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Saturday, August 29, 2009
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48 comments:
Virgina is making a comeback against California. Last month the gap was over $2 billion. Gap has closed to less than $200 million. Texas is a real laggard. Possibly seasonal.
Link
contrarian posted the Haney article in the last thread. Worth a read since it lists CBO suggestions for raising tax revenue. Can anyone come up with a reason not to pass this one?
Tops on the CBO's hit list for housing: Slash deductions for homeowner mortgage interest from the current $1.1 million limit to $500,000, phased in with $100,000 annual reductions starting in 2013 and extending to 2019. Under current law, taxpayers can write off mortgage interest on their principal-home debt up to $1 million, and on home-equity debt up to $100,000.
Under the CBO's option, that maximum mortgage-debt amount would shrink annually until it hits $500,000. Over 10 years, this change alone would boost federal tax collections by an estimated $41 billion.
Who has $1.1 million in mortgage interest debt in one year? Heck, who has $500,000 in mortgage interest debt in one year. Other than perhaps someone with a $20M home (which is more than even most Hollywood celebs seem to spend on homes) I can't think of anyone. I think most of this most go to developers and companies owning apartment complexes? That's all I can think of. This seems like a no brainer that would affect almost no one.
As for completely removing the mortgage interest deduction -- it's not going to happen any time soon. If it does it will be done very gradually and I think after this housing bust is over. In fact, the last thing I would want is for them to get rid of it now and have further housing losses (which were going to happen nationwide anyway) blamed on removing the mortgage interest deduction. That would give NAR and NAHB an anecdote to use the rest of my life and we'd never see it gone. I hope in 2013 or so they talk about getting rid of it over 10 years or so and it will be painless and everyone will realize it was not even necessary since as noted Australia, Canada, and UK all have it with similar homeownership rates.
Robert,
You always ask me to respond to your questions and yet never respond to mine. I ask you directly -- tell me how this is not going to harm our region?
Insourcing and Acquisition Workforce. Under the fiscal 2010 budget request, the department will begin reducing its reliance on support service contractors from the current 39
percent of the workforce performing administrative and advisory services to the pre-2001 level of 26 percent. Contract personnel will be replaced with approximately 13,800 government
employees, including 2,500 acquisition specialists. In addition, the department will increase the
acquisition workforce by another 1,580 government employees, for a total of 4,080 in fiscal 2010. By 2015, the acquisition workforce will grow by about 20,000 people.
As I said yesterday, this will be devastating for SAIC and similar companies.
Robert,
Looked at what you linked up there. I presume FY 2009 figures are not yet complete.
So in FY 2008 Virginia had $78,393 in federal contracts. In FY 2002 Virginia had $32,964. Obama and Gates want to go to pre-2001 levels of contracts for DOD. Unclear what percentage of the above figures are DOD but clearly going to be devastating reductions.
Probably good for a bunch of veterans though who will get those DOD jobs. Not good news for many of your fellow SAIC workers who are not veterans and who will not get those new DOD jobs because of veterans preference points.
TBW, a couple of years ago, a real estate agent made a list of all MLS sales around $1 mill. in one Arlington zip code. Nearly every one of them was 90% or more financed. I could not believe my eyes - I expected most to be move up houses with big down payments, but instead it appears most of them were high income couples either buying a first home or choosing to invest the equity elsewhere. So there are plenty of people around this area (and I would imagine in other high cost cities) who have these big loans. Who will fight the new legislation? People like them will, but more importantly (because they have the organization and the $), the Realtor lobbyists probably will.
Even if the Federal govt. spending increases considerably, why aren't we talking about offsetting increases by state and local governments in the area and whether these effects on employment will cancel each other out?
Ace,
Oh I think Haney wrote it in a confusing manner. You cannot deduct mortgage interest for loans that go beyond $1.1M? The way Haney wrote it I thought he meant $1.1M in interest. Hence only a small number of people would be affected.
Yeah, if they just mean total principal then that would affect a lot of people. If it went all the way down to $500,000 that would probably affect many of Robert's neighbors in Great Falls.
[crocodile tears]
In today's real estate section they have the following chart. The first number is average listing price and the next is median sales price.
Oakton $993,680 $575,500
Vienna $947,523 $545,000
Reston $477,572 $365,000
Sellers are still very much unrealistic especially in Oakton and Vienna. I know these numbers probably never are 1:1 even in a normal market but sales prices being 1/2 show how silly the market still is right now and why many of us are still sitting it out.
Unrealistic asking price in Vienna:
http://franklymls.com/FX7145625
In contrast, this place is larger, backs up to a park, and quite frankly, is jaw-dropping inside (too bad there aren't pictures).
http://franklymls.com/FX7123481
TBW, yes, it is poorly written.
Amazing info about those asking:sales prices.
As for Vienna/Oakton vs. Reston: my hunch is that it is the condos and townhouses that are selling, and the SFHs, which drag the 'asking' average up, aren't moving.
NoVAwatcher,
Exactly. It's the "mix" and, as I heard here, if the mix don't fit, you must acquit!
p.s. meant to ask if you had checked out the WFC area. We used to live by Haycock and Great Falls Street. Seems it would work for your split commute. McLean School District. Very convenient to everywhere.
NoVAWatcher,
Both homes are asking too much but the second one is much more realistic than the first one.
Whoever owns the second one has a realtor who is only going to upset a lot of potential buyers. First, she has upset everyone by not showing the "a die for basement." With a digital camera it's pretty easy.
Also, she blocked Zillow data and does not allow anyone to comment on the FranklyMLS page (and I imagine made similar restrictions on the other pages.)
Does she really think it's hard to look up zillow data on their website? Takes two seconds. Does she really think buyers about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars are not going to do their own due diligence? Especially given how easy it is now.
At least the realtors put "convenient/close to Metro" and did not claim either was a "walk to Metro" place. We've noted some about as far as these homes that claim to be walk to Metro places.
You always ask me to respond to your questions and yet never respond to mine. I ask you directly -- tell me how this is not going to harm our region?
Uh, basically, the people that work for the contractors will get jobs with the government. Net impact to the region = 0.
Yes, that is bad for the contractors. No way around it.
Of course the gov't will be more FU than it is currently by doing this.
Sorry, just realized I made a typo - I meant S & L govt DEcreases in spending.
Robert, I really don't think it's that simple. There are likely some jobs the prior admin. was paying for contractors to do, that the present admin. won't continue. As others have pointed out, increased spending by the fed. may go for many things other than labor, and the labor that is done may be done in many places other than the DC area. etc., etc. I guess we will see over the next few years.
TBW, I'm not worried about the mortgage interest deduction because I don't make more than $250,000. Obama said he would not raise my taxes, he even said he would give me a tax cut.
That's sarcasm.
Robert said,
Uh, basically, the people that work for the contractors will get jobs with the government. Net impact to the region = 0.
Are you aware of veterans preferences in federal hiring?
Also, note that 20 percent of DOD employees are black (see page 14 of report on diversity in the federal workforce).
By the way, that is a national number. Look at the next page where they discuss numbers at independent agencies (most of whom have almost all employees in DC). The Smithsonian Institution is 50% black employees. NSF 32.5% black. FCC 32% black.
Many years ago, I had clerical summer jobs in Tysons Corner and some were for defense contractors. The offices were not 30+% black.
There also are fewer women in the federal workforce than civilian workforce. This may be related to veterans benefits. There have been many unsuccessful lawsuits brought noting how veterans benefits causes gov't agencies to have a disproportionate number of men.
So, no, it will not be a 1:1 transfer between agencies.
[Btw, not making any judgment calls on differing demographics between the federal workforce and civilian workforce. Just explaining why it will not be a 1:1 transfer.]
Sorry should have said independent agencies have a larger percentage of employees in DC, not all. Although I suspect the Smithsonian Institution is almost all in the DC area.
Another thing that will not be 1:1 is changing commercial real estate. SAIC et al will need less office space in the region if they lower the number of contracts. GSA is not going to rent out all that office space. Federal contractors prefer suburban office space (often non-Metro accessible) whereas GSA prefers DC and Metro-accessible suburban office space.
VA_Investor: I got lost on the way to RoadRunner Sports one time and got a nice tour of Falls Church. The area was pretty cute, but not for us.
TBW: the basement truly is that good. Stunning.
Their realtor must be a retard or the owners have issues with having photos of their interior displayed on the web.
Okay before I head out for the night . . . a little note for reecon, anielarke, and HayfieldGrad.
Article on Mayor Fenty's School Choice
Mayor Fenty chose to send his twin sons to Lafeyette Elementary School (72% white) instead of his neighborhood's base school West Elementary (71% black). Lafeyette also has wealthier families than West. [Stats provided by WaPo article]
The article also notes Christopher Barry, son of former mayor Marion Barry, attended city schools in the 1990s. Christopher Barry, who was raised in Southeast Washington, also went out-of-boundary to attend schools in upper Northwest.
President Obama is sending his daughters to Sidwell Friends instead of even the NW school Fenty picked (Rhee said Obama could have any elementary school he wanted for his daughters.)
As you all have often pointed out the test score differentials between the schools are probably all explained by socioeconomic factors.
Just curious if you will condemn Obama, Fenty, and Barry for choosing whiter, richer schools?
And FWIW, a lot of the schools I praise on here are less white (and less rich) than Lafeyette Elementary and Sidwell Friends.
For the second house, the square footage on Zillow and on the tax records is definitely wrong. I'd guess it is 2000-2200 sqft, which is 20-30% larger than Zillow and the tax records.
tbw,
You have never stepped foot into any of the NOVA schools that you claim are "bad". A lot of the statements you make remind me of what happened when the South County boundaries were being set. See the parents from Fairfax Station and fancy Lorton subdivisions, told the school board which neighborhoods they approved of letting into the school. Basically, they went street by street in Lorton, Fairfax Station and Springfield and told the school board which ones had the desirable socioeconomic characteristics they would like to see. They told the school board that Hayfield should be the school for any Lorton area low income and ESOL kids. Their goal was to have no low income and no ESOL students in their school. Thankfully, the school board had the guts to push back at them.
The DC school system has long been dsyfunctional. Plus, under No Child Left Behind, a Title 1 school that doesn't make Adequate Yearly Progress for a couple of years, has to let children enroll in a school that is making AYP. Why do you think they have school choice in DC? A couple of FCPS elementaries have had this happen to them and the school system has hade to pay to transport these children to new schools.
Graham Road elementary is one of the 7 elementaries in FCPS that have operated under the Modified Year Round School calendar. Those children received a extra 6 weeks of schooling and the longest they were out of school was 5 weeks. That program is being cut do to budget cuts next year. How long do you think Graham Road will keep its high test scores when the children no longer have all the extra schooling?
Schools: Yeah, parents want to send their kids to the best school. What's the BFD?
tiredbubblewatcher: I hereby condemn Barry, Obama and Fenty for sending their children to schools which are "whiter and richer." Do you want me to condemn Rhee for sending her children to Oyster Bilingual? Do you want me to condemn the parents who send their children to Graham Rd Elementary(incidentally Graham Rd Elementary school is the adopted school of the Northern Virginia realtors association and they raise thousands of dollars to supplement the year round program and add reading resource material)? How about the parents who don't send their children to Graham Rd. but send them to Bailey's Elementary Magnet School? Do you want to me to condemn the parents in North Arlington who send their children to Kenmore Middle School in South Arlington for their arts program? Do you want me to condemn the parents all over Arlington who send their children to Claremont Elementary School for the Spanish immersion program? How about the parents who send their children to Arlington Traditional School instead of the "richer and whiter" North Arlington Jamestown or Tayalor Elementary Schools because they don't like the social aspects of those schools? Hayfield Grad makes the point that you are always quick to condemn the schools you know nothing about. Since you have said you have time on your hands, all of these schools need volunteer help. Why don't you start as a reading coach at the Capitol Hill school where Ted Kennedy can no longer read? Why don't you volunteer at Belvedere Elementary in Fairfax (it is across the road from the Fairfax government center and the police officers and workers at the center volunteer at the school)? You learn a lot about schools, the teachers and the parents when you are actually there, like I am as a volunteer. You don't learn much about schools from websites, newspaper articles and talking to your friends who teach. Robert is right that parents want good schools for their children. Your definition of a good school might not be the same definition used by Barry, Fenty or Obama. Your definition of a good school might not be the same one the concrete worker from Salvador uses or the dishwasher from China uses.
Ah Kenneth Harney,
As I said the other day, he's great for rumors, but I wouldn't put any weight behind anything he says until some other more reputable source backs it up.
Despite how great I think any of these changes might be.
Robert,
The BFD is that it will create schools based on economic segregation. Basically, the kids they tried to have removed from South County lived within a mile or two of the school in favor of some rich kids from Mason Neck which is 7-8 miles from South County. Do you realize that a lot kids from the Springfield/Newington/Lorton areas of Fairfax County have long attended the 4th or 5th closest high school to their house? Hayfield wasn't the closest high school to my house. West Springfield, Lee, and Lake Braddock were miles closer. Robinson was about the same distance from my house as Hayfield. How do you think some parents felt when other parents told them they were not welcome at South County, despite living only a mile from the campus, because their neighborhood was not wealthy enough?
reecon said,
Your definition of a good school might not be the same definition used by Barry, Fenty or Obama.
No, I think they (and/or their wives) had similar thought processes as I did.
reecon/HayfieldGrad -- you are the one making assumptions. First of all I have "stepped foot" into the schools I am discussing.
I attended a school with more free/reduced lunch students than Hayfield HS. Just because my HS was rich does not mean everything that fed into it was. A neighborhood's school pyramid is not uniformly the same racial and wealth demographics.
How do you think I knew about the GT Center trick that parents used? Some of my neighbors did that -- although many of us (including me) stuck with the base school.
Based on having experienced both types of schools within the suburbs I can say it's much more academically rewarding to attend the better schools. The classes are harder and cover more material. You also have fewer students disrupting class and slowing things down.
While I'm pretty happy with my life, if I have children I want even better for them. And for me that's having them attend good schools K-12. I know they could succeed going to Graham Road ES through Falls Church HS but why not let them attend a nicer ES and Madison HS or Woodson HS etc? I don't see how that makes me an ogre.
HayfieldGrad,
The out of boundary enrollment in DC is not because of No Child Left Behind. Anyone at any school can go out of boundary. There are plenty of schools in DCPS that make adequate yearly progress and you can still go out of boundary even if you live in one of those neighborhoods.
It's because of underenrollment. They have fewer and fewer school aged children in DCPS each year. More and more families moved out of DC, more and more attend private/parochial schools, and many attend charter schools. So the school system lets people go to out of boundary schools since there's more and more space.
Every few years they close down a few DCPS because they need less and less space.
Regarding schools; the bottom line is that there is a direct correlation between home prices (family income) in a neighborhood and the quality of the school. Period.
This was the entire basis behind busing.
tbw,
Of course, not every elementary that fed into your high school was wealthy. However, blaming your bad elementary experience on only the free and reduced lunch kids is wrong. Did you interview every kid acting out and ask them if they were poor? Your teachers obviously lacked good classroom management skills. My sister teaches at a school in SC where 95%of the students are FRL. I have been at the school and it is orderly. The teachers and principal expect the children to behave just like the kids at other schools.
You shouldn't assume that all the schools I attended in my life were like Hayfield. The high school I attended for the 9th grade was Radford High in Honolulu. That school probably had similiar amounts of low income children as Hayfield, but Radford could best be described as "managed chaos". Most of my teachers were good at Radford, but some of the course content was lacking in a few areas. The facilities and resources were most definitely sub-par compared to Hayfield.
The problem I have with you is that you have called people stupid for sending their children to Falls Church, TC or the like. You cannot assume from your limited experience that all schools with higher levels of free and reduced are like that. Falls Church's SOL pass rates for the 2008-2009 school year were 96% for English, 88% for Math, and 93% for Writing. These SOL rates are very similar to Herndon(95/91/94) and Centreville (97/92/97).
Va_Investor,
Did you know that Fairfax County owns 4 apartment complexes that feed into South Lakes High School which are rented out low and moderate income families? Housing developers in areas of the county that are zoned for higher density housing also are required by the county to set aside 10-20% of their homes for the affordable housing programs. Those homes are sold below market value to families that make usually under 60k. Some High School districts have very few of these and some have hundreds.
Va Investor: While I somewhat agree that there is a direct correlation between home prices (family income) in a neighborhood and the quality of the schools, I cannot agree with you that this was the entire basis behind busing. Before desegreation in Arlington, my wife and I had the income to buy a much better house in a neighborhood in Arlington with better schools but we were not allowed to buy in those neighborhoods because of racial covenants which are still in the chain of title for most neighborhoods in Arlington. The basis of busing was so that children would have a right to equal education. Although Arlington was the most enlightened place in Virginia, there was a huge gap in funding between the negro schools and the white schools, so that the schools were not equal in what was provided.
reecon,
When were those covenants struck down? I believe that busing was well in force a decade or more thereafter. Wasn't "busing" still very much an issue in the '70's? I don't know about the '80's. I grew up in upstate NY. We didn't have the issues that the South had/has.
It's about $$$ these days, not segregation and restrictive covenants.
I made an error in judgment in bringing this topic back up. I felt like there was an implication the past few times we discussed this that it was all racism and I just thought maybe some of you would feel differently after seeing that the black elite (Fenty, Obama, Barry, etc) thought about schools in a pretty similar way.
HayfieldGrad,
However, blaming your bad elementary experience
Never said I had a "bad" experience. I have happy memories of my entire K-12 experience for each and every year regardless of the socioeconomic makeup of the class.
The problem I have with you is that you have called people stupid for sending their children to Falls Church, TC or the like.
I don't think I have ever called anyone stupid. I think I just said the sort of people who can afford an $800k home usually do not send their kids to TC Williams or Falls Church.
reecon,
I'm pretty sure you are not old enough to have bought a home while race based restrictive covenants could be enforced. The Supreme Court struck those down in 1948 in a case called Shelley v. Kraemer.
There was plenty of housing discrimination between 1948 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (and even after the FHA) but it was not via restrictive covenants. It was private discrimination -- white homeowners refusing to sell to blacks, realtors refusing to show blacks homes in white neighborhoods, banks discriminating against blacks for mortgages, etc.
Va_Investor,
I grew up in upstate NY. We didn't have the issues that the South had/has.
Well, I don't know exactly where you grew up but I can tell you that busing is *still* in force in Boston. And was ordered in many non-Southern parts of the country (NYC, Denver, CA, etc).
A month or so ago I was watching the HBO documentary on Ted Kennedy. They had a clip showing him in Boston in the 1970s when he supported the busing order. Police had to protect him because people were mad about it. The documentary showed a riot and people throwing bricks at the building he was in.
On a less serious note but perhaps more on our general topic . . .
Cash for (Clunkers) Refrigerators
The Department of Energy hopes to encourage conservation by getting consumers to replace old, wasteful appliances with new, more efficient Energy Star certified machines. But the appliance industry, reeling from the recession and a drop in sales, also hopes the rebates will provide a much-needed sales boost.
If anyone is thinking about getting an appliance you might want to hold off until this program is around this fall. Sounds like another silly program but if any of you are buying anytime soon might as well get the rebate.
Virginia's page to watch
Virginia Submits Recovery Act Energy Program Application
May 12, 2009
•$15 million in grants or rebate incentives to stimulate implementation of energy efficiency improvements in homes and commercial properties.
◦Residential consumers will be eligible for a rebate for 20 percent of the cost of eligible energy efficiency improvements, up to $2,000 per consumer.
There are also other things for solar panels wind turbines and the like.
But no dates:
Additional details how to apply for the incentives will be made available on the Stimulus.Virginia.Gov website after Virginia’s plan has been approved by the U.S. Department of Energy.
contrarian:
Check out the "fat-free fudge" comment on this frankly FAQ for why that happens.
frankly link
tbw,
We only had 2 Junior Highs and ONE High School. I only know of a couple of kids who went off to boarding school. We had no local private schools. Boston is an entirely different animal than a small, extremely liberal, college town. The only thing I remember about elementary school was that the "bad" kids (expelled) went to Catholic School - the only alternative.
btw - we routinely had 12-16 National Merit Semi-finalists and about 10% of my class went to an Ivy.
http://franklymls.com/FX7036420
http://franklymls.com/FX7146780
LOL. Out of focus pictures. How horribly unprofessional and embarrassing.
Texas Native
Given the "RENT" sign in the yard I wonder what it used to rent for and how that compares to the $400k pricetag.
Tiredbubble watcher The 1968 Civil Rights Law ended discrimination in housing and meant the racial covenants in Arlington were no longer enforceable. I tried to buy houses in Arlington with my VA benefits in 1959 and then in 1965 and 1966 when two of my sons were born. My wife made appointments to see many houses in areas with racial covenants, because we heard that some people were getting into those areas if they were professionals. In 1959 we were told that we could not buy the houses. In 1965 and 1966 we were told that all the houses we wanted had either been taken off the market or sold 15 minutes before we arrived. That practice continued well after the Civil Rights Act. About the same time a nice house came on the market across the street from my parents' house and we bought and added on to it. By the time we could buy any place we wanted in Arlington, we had done a lot of work to the house and my family was settled into the neighborhood. My wife was teaching in Springfield and I was downtown, so our location worked well. I started to buy investment properties in the late 1980s and bought my condo where we now live in 2001. My point about the schools is that there are some schools which serve a diverse economic and social population and do okay. One of those schools I know real well is Key Elementary School in Arlington which draws from Lyon Village with some of the most expensive houses in Arlington and from the red brick apartments off Rt. 29 and Rt. 50 with a lot of working class Hispanic families.
reecon,
The racial covenants were unenforceable as of 1948 after the case I noted.
What happened to you was not enforcement of racial covenants but discrimination on the part of the owner of the house or the local realtors.
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