Thursday, December 11, 2008

Washington, DC metro area foreclosures

A picture is worth a thousand words:


These are the foreclosed homes currently for sale. Click on the image to see a full-size version. It looks like it says 307 in Washington, DC, 287 in Alexandria, VA, and 340 in Manassas, VA.

Want to buy a home?

12 comments:

  1. Looks like theres a ton of them in PG County - right over the district line...

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  2. The value of Proximity is slowly unveiled:

    "Commuting makes people unhappy, or so many studies have shown. Recently, the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and the economist Alan Krueger asked nine hundred working women in Texas to rate their daily activities, according to how much they enjoyed them. Commuting came in last. (Sex came in first.) The source of the unhappiness is not so much the commute itself as what it deprives you of. When you are commuting by car, you are not hanging out with the kids, sleeping with your spouse (or anyone else), playing soccer, watching soccer, coaching soccer, arguing about politics, praying in a church, or drinking in a bar. In short, you are not spending time with other people. The two hours or more of leisure time granted by the introduction, in the early twentieth century, of the eight-hour workday are now passed in solitude. You have cup holders for company.

    “I was shocked to find how robust a predictor of social isolation commuting is,” Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist, told me. (Putnam wrote the best-seller “Bowling Alone,” about the disintegration of American civic life.) “There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.”"

    The full article is in the New Yorker: Annals of Transport

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all

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  3. I read the full article mentioned above, and I tend to agree. Is it any wonder that we see such angry comments here from people who staunchly defend their decisions to commute 90 minutes each way for the 'pleasure' of mowing a big lawn on the weekends? And how far does that 90 minutes get you, anyway? 30 miles?

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  4. Looks like theres a ton of them in PG County - right over the district line...

    Those foreclosed homes in PG county are going to leap across the boundary and drive the Washington's housing values through the basement floor.

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  5. If you click on the summary foreclosure icon in Washington (the number with the 307) and then click on "display in a list", it will put all the properties in a list for you.

    Then you can start reading some of the addresses of the foreclosed properties in "Washington". Here are a few of them:

    - Afton St, Temple Hills, MD
    - 11th St S, Arlington, VA
    - Ottawa St, Oxon Hill, MD

    Dozens and dozens of those foreclosed homes in "Washington" are actually in "Virginia" and "Maryland".

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  6. Don't you worry, there are plenty of actual foreclosures in "D.C. proper"

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  7. "Don't you worry, there are plenty of actual foreclosures in "D.C. proper"

    No worries at all, but it is nice to know anonymous strangers on the internet are genuinely concerned.

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  8. The raw numbers are meaningless unless you account for the poplutaion of an area.

    According to realtytrac, DC proper has one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the nation. About 1 in 1200 homes is in some state of foreclosure - the national average is 1 in 400

    In PWC its about 1 in 100!

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  9. "In PWC its about 1 in 100!"

    Those foreclosed homes in PW county are going to leap across the boundary and drive the Fairfax county's housing values through the basement floor.

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  10. Now homes (physical structures) LEAP across "boundaries" and infect other homes.

    And I thought I'd heard everything on this blog. Until now.

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  11. "Anonymous said...

    Those foreclosed homes in PW county are going to leap across the boundary and drive the Fairfax county's housing values through the basement floor."

    Really? You sure about that? Thing is, last time I checked, Fairfax has been improving. 6 months ago, Fairfax was averaging about 1 in 250, 3 months ago, it was about 1 in 300, now its about 1 in 400.

    Arlington next door to Fairfax has been holding rock solid at 1 in 1000 for over a year now. If anything it looks like the low foreclosure rate in Arlington is pulling Fairfax foreclose rates back to a more moderate pace!

    Also, PWC was actually closer to 1 in 80 homes in foreclosure 6 months ago. Now PWC is actually a bit closer to 1 in 150. Could it be that fairfax is now yanking PWC back from the depths? We shall see.

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  12. I can't stand Manassas...bunch of pretentious aholes....I feel no remorse...let em burn.

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