Hampton Roads Housing/Real estate/and Economy

[adctvmonkey]

The absence of good jobs in HR is an immense issue that the area's leaders need to take a serious look at and remedy. My family, relatives, and friends are some of the people that left because we simply found much better opportunities in Northern Virginia.

To supplement this point, in occasions of boredom, I type in 'Newport News' or 'Yorktown' as hometowns on facebook, or look up people who graduated from my previoius high school, and almost every single person is in the Washington, DC area. I knew there was a pattern, but I was shocked at how basically everyone who is well-educated from HR ends up in Northern Va or elsewhere, such as Richmond or Atlanta.

It seems that HR's biggest issue into the future is the lack of good jobs. With good jobs, higher home prices are less of an issue and economic/cultural prosperity obviously abound (when at appropriate and non-inflated levels).

Edited September 25, 2007 by adctvmonkey

[urbanvb]

An article in Inside Business echoes your sentiments. The Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance (HREDA) says announcements of new companies opening in the region are down from 10 same time last year to 4. They have hired a Atlanta consultant to "help reshape and redefine its role to adapt to the global economy. The report is due next year. "

[Telmnstr]

Trying to lure businesses to Hampton Roads to help prop up the cost of living isn't going to pan out, I fear.

There is a certain type of energy in other areas that just isn't here in Hampton Roads. I'm not sure you can generate it easily.

The region is full of cranky old people. How many of the young people are those left behind, that don't really have any skills?

I stayed around because I was trying to start something. It didn't pan out. Now I'm at a cool company, but it's an oddity for the area. I've worked for some of the names. Before switching jobs, I wanted to smash my skull in versus going to work, because the job was so boring. And that was at a very well respected place in the region.

I have friends who have good skills, and they are totally frustrated working for gov't contractors in what should be good, fun jobs. The issue is management doesn't have a clue, and when you get stuck working with people who drag you down, it's not fun.

I worked for a place, and later found out a coworker was earning $10K more than me because he had a degree. He had little skills that pertained to the job. While he could kid and joke and was funny sometimes, his days generally consisted of fantasy online sports. Many of the gov't contractors can over staff and earn more money, so they do. Many of these jobs could be cut, and little impact felt, but this is probably a large portion of the good paying jobs in the region.

*shrug* People on here might say I'm negative all the time, but I'm telling it like it is. I'm echoing what I'm seeing. I've worked for the names, and I've seen where friends have gone that have left the region.

People should take notes on what I'm saying. It's why the area sucks.

Going to Raleigh next week I think to check out the 2600 meeting and hang out with a friend. Taking some other friends... one of which was sniffing around Portland. Another person I know says he doesn't know how long he will be here (both very smart, one has masters now). Another dude is looking at Raleigh, another is going to try to sell his house (been there for a long time, so can undercut all the suckers). Another friend is looking at moving back after making a good amount of money elsewhere, but is now looking at Raleigh because there are better jobs $300K gets you a $500K HR house... even tho he can afford either, still no point in giving money away.

Okay, done with latest rant.

[urbanvb]

What is the 2600 meeting?

[Chesapeake Pirate]

The local housing market as measured by assessments is holding steady in spite of all the negativity. Based on all the doom and gloom, I am surprised to hear that assessments are not projected to be going down.

Jump in home values expected to taper off in '08

[Telmnstr]

The local housing market as measured by assessments is holding steady in spite of all the negativity. Based on all the doom and gloom, I am surprised to hear that assessments are not projected to be going down.

Jump in home values expected to taper off in '08

That is because the cities want the cash. If you look at the home listings, they are going down.

The assessments are based on prior year, but still.... you can hit norfolk.craigslist.org, click "Real estate for sale" and search for "below assessment" and poof, 25 current listings. You want to be careful to use the cities assessment, because private ones are often BS, the mortgage guys get the appraiser to hit the numbers so the loan goes thru and they get paid $$$.

I commented on the story. I'm going to do a video for HamptonRoads.TV ... I can't take it anymore. They've ignored real facts for too long :-(

[Telmnstr]

JFCOM ... new budget is out. From what I understand:

10% cut across the board in people + gear

50% cut in Modeling & Simulation

[scm]

JFCOM ... new budget is out. From what I understand:

10% cut across the board in people + gear

50% cut in Modeling & Simulation

Little off the mark -- this is only among the contractor workforce -- doesn't effect any government personnel. Also is only in one directorate, and not the one that is the main consumer of M&S services. Not really budgetary driven, but rather new leadership emphasis.

[Telmnstr]

Little off the mark -- this is only among the contractor workforce -- doesn't effect any government personnel. Also is only in one directorate, and not the one that is the main consumer of M&S services. Not really budgetary driven, but rather new leadership emphasis.

Yea I forgot to say it's people only. Lol, doesn't effect gov't personnel. There's a surprise.

Still job losses.

I assume if we end up with a responsible president next term then we will end up loosing a lot of the gov't jobs.

[scm]

Yea I forgot to say it's people only. Lol, doesn't effect gov't personnel. There's a surprise.

Still job losses.

I assume if we end up with a responsible president next term then we will end up loosing a lot of the gov't jobs.

You left the impression it was a 10% cut across the entire command. All I was pointing out was that it was a little more targeted than that. As far as your cynicism, it is extremely difficult to cut military billets in the short term. Civilian billets are only slightly easier. Contractor billets are more flexible, and therefore, more likely to get cut (and also, to get added).

And as far as your cheap shot, the leadership direction change came when the new director took over the effected directorate. Had nothing to do with national leadership.

[scm]

It seems that HR's biggest issue into the future is the lack of good jobs. With good jobs, higher home prices are less of an issue and economic/cultural prosperity obviously abound (when at appropriate and non-inflated levels).

Being a guy that likes to see numbers, I went and looked at the BLS stats on IT wages in HR vs. other areas. Interesting data that shows, on average, IT jobs in HR earn almost $20K less than in NoVA. Table is below, but the question is why? Completely dismissing Tel's rant against "cranky old people" setting wages too low, my experience is that the prospective employees set the rates. If there wasn't a supply of folks, with skills adequate to do the work, willing to take these jobs for $20K less, then all of the "cranky old people" would find their positions empty. Obviously, they don't

Is it worth $20K less to live here? If so, why?.

[urbanvb]

One glaring difference would be the cost of housing. The median sales price in HR is $308482 versus Novas' $531k. The difference in mortgage payments would be about $1500 per month which would virtually make the $20k difference a wash. Of course a down payment could make a lot of difference.

Edited September 27, 2007 by urbanvb

[Telmnstr]

Being a guy that likes to see numbers, I went and looked at the BLS stats on IT wages in HR vs. other areas. Interesting data that shows, on average, IT jobs in HR earn almost $20K less than in NoVA. Table is below, but the question is why? Completely dismissing Tel's rant against "cranky old people" setting wages too low, my experience is that the prospective employees set the rates. If there wasn't a supply of folks, with skills adequate to do the work, willing to take these jobs for $20K less, then all of the "cranky old people" would find their positions empty. Obviously, they don't

Is it worth $20K less to live here? If so, why?.

Hmm that is odd, that seems very low. I wouldn't move up there for anything less than $120K.

Also, do remember that just like Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia and the DC metro area is in a housing bubble. The people up that way say that inventory is massive, there are many new homes up there. Unfortunately the housingtracker doesn't go back to 2001. DC will fall like HR will fall, DC should come first (they saw their run up first).

http://www.housingtracker.net/askingprices...ton-Alexandria/

As far as salary information, here is the 2006 survey results that I have. It's quality. The numbers are a bit different, but it shows DC @ $85K+ for sysadmin:

http://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/sage/sage-06-salary.pdf

Rental numbers are all over the place.

There are other factors, like, perhaps there are more companies willing to do stock options and what not. There might be more opportunities for good people, versus standard gov't contractors that don't really care as long as they get money from the customer.

*shrug*

[adctvmonkey]

Kind of a sad note, but I've been noticing that Ryan homes, a prominent builder in major cities and especially Northern Virginia, has entered the Peninsula market through Stonehouse and some other neighborhood in Williamsburg and another neighborhood beside the Yorktown battlefield, the latter two being NoVa style townhomes. I guess HR is going to see more NoVa style cookie cutter homes =/.

Edit* I forgot to add, I live in a townhome like that, and it isn't exactly the best. But yes indeed, there is a massive inventory here, and there are several homes in my subdivision that have been on sale since I moved here - 2 years ago. There's also some very expensive single-family homes that have sat just as long and empty. They're considered very nice and in a very excellent location in the metro, but they're just too expensive for what they are (objectively) and there aren't many prospective lookers that come through, if any. However, things aren't as bad in my community as they probably are out in the exurbs. It seems to me that prices can only come down. The last I heard in the Post, the median price of a new home in Ffx Cnty. was something around $963k and over a million in Montgomery Co. Md. Absolutely ridiculous.

Edited October 3, 2007 by adctvmonkey

[adctvmonkey]

Moody's economist says HR one of handful metros to ride out potential recession

[adctvmonkey]

Warner lauds modeling, simulation hub of HR

Ninety private businesses are responsible for 6,000 high-paying jobs in the region.

Edited October 9, 2007 by adctvmonkey

[scm]

PMI Group's U.S. Market Risk Index gives a 40% likelihood of home price declines in two years for the Hampton Roads metropolitan statistical area

PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., the U.S. subsidiary of The PMI Group, Inc. (NYSE: PMI), today released its Fall 2007 U.S. Market Risk Index(SM), which ranks the nation's 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) according to the likelihood that home prices will be lower in two years. For the 50 largest MSAs, the average score, weighted by population, was 329, translating into a 32.9 percent chance that prices will be lower in two years. The average risk score for the 50 largest MSAs was down 17 points, or 1.7 percentage points, from the previous quarter. The index shows that declining home prices have improved affordability, which led to minor decreases in risk scores for most MSAs.

"Home price appreciation rates have slowed significantly and have gone negative in some areas. This will cause some pain in the immediate future. But in order to restore a healthy market balance, prices need to come back in line with incomes," said Mark F. Milner, Chief Risk Officer of PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. "The drop in appreciation rates and slight improvements in affordability caused the average risk score to decline 17 points, the first drop since the fourth quarter of 2004. Despite this slight drop, the risk of price declines remains high nationally, and particularly high in California, the Southwest, and Florida."

HR potential for price declines ranked right beside San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA, Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA, Nassau-Suffolk, NY and San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA. Chief culprits in the HR's high ranking were slowing price appreciation, and little to no increase in affordability.

The entire report is available here.

[urbanvb]

Economy ranks poorlyTwo studies show slow growth for region

The region

[vdogg]

Good lord. I think i'm gonna cancel my subscription to the newspaper if bad news keeps coming out like this. What a depressing few weeks.

[rusthebuss]

Everyone talks about it being bad here but no one is willing to step up to change things. Its going to take people that want this region to step to do something about it. People need to stop running from the area and embrace it and change it. How, I'm not sure but if a group of us that have the passion can and will make a difference if we are willing to do it.

[Telmnstr]

This is strange, but the more imports that come through our ports (without real exports), the worse it is for our country. We import goods and export scrap metal and materials.

As far as bad news, I'm afraid we are in for quite a bit of it. And I don't really think it's just Hampton Roads. As a country our business leaders and political leaders are failing us pretty hard. You can't get rid of all the jobs, protect all the corporations, and expect things to remain rosy for the common people very long.

Much of the economy over the past few years has been propped by up debt extraction from housing. Using the house as an ATM machine, or HELOC loans is how it's normally put. This is drying up though, and is going to show up. When people watched their homes double in value in a year, it made them feel rich. As that pulls back, it will cause them to save money. They won't feel as wealthy.

As a country we need to get back to innovation, and stop dumping our jobs overseas with the only benefit of a better bottom line for a quarter so some wall street people and board members can get rich. We are supposed to exist as a service economy or something, but if you've done business with many of the US companies the calls end up overseas, or even if they terminate in America the service is pretty bad.

But in regards to bad news, burying one's head in the sand is not a solution. The past 5 years have been unsustainable. Economy driven by speculative mania in housing and the so-called War on Iraq. The water is receding into the ocean, and eventually it will be discovered that we are swimming naked.

[adctvmonkey]

I agree.

[Telmnstr]

I agree.

I just can't figure it out. The main stream media seems to work against the good of the country. They pumped the housing mania all the way, and even to this day I have yet to see any real reporting from our local paper. The blogs I read track the articles all across the USA. It's sad, and it flushed an absolute TON of money from the lower and middle classes to the upper class.

Look at our Presidential Candidates. The only one I've seen that really questions the future is Ron Paul ®, and he doesn't really get the time of day. He has some odd views, which doesn't help.

[cpeakesqr]

I just can't figure it out. The main stream media seems to work against the good of the country. They pumped the housing mania all the way, and even to this day I have yet to see any real reporting from our local paper. The blogs I read track the articles all across the USA. It's sad, and it flushed an absolute TON of money from the lower and middle classes to the upper class.

Look at our Presidential Candidates. The only one I've seen that really questions the future is Ron Paul

[Telmnstr]

I love Ron Paul... until he starts talking about cutting out necessary parts of government.

Yea... eliminate the CIA? What?!?

Arrrgh

What are you going to do.