11650 STONEVIEW SQ #90/21C
RESTON, VA 20191
List Price: $160,900
Prior Sale: $295,000 12/22/2005
Listing Date: 01/27/08
-45.5%
13532 SIERRA DR
CLIFTON, VA 20124
List Price: $199,800
Prior Sale: $364,900 07/31/2006
Listing Date: 01/27/08
-45.2%
1119 WATERFORD PL
HERNDON, VA 20170
List Price: $179,000
Prior Sale: $310,000 06/27/2005
Listing Date: 01/29/08
-42.3%
2329 FREETOWN CT #12C
RESTON, VA 20191
List Price: $159,000
Prior Sale: $271,000 04/25/2006
Listing Date: 01/28/08
-41.3%
7368 LEE HIGHWAY #204
FALLS CHURCH, VA 22046
List Price: $174,900
Prior Sale: $298,000 06/01/2006
Listing Date: 01/29/08
-41.3%
(See "Same-House Sales" sidebar for more)
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Fairfax County -- On the Market
Posted by Harriet at 10:34 PM
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8 comments:
Hi Harriet,
You may delete this post if it is not on topic, but I was wondering if people saw this letter to the editor in the Wash Post today, and what they thought about its logic:
Immigration's Market Force
William Campenni [Free for All, Jan. 26] criticized The Post for ignoring a correlation between a decline in housing prices and the presence of immigrants in an area.
But my experience says that immigrants were the heat that made the housing market boil and bubble. My townhouse cluster, where prices had been stagnant for years, provided this example:
The townhouse next door sold in 1999 for $97,000 to a native-born couple. They fixed it up, sold it two years later to an immigrant for $167,000 and used the money to buy a new house west of here. How could the new buyer afford the price? He rented rooms to other immigrants and made his mortgage payments. He sold in 2006 to a pair of immigrants for $367,000 and so could move to a better neighborhood. The new owners also tried the same rental process, but that depended on a continued flow of immigrants with jobs and needing rooms. When the anti-immigration forces started to scare off people, the bubble burst. The house is now on the market for $309,000. It has great neighbors.
BILL HARSHAW
Immigrants provide cheap labor. If and when they are forced to leave the area, you can expect home construction to drop, and new construction prices to rise. That is if anyone is still making new construction - you would have to be pretty stupid to be building new homes right now!
I would merely point out that, 2.5 years into the post-bubble era, essentially none of these same-house sales are for any of the really desirable areas of ffx.
Tabitha,
I think the bubble in housing was international, and the immigrants in our area were a symptom and definitely not the cause.
But now for the aftermath. The immigrants are finding trouble getting construction work here, so they're moving on. I am sure that PW's immigration policies may have something to do with the exodus, but it might have been inevitable anyway. I'm not sure how Bill Harshaw's neighbors were going to afford $367K when their immigrant tenants can't pay the rent.
Also, it's quite obvious that new immigrants (I remember sharing an article about one such family) were given ridiculous loans. Their ability to repay went downhill fast when all the houses that needed to be built for a while were finished. There's fallout from their defaults, which were due to both bad loans and to lack of ability to pay.
It might be useful to look at other areas of the country where immigration policies haven't changed and see what's happening there. I don't think making PW's immigration policy a scapegoat is necessarily correct.
Doug,
I think land, proffer fees, and builders' profit margins drove up new construction costs for buyers. I haven't seen evidence of building costs notably rising. Not saying it can't happen.
"Jan. 15--Prices for some construction materials such as lumber and finished items are at a two-year low due to weakening demand for building supplies around the U.S. and a seasonal downturn in local construction activity".
Doug, you assume that immigrant builders move away faster than demand for them decreases but it's more likely that with decreased building jobs, there is a surplus of workers.
No Im not assuming that - Im suggesting that legal efforts to rid businesses of immigrants will force them to hire legal workers who will not work for pennies.
Ive heard of a bill being proposed to fine employers 50k for each illegal they are found to have working for them.
we sold our townhouse (after making extensive upgrades) at a much lower price then we expected due to the lousy housing market, we then wanted to buy a sfh but we are finding that sellers in the fairfax county area are still pricing a 4bdrm sfh at 2003 prices. when are sellers going to wake up and start pricing their old, old homes at a sensible price
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