Future of NOVA housing market (to rent, refinance, loan)

[Dmvjay]

Originally Posted by Lusitan

I don’t know - my experience is limited to Fairfax County Public School System (FCPS). It will be interesting to hear from folks in other areas.

It may be that the dysfunction and decline are unique to FCPS. FCPS is a huge, bloated school district covering an enormous county geographically and nearly 190,000 students. You can get in the car and head west on the interstate and be driving for darn near half an hour and STILL be in the same school district; this sometimes results in comical situations like a “snow day” when not a single snowflake falls in a 5 mile radius of my house .... because somewhere out in the NW corner of the county, it’s snowing.

Less humorous is the dysfunction of the FCPS school bus system — my 7th grader was standing at the bus stop in the pitch dark at 6:45am, while my elementary school children weren’t getting home until close to 5pm! The reason? It was too complex to try to bus all the kids to school during normal hours, so they stagger it out by making some schools start ridiculously early and other schools getting out ridiculously late. “It’s too complicated!” FCPS administrators would squeal. Um, how do normal sized school districts manage to deal with it just fine all across the country? How can children participate in after school sports or music or dance or other activities when they’re not home until nearly 5pm? Perfect time to send all the parents out into rush out traffic to try to get to sports/music and other activities! What’s that, did you think that by middle school FCPS would offer school-based athletic programs? Ha! Think again! No school sports until high school. Again, “too expensive” they squeal. They seem to have plenty of money for pet political projects though — what you’d expect from a school board that’s used as a stepping stone to higher political office, as is the case.

Less humorous still is when you talk to your children’s teachers and principal about the complete lack of textbooks and how it’s having a detrimental effect on your children’s ability to learn, but you’re told that, sorry, it’s an FCPS decision ... maybe try to take it up with the superintendent or school board managing 190,000 students ...

Like any organization, the bigger and more bloated it gets, the less connected anyone in it feels to their individual constituents, the less it feels like a community endeavor and the more it feels like the DMV or the Post Office.

If you want that “bigger than the Philadelphia Public School System” experience, FCPS is for you. If not, look elsewhere.

Thanks

[sonnymarkjiz]

Originally Posted by Old Guard

Are the sales prices going down as well or just the rents?

I have a friend who lives in NYC and she says that prices are dropping for rent by as much as 20%.

If the sale prices go down, I can easily see investors making a killng soon. I do see the value going up in suburbs of major Metro cities. But I fear everything else wil decline.

[JD984]

Originally Posted by Dmvjay

I don't have children in the schools currently. With all of the talk of Fairfax going down, is the same happening to Alexandria? Arlington? Just curious if folks think this way about all the area schools, or is this trend happening to Fairfax schools only?

A lot of the bashing is coming from parents angry that FCPS has decided that it is going to full-time distance learning in the fall. But the Arlington, Falls Church City, Loudoun and Montgomery County systems all made the same decision. As did other large suburban public school systems, like Gwinnett County in Georgia.

These decisions weren't made because the county has become some hotbed of socialist egalitarianism. They were made primarily because the school systems knew that not enough teachers were willing to return to the school buildings in person to make the alternate plans work, and secondarily due to concerns about a future uptick in Covid cases (Fairfax seems to be doing reasonably well right now, but that isn't the case in other parts of the state).

And, of course, just hearing school officials mention the word "equity" upsets some people, even when their kids are in schools where most of the families are quite affluent.

[oneasterisk]

My wife closed on the sale of her house yesterday. 5 weeks from list to closing. Market is on fire.

I'm in the middle of refinancing the house in Woodbridge and got a rate of 1.875%. I'll be closing on that in a few weeks.

[Ffxdata]

Houses are going fast. I’m not concerned about housing. I wish we were in a position to sell. I’d love to take advantage of this moment.

[Flamingo13]

Originally Posted by oneasterisk

My wife closed on the sale of her house yesterday. 5 weeks from list to closing. Market is on fire.

I'm in the middle of refinancing the house in Woodbridge and got a rate of 1.875%. I'll be closing on that in a few weeks.

Fantastic rate! congrats

[Old Guard]

Originally Posted by sonnymarkjiz

I have a friend who lives in NYC and she says that prices are dropping for rent by as much as 20%.

Are rents sales? There is seems to be little to suggest a mass exodus from New York City or any other city is happening. I think once a vaccine is found that things will go back to normal. There are a lot of people not making money now but that should change once we go back to normal.

[Lusitan]

Originally Posted by oneasterisk

I'm in the middle of refinancing the house in Woodbridge and got a rate of 1.875%. I'll be closing on that in a few weeks.

Where did you get that rate for a refi?

[oneasterisk]

https://www.congressionalfcu.org/

[Old Guard]

Originally Posted by oneasterisk

https://www.congressionalfcu.org/

30 Year Fixed Mortgage
as low as
2.955% APR





What did you get a 1 year mortgage?