DC HOUSING MARKET FLAT AND NOT SINKING

During the three-month period ending March 31, DC housing prices jumped ... ok not jumped ... but rose 1.47 percent, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Over a one-year period, prices were up a much sharper 20.84 percnet, said the OFHEO.

Most striking though is the fact that houses have gone up about 5.2 times their value since 1980. This statistic illustrates the paradym shift that has happened here in DC over the last 25 years or so. As a point of comparison, over the same period homes in the state of Virginia went up only 3.5 times their value and homes in Maryland rose four times their value.

In a nutshell, the paradigm shift argument states that capital disproportionally shifted to DC over the past few decades as the city revived and gentrified. Contrary to the title of this blog, the housing market in D.C. is not a bubble waiting to burst.