Arlington sees housing boom before Amazon HQ2 even arrives

[brooklynite]

Source: Axios

The Northern Virginia housing market has tightened dramatically in anticipation of Amazon's HQ2, where buyers and sellers have been scrambling for months to lock up properties and take advantage of the new demand.

Why it matters: Amazon’s move into Arlington, VA — the first of 25,000 employees will arrive in June — comes as large tech companies are being blamed for fueling inequality and gentrification in major cities around the country.

The big picture: In Seattle, Amazon's home, housing prices have doubled over the past 6 years. The Washington, D.C. market is already feeling the Amazon effect.
- Prices are rising and the market is tightening, according to real estate agents.
- Available inventory of units on the market in the Arlington and Alexandria areas near the Amazon project has dropped disproportionately compared with the rest of the region since the HQ2 plan was announced, said David Howell, executive vice president at McEnearney Associates.
- “I’ve been studying this market for 35 years, and I’ve never seen a circumstance like this one," Howell said. “There has certainly been a bit of a boomlet in the area right around what they’re now calling National Landing."

Critics of the project worry rising prices could force current residents out of the neighborhoods around Amazon's campus-to-be.

Read more: https://www.axios.com/arlington-virginia-sees-housing-boom-ahead-of-amazon-hq2-cf7bfffc-9ea7-4c76-ade4-b12355cbd463.html

[Clash City Rocker]

1. My first thought on reading the headline was "Uh oh, San Francisco all over again"

The low income threshold in San Francisco is $117,400 now, because of all the tech jobs that have moved into the city, and as a result, everything is more expensive. Families that lived in SF for generations have had to move. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen there.

[brooklynite]

2. Not exactly...

...the tech jobs have NOT all moved into the City; the major problem is that the people filling the tech jobs in Silicon Valley don't want to live there, so they buy up homes in SF, and the tech companies bus them down...

[reggaehead]

7. Are you kidding

Housing in the South Bay is at least as expensive as in San Francisco.

[CountAllVotes]

6. I agree

My family came there in 1860.

The last of "us" packed it in and left a couple of years ago.

Cannot afford to live in our home any longer!

[madville]

8. I live in the East Bay on Alameda Island

right next to Oakland. It's been getting worse over here. I rent a one bedroom condo, it was $1900 in 2017, $2000 in 2018, and the landlord says he is raising the rent to $2500 a month when I move in August (heading back to Florida, own a house and some property there, I'll be taking about a 40% pay cut but have about the same standard of living or better and no state income tax again).

The cheapest houses here are 800-900k. These 600 sq ft condos here like the one I rent sell for about 400k last I saw, approaching $700 a sq ft. Just the taxes, insurance and condo association fees on this place are approaching $1000 a month, that's $1000 a month to live here if the place is paid off.

A police officer here starts at $100k now and with overtime can get to $150 easily. The garbagemen start at $35 an hour. I would say a middle-class two income family (like say a cop and a nurse) is easily bringing in 200-300k a year.

[Clash City Rocker]

9. Last year we moved to New Jersey from Redwood City

And this is a really nice part of New Jersey, trees everywhere. We love it.

We pay $50 more a month in rent than we did in Redwood City. Our old house was one story, our current place is three stories, much newer, much nicer. We actually have more space than we need, and the rent is almost the same.

It’s the dark side of capitalism. The key to being comfortable is not so much how much you make, but whether you make more than other people who live near you.

[Chakaconcarne]

3. So all of these transplanting employees are about to get hosed on housing prices.....

[NBachers]

4. Yup, it's not the employees who are buying up the housing; it's the predatory speculators.

[turbinetree]

5. Rents down in the Pentagon Mall area right now are, depending on what floor you live on

and the view, can't forget the view, is running at around $4,500 to $6,000 a month just on the thirteenth floor, sitting on building that has a Whole Foods shopping market planted underneath it............and then across the street where the vacant lot, is going to be their mini empire, and there will be two classes of Jeff Bezo's employees, one getting at least $60,000 to over $100,000, depending on positions, while, the Whole Foods employee underneath the apartments trying to get union, making around $15.00 a hour and benefits................yep the same corporate monopoly that paid zero taxes.........................but siphon's off infrastructure money, for a fee from the state taxpayers to have a building with its name on it......................

[sandensea]

10. That traffic though!

The 395 is awful as it is. But oh well.

That's the price of prosperity - especially with deficient public works.