance.yahoo.com ^ | Fri May 24, 2013 | Lauren Schuker Blum

Posted on 05/28/2013 10:24:15 AM PDT by posterchild

Bidding wars are breaking out. Foreign buyers are moving in. A new wave of contemporary architecture is taking hold. And a growing class of tech executives is helping to fuel the boom.

All this is happening in Washington, D.C., a town known for its relative affordability compared with cities such as New York and San Francisco, and for architecture about as exciting as its fashion sense. Today, home prices in Washington and its surrounding suburbs are rapidly rising to new levels.

As other American cities have been buffeted by an uneven economy, Washington's property market has been buoyed two forces specific to the capital city: a surge of federal contractors and a rising tide of government spending. The result: what real-estate agents and developers are calling an unprecedented real-estate surge.

"Buyers are clamoring for high-end product, and homes are selling in a day," says Chris Ballard, principal and founder of real-estate firm McWilliams Ballard. "We are getting all-cash offers with no contingencies on lots of properties—stuff we would have never seen a year ago."

(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; US: District of Columbia; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: bankrupt; corruption; dc; federalspending; graft; porkulus; spending; virginial
Federal Government - a growth industry
1 posted on 05/28/2013 10:24:15 AM PDT by posterchild
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To: posterchild

Blame it on the sequester.


2 posted on 05/28/2013 10:27:54 AM PDT by USNBandit (sarcasm engaged at all times)
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To: posterchild
Washington DC and the nearby area have been prospering for a number of years ...
this isn't any breath taking announcement by the WSJ/Yahoo. This is old news.
Meanwhile out here in the real world ...
3 posted on 05/28/2013 10:30:52 AM PDT by BluH2o
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To: posterchild

What is the name of the capital in Hunger Games? I hope they don’t muck up the plot of Catching Fire.


4 posted on 05/28/2013 10:33:27 AM PDT by Truth29
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To: posterchild

“Boomtown”? Then why does so much of it look rundown and diseased?


5 posted on 05/28/2013 10:36:47 AM PDT by Future Snake Eater (CrossFit.com)
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To: posterchild

Obama lied when he said there were no shovel ready jobs after porkuls passed; the shovel ready jobs were building street after street of million dollar homes in VA and MD.


6 posted on 05/28/2013 10:37:42 AM PDT by Pietro
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To: Truth29

It’s just “Capital District”. DC in reverse. And the Hunger Games have been going for years. . .

May the EBT always be in your favor !!


7 posted on 05/28/2013 10:51:14 AM PDT by Salgak (Acme Lasers presents: The Energizer Border. I **DARE** you to cross it. . . .)
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To: BluH2o
Living here let me tell you what's happening ~ lots of hype on housing but we are nowhere near the high of 2007/8. Neither is anyone else in this country.
8 posted on 05/28/2013 10:51:42 AM PDT by muawiyah
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Working on the last 10%!!
Woo hoo!!
Less than $6.7k to Go!

We can do this!!
FReepers ROCK!!

9 posted on 05/28/2013 11:17:47 AM PDT by RedMDer (You are Free Republic. There are no outside influences. Just us, all of us. Please donate today!)
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To: muawiyah

I agree. My home in Annapolis in 2007 was worth 1.2 million. I purchased the home in 2011....a huge steal. And of course Maryland is going up up up so someday it will be the 2007 appraisal. People should be buying the home of their dreams the last three-four years. So many bargains and less expensive homes out there. This is the time to buy. We will NEVER be in this incredibly great position ever again in our lives (at least anyone over 30).


10 posted on 05/28/2013 11:33:16 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Santorum-Bachmann 2016 for the future of the Country!)
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To: muawiyah

Thank you for pointing this out. I am sick of people saying that housing in the DC area is reaching or exceeding its peak, when it clearly isn’t. I pay close attention to prices in NOVA (and have for 10+ years), and it is not even close. Maybe in certain isolated areas it is, but not for the vast majority of NOVA.


11 posted on 05/28/2013 12:00:05 PM PDT by jjsheridan5
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To: muawiyah

Here in No. Virginia, our house is up 10% from our purchase price in 2008. That’s the tax assessment, anyway.

That tax assessment was a typical bait-and-switch by the Dems in control of Fairfax County. When home prices tanked (ours went down 5% after we bought it) they raised the property tax, saying “since values declined, we’d actually be paying less tax.” Right. Now values are way up, and they’re talking about ANOTHER tax increase on top of that first one.


12 posted on 05/28/2013 12:02:02 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("a shadow...draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence.")
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To: posterchild

It’s like the Palace of Versailles.


13 posted on 05/28/2013 12:43:40 PM PDT by popdonnelly (The right to self-defense is older than the Constitution.)
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To: popdonnelly

“it’s good to be(livin near)the king “


14 posted on 05/28/2013 2:31:22 PM PDT by TurboZamboni (Marx smelled bad & lived with his parents most his life.)
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To: posterchild

I was in Manassas right outside DC recently and went yard sale-ing. There were hundreds 750k homes occupied by foreigners who barely spoke English. I think I see how Romney lost Virginia.


15 posted on 05/28/2013 3:01:49 PM PDT by ez (Muslims do not play well with others.)
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To: ez

I was in Washington for a Free Republic Patriots’ Rally back in 2002...my wife and I thought we were in the damn Middle East on the way back to our car via subway. Couldn’t get away from there fast enough.


16 posted on 05/28/2013 3:06:08 PM PDT by who knows what evil? (G-d saved more animals than people on the ark...www.siameserescue.org.)
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To: who knows what evil?

I said “Hello” to an older lady who appeared to be Paki and she said “Shalom.” Isn’t that a Jewish word? Perhaps she thought I was a Jew?
I also bought a soldering iron from a nice Arabic fellow. $2.


17 posted on 05/28/2013 3:15:18 PM PDT by ez (Muslims do not play well with others.)
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To: ez

Manassas is a bit far afield. When I think of ‘right outside DC’ I think of Arlington, Bethesda, maybe Alexandria...


18 posted on 05/28/2013 6:58:50 PM PDT by posterchild
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