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Actually, most of the job growth right now is outside the beltway. People moving here are usually headed to jobs in the Dulles Tech Corridor, which is a good 30 miles outside the beltway. But you are right about traffic being an influence--people wanting a short commute to their high paying jobs in the tech corridor are a big reason home prices are high in the western burbs.
I was under the impression there was job growth all over the DC area, and not just outside the Beltway. Many coming to C-D seeking advice are accepting jobs in DC, Tysons and around the Pentagon/Ft. Belvoir/Mark Center. Certainly traffic heading into DC itself has gotten progressively worse over the past 5-10 years, though some of this is due to road closures downtown after 9/11.
In any event, I don't think the Dulles Tech Corredor is 30 miles outside the Beltway. 30 miles outside the Beltway will put you in Leesburg or further out in Loudoun, well beyond what I think most people associate with the Dulles Tech Corredor (areas off the Dulles Toll Road and Route 28 in Western Fairfax and Eastern Loudoun).
]In any event, I don't think the Dulles Tech Corredor is 30 miles outside the Beltway. 30 miles outside the Beltway will put you in Leesburg or further out in Loudoun, well beyond what I think most people associate with the Dulles Tech Corredor (areas off the Dulles Toll Road and Route 28 in Western Fairfax and Eastern Loudoun).
Yeah, it's not. It's about 13 miles on the toll road from the Beltway to Dulles Airport.
OK, let me deflate some of these erroneous claims first:
2. Claim: Housing prices are high because we have so many two-earner families.
If that were the cause, then why did housing prices here go up suddenly only in 2003? And why are prices in other cities where there are many two-earner households not go up as much?
Fact: The DC area is like every other large American city, in that the majority of households have two incomes since at least the 1980s. It's not much different here in that regard from Dallas, Cincinnati, Chicago, or Seattle.
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Carlingtonian, I have to disagree with part of what you said.
First, no one said that any one factor accounted for high home prices here, unless you want to collapse everything into supply/demand and greater ability to pay. But you are interpreting some comments as though people were making that claim. A relative high proportion of two career couples with high levels of education was simply one more factor along with those that people already mentioned that accounts for why people are able to pay higher home prices.
Second, the DC area is NOT like every other city with respect to household incomes. All dual income couples are not alike. A police officer and a part-time teaching assistant do not make the same level of money that two full-time lawyers do, or a business professor and a GS-15, or a beltway bandit and Lockheed Martin middle manager, and there are far more households in the latter category in this area of the country than in most other metropolitan areas. Check out the data - education levels here on average are much higher than in Dallas, for example.
Fairfax, Loudoun, and Arlington counties have some of the highest median household incomes in the nation. Unless we have more households with 3 or more earners than elsewhere, then either the primary income earner is making a relatively high salary, or two partners are making at least somewhat more than their counterparts elsewhere, or some combination of this. This site is a little out of date (PW has gone down and Loudoun up since then), but it's still helpful:
The counties of the four cities you gave as examples aren't even in the top 25.
Notice also the high ed. levels shown at that site.
Third, no one said that high income couples accounted for the temporary housing bubble. They are one factor that gives people in this area greater ability to pay for housing here than in other parts of the country. The housing bubble, as you know, was caused by loose lending, unregulated (fraudulent) packaging and sales of loans touted as being better than they were, etc., etc., AND prices have dropped significantly in many parts of the metro area since the peak of the bubble. If you go to the NOVA housing bubble fallout site, you will see some interesting statistics about changing demographics of certain parts of Arlington, DC, etc., which has helped keep prices from dropping more from peak than they have. Housing was relatively expensive here before the bubble and it is relatively expensive now, more so in some areas than in others, and highly educated workers have been flocking here since the recession began.
You have to look at a combination of factors that people have identified on this thread, including the availability/stability of jobs as well as pay rates; influx of defense contracting spending; large number of corporate headquarters, medical centers, and universities; difficulty in commuting (maybe in part because of restrictions on building height in the district and inadequacy of transportation systems to keep pace with growth, etc.).
Also, it's a side point, but housing costs in Cincinnati, Dallas, Chicago, and Seattle are not roughly equivalent to each other. For example, perModerator cut: link removed, linking to competitor sites is against the tos
The median home cost in Chicago is $220,470. Home appreciation the last year has been -11.35 percent.
The median home cost in Cincinnati is $115,530. Home appreciation the last year has been -2.47 percent.
The median home cost in Dallas is $158,600. Home appreciation the last year has been -5.22 percent.
The median home cost in Seattle is $361,940. Home appreciation the last year has been -8.83 percent.
In any event, I don't think the Dulles Tech Corredor is 30 miles outside the Beltway. 30 miles outside the Beltway will put you in Leesburg or further out in Loudoun, well beyond what I think most people associate with the Dulles Tech Corredor (areas off the Dulles Toll Road and Route 28 in Western Fairfax and Eastern Loudoun).
You're right about the distance, I was thinking how far it was from DC. Sorry 'bout that. I don't count Tysons as being inside the beltway, although the easternmost part of it is straddling the beltway. I guess it all comes down to how you see it, though. To me, since the majority of it is outside the beltway, it's out in the burbs.
Regarding the job growth, sure there's job openings in allparts of Nova but have you noticed how many threads start of by saying "Hi, I've got a job in Reston/Ashburn/Herndon/Leesburg. Where do you think I should live."? I think there are a LOT more of those than people saying they're moving here for a job inside the beltway. Really, a lot more. Of course, I've never actually stopped to count--but don't you get the same impression? It just seems like everyone keeps talking about moving here for a job in the Tech Corridor.
Regarding the job growth, sure there's job openings in allparts of Nova but have you noticed how many threads start of by saying "Hi, I've got a job in Reston/Ashburn/Herndon/Leesburg. Where do you think I should live."? I think there are a LOT more of those than people saying they're moving here for a job inside the beltway. Really, a lot more. Of course, I've never actually stopped to count--but don't you get the same impression? It just seems like everyone keeps talking about moving here for a job in the Tech Corridor.
Actually, I don't. I tend to notice the considerable number of threads that say "I've accepted a job in Reston/Tysons/Old Town/DC," because I'm more likely to offer advice in response to such a post than one from someone who's taken a job in Ashburn or Leesburg, which I don't know particularly well.
If someone takes a job in Ashburn, I just think to myself "they should probably live in Ashburn" and then assume someone else will make that point.
LOL I guess we all notice different things. Getting back to the question of why homes are pricey outside the beltway, while it's fun to debate where job offers are most prevalent, it doesn't change the answer to the question. The point is, a lot of people are moving here for jobs and they want to live near their jobs. A huge number of new jobs are in Reston, Herndon, Ashburn, Leesburg and Tysons and that's one big reason homes nearby are expensive. There are many job openings inside the beltway, too, which is one reason many people are also buying homes there.
One other piece of data some might find interesting:
"The 2006 economic survey also found that households in the top two income quintiles, those with an annual household income exceeding $60,000, had a median of two income earners while those in the lower quintiles (2nd and middle quintile) had median of only one income earner per household."
"Households in the lowest quintile had incomes less than $19,178 and the majority had no income earner."
So it isn't true as recently as 2006 per these data that most households in the US have two income earners (even if the 2nd is part-time), let alone "since the 1980s." Carlingtonian did focus only on cities, and the rates of two income earners are likely higher in cities, but these rates would have to be much, much higher for it to be true that most city households have two full time income earners.
And across the country:
[LEFT] [SIZE=4]"Tuesday, September 28, 2010[/SIZE][/LEFT]
[LEFT] [SIZE=4]Percent of Unmarried Households in USA Continues to Rise[/SIZE][/LEFT]
[LEFT] [SIZE=2]The Census Bureau released results today from the American Community Survey (ACS) for 2009. The ACS is an annual survey taken of 3 million households in the United States. The percent of the nation's households headed by unmarried adults has risen to 50.9. For the past five years, married-couple households have been outnumbered by unmarried households. [/SIZE][/LEFT]
[LEFT] [SIZE=2]In terms of per capita data, there were 106.4 million adults in the United States who were unmarried in 2009. That is up from 104 million in 2008. For more details on household data, per state, click here. "[/SIZE][/LEFT]
First, no one said that any one factor accounted for high home prices here, unless you want to collapse everything into supply/demand and greater ability to pay. But you are interpreting some comments as though people were making that claim. A relative high proportion of two career couples with high levels of education was simply one more factor along with those that people already mentioned that accounts for why people are able to pay higher home prices.
Well, I believe some people did say it was solely USG salaries or solely two-earner families. But OK, yes, it's true we have more highly educated 2-income families than in other areas. But then, why are housing prices not at our level in areas that also have a lot of highly educated 2-income families? I don't think housing prices in the NC Research Triangle are like here--nor in greater Atlanta. Or Dallas. Or Austin.
Which brings me to your second point: Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough, but where on that Wikipedia page does it show the percentage of two-income families for greater Dallas and other regions? It's important to look at the entire urbanized area (UZA); any city proper is going to have disproportionately more single people than will the suburbs. So just as we include Fairfax, Montgomery, PG, and PW counties in the DC area, I think Dallas would have to include areas not in Dallas County--e.g., Plano, Arlington, etc.
I grew up in a middle-income suburb of Ft. Worth in the 1980s, and I was just about the only kid I knew whose parents didn't both work. (Which they could do mainly because they were super frugal.)
But supposing for the sake of argument that even looking at UZAs, that those cities all have a smaller % of high-education two-income families: Why would DC's prices have skyrocketed only in about 2003? Sure, prices went up almost everywhere in the US back then, but they rose here by a greater percentage.
I think the answer to *that* question is the sudden influx of high-money jobs (demand) and the relative concentration of those jobs to just a few areas.
First, no one said that any one factor accounted for high home prices here, unless you want to collapse everything into supply/demand and greater ability to pay.
All the side explanations are interesting but they're just subsections of supply and demand. Supply and demand is what it's all about.
Well, I believe some people did say it was solely USG salaries or solely two-earner families. But OK, yes, it's true we have more highly educated 2-income families than in other areas. But then, why are housing prices not at our level in areas that also have a lot of highly educated 2-income families? I don't think housing prices in the NC Research Triangle are like here--nor in greater Atlanta. Or Dallas. Or Austin.
There are some sky high prices and areas in any of those cities, comparable to our prices. Those tend to be the areas with the better school systems, though.
Since we may still move to Austin (within a few years is looking most likely), I can tell you that their property tax rates are much higher than ours, which I think keeps their prices slightly lower. The prices are rather high by TX standards, though. Comparing Austin to San Antonio, there is a big difference, and they are an hour apart. Probably similar to DC and Baltimore - but without any train service.
Austin also is not the job mecca everyone raves about. There are much better job opportunities here in most fields. If you aren't a computer person, you are NOT going to be making the big bucks in Austin.
Their public school system is a mess, to be honest. They are talking about laying off teachers, closing multiple highly rated schools. I am leaning away from Austin's public schools in favor of the schools system where all the multi-million dollar homes are just so that we won't have to be as concerned about the budget axe.
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