Hampton Roads Housing/Real estate/and Economy

[mikefaceless]

Yeah its by the trailer park right? They went to BTW too and I knew some guys from that area. By the Wendys and behind the Shoney's right. Got Townhomes too.

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Yea! Thats the area. i lived there during hurricanne Gloria. Its insane looking on this site and seeing all the changes going on out there!

[mikefaceless]

Pick of one of my fish

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[rusthebuss]

Pick of one of my fish

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off topic a bit but what kind of fish is that?

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[rusthebuss]

Also, I'm not done with the tank. I have nothing on the back and need more rocks in the tank and it will come in the near future.

[BRONX BOY]

On VaBeach Blvd. in Norfolk

On Corprew Ave. next to Norfolk State University

Not a good pic but its public housing on Brambleton Ave.

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Russ,

I don't have any pics to post, but I do have a question. Are you very fimiliar with Hampton?

[BRONX BOY]

Russ,

I don't have any pics to post, but I do have a question. Are you very fimiliar with Hampton?

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Russ,

I saw in another thread that you work in Hampton...So I guess I answered my on question. The reason I was asking is because I had some family that was moving down south from NY, and they were deciding between VA & SC. Well they chose VA, and settled into Hampton. They moved into a section of Hampton called Farmington(off of Todds Ln & Farmington Blvd). Now being from NYC(Bronx) you only see neighborhoods like that in Riverdale(wealthy sec. of the BX) Westchester Co., Rockland Co, and most of L.I. My question to you... is Farmington considered a good neighborhood in the Hampton Roads Area? I mean with all the new developments and all, do neighborhoods like this lose their appeal to the transplants & younger people looking to purchase a home or their very first home. IMHO, I would move to Farmington @ the drop of a dime. It seems like a nice place to raise a family...

[rusthebuss]

Russ,

I saw in another thread that you work in Hampton...So I guess I answered my on question. The reason I was asking is because I had some family that was moving  down south from NY, and they were deciding between VA & SC. Well they chose VA, and settled into Hampton. They moved into a section of Hampton called Farmington(off of Todds Ln & Farmington Blvd). Now being from NYC(Bronx) you only see neighborhoods like that in Riverdale(wealthy sec. of the BX) Westchester Co., Rockland Co, and most of L.I. My question to you... is Farmington considered a good neighborhood in the Hampton Roads Area? I mean with all the new developments and all, do neighborhoods like this lose their appeal to the transplants & younger people looking to purchase a home or their very first home. IMHO, I would move to Farmington @ the drop of a dime. It seems like a nice place to raise a family...

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Honestly I don't know that neighborhood but it sounds like its close to Newport News and thats where alot crime takes place. This place is a little odd. You can go anywhere around this metro area and run into a bad spot. I'll look on mapquest and tell you what kind of neighborhood it is. Hampton overall has some of the less crime in the area. It has single digit murders and such so they should be ok. Vabeach has a better style of life but it is a king of suburbia.

[urbanfan]

Russ,

I saw in another thread that you work in Hampton...So I guess I answered my on question. The reason I was asking is because I had some family that was moving  down south from NY, and they were deciding between VA & SC. Well they chose VA, and settled into Hampton. They moved into a section of Hampton called Farmington(off of Todds Ln & Farmington Blvd). Now being from NYC(Bronx) you only see neighborhoods like that in Riverdale(wealthy sec. of the BX) Westchester Co., Rockland Co, and most of L.I. My question to you... is Farmington considered a good neighborhood in the Hampton Roads Area? I mean with all the new developments and all, do neighborhoods like this lose their appeal to the transplants & younger people looking to purchase a home or their very first home. IMHO, I would move to Farmington @ the drop of a dime. It seems like a nice place to raise a family...

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Man your family hit if off well. Farmington is one of the premier residences on the peninsula outside of Williamsburg. A couple new sections opened up back their and houses back their range from 250,000 - 500,000. It is also a secluded neigborhood so very little crime. There is only one way in and one way out. There are other neighborhoods in hampton that are even more ritzy but this is definately one of my favorites. I use to ride my motor bike back through there when someof the first homes went up. All of that track is gone now and nice new homes sit there. You won't find too many first time home buyers in these neighborhoods. Although, you can tell the difference in the homes built in the first section and homes being built now.

[BRONX BOY]

Honestly I don't know that neighborhood but it sounds like its close to Newport News and thats where alot crime takes place. This place is a little odd. You can go anywhere around this metro area and run into a bad spot. I'll look on mapquest and tell you what kind of neighborhood it is. Hampton overall has some of the less crime in the area. It has single digit murders and such so they should be ok. Vabeach has a better style of life but it is a king of suburbia.

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Thanks for the info....

[BRONX BOY]

Man your family hit if off well.  Farmington is one of the premier residences on the peninsula outside of Williamsburg.  A couple new sections opened up back their and houses back their range from 250,000 - 500,000.  It is also a secluded neigborhood so very little crime.  There is only one way in and one way out.  There are other neighborhoods in hampton that are even more ritzy but this is definately one of my favorites.  I use to ride my motor bike back through there when someof the first homes went up.  All of that track is gone now and nice new homes sit there.  You won't find too many first time home buyers in these neighborhoods.  Although, you can tell the difference in the homes built in the first section and homes being built now.

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Urbanfan,

Thanks so much for the info.......Yeah I noticed that too about one way in and one way out. I think that community is absolutely beautiful, I mean the lawns and everything is so well kept. Yeah, my aunt likes to have nice things...so I know that neighborhood fits her, plus they are older people.

[Telmnstr]

Okay, a bit of an introduction I suppose. I've lived in HR all my life. I have a decent job, but spend alot of money funding a tech startup that has yet to be profitable. I consider myself one of the few local tech visionaries. I was planning to purchase a home around 2004 as I predicted my income would approach a point in which I could buy something that I would be satisfied with.

Obviously I wasn't prepared for the increase in supposid values of the properties. My income reached the point in which I would have purchased, but now that has been put on hold.

I'm a bit of a bubble believer. After seeing all the arguments from the housing bulls, and seeing the facts that the housing bears point to, I tend to side with the bears. Bulls say it's a new paradigm, there is no more land, and real estate never goes down. Bear's point to statistics on insanely increasing consumer debt, risky loan products often not understood by those signing up for them, and stagnation in wages and real job growth.

Unfortunately our region isn't really in the scope of most statistics I see, so information is limited. I see all the figures and statistics about Vegas, MA, CA, TX, and other frothy markets. But HR, well most people on a national overview aren't concerned with our region. Every now and then. Once in a while I will see reference to our region in outside publications, the Washington Post mentioned our run up.

I'm interested to know if the growth in population in our region is due to gov't expansion due to "war" spending? I realize the simulations complex in Suffolk is growing as are a few other projects, what about other job growth? Is a large portion of the population increase people from larger bubble-markets realizing their gains on housing in Hampton Roads? Or are wealthy people buying second vacation properties in our region?

Also, I would love to know how many of the first time home buyers and local home buyers in general are using "creative loan products." You know, the loans with the balloon payment, the IO loans, the loans where owners expect to sell their properties at a large profit and move to a std 30 year mortgage?

I know of one person at least tracking the 25%, 50% and 75% percentile in terms of housing sale prices for this region. It will take a while for the data to really show anything, and the data source isn't 100% reliable (I don't believe it's from the local MLS system, it's being scraped from a national site).

I do see we are getting a large number of condo conversions. Ghent on the Square is undergoing conversions. I did rough math and I *think* the property is valued at $8 million (Via city of norfolk site) and should yield $28,000,000 if all units are sold (guessing a medium price on units). That would be a pretty nice profit. My friend who lives there but is unwilling to buy said the city just appriased the apartment at $280,000k... I believe condo conversions is considered the final stages of a market bubble, as owners cash out to build up savings to buy distressed properties during the downtrend?

Living in downtown Norfolk, I checked the annual gross incomes in 2000, 01 and 02 in the zip code I reside. Between 00 and 01 there was a $5,000 DECLINE, and between 01 and 02 there was yet another decline. Like other markets, it doesn't appear that our salaries are keeping up with inflation, let alone growing (to support the housing bubble).

Any opinions out there? Any other housing bears? I'm saddened to see young people I know high on the employment ladder entering such large debt contracts on places that seem so artificially inflated.

Also, how many properties are being bought as investment or 2nd homes (I won't say speculation, because anyone buying a house assuming it will increase in value is speculating).

[rusthebuss]

I really don't know. One thing that i did notice about our area is its behind in housing development and such. This just might be a catch that we are seeing right now. Also you talk about the income dt going down. That might be due to the number of retirees dt. I don't like the fact that my house is going up around 23% more next year. Taxes are going to kill me! But the people do it to themselves. I think we have decades of catching up and don't see our region is like the rest of the nation. We are playing catch up with them and don't see it bursting. I don't think Oceana closing will hurt us as bad as its being made out to be. Just My Opinion though and we will see once its closed!

[Telmnstr]

I really don't know. One thing that i did notice about our area is its behind in housing development and such. This just might be a catch that we are seeing right now. Also you talk about the income dt going down. That might be due to the number of retirees dt. I don't like the fact that my house is going up around 23% more next year. Taxes are going to kill me! But the people do it to themselves. I think we have decades of catching up and don't see our region is like the rest of the nation. We are playing catch up with them and don't see it bursting. I don't think Oceana closing will hurt us as bad as its being made out to be. Just My Opinion though and we will see once its closed!

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Ah, I just checked to make sure I didn't goof, and two ZIP codes in Chesapeake revealed near flat AGI as well, and one ZIP in Hampton. One did show about $1000 extra after 2 years. There are good free lookups at www.melissadata.com, include home sales by zip by month (with average price).

Someone who I trust told me real estate is slowing down majorly in Virginia Beach, but it could take a long time for that to turn into visible reductions in prices.

In terms of "catching up" ... I don't get that. We aren't going to catch up in terms of corporate growth, and jobs. Our region markets itself as low cost of living, low paying jobs, skilled workforce. I left what would be considered one of the high paying gov't jobs in the defense simulation industry, the pay wasn't that good and I was told upfront I wouldn't see much in the way of raises. I eventually left for a higher paying job elsewhere, I can't imagine what fuel prices are doing to some of the people out there that commute long distances.

Let's not sugar coat things, Hampton Roads is pretty ghetto.

[vdogg]

In terms of "catching up" ... I don't get that.

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By catching up he was referring to the housing market. It has been stated several times recently that there is an undersupply of housing in the Hampton Roads market. As long as this is the case, I would say that bubble is pretty much nonexistant. Wouldn't we first have to have an over supply of housing before we have to be concerned about the bottom falling out of the market?

[rusthebuss]

By catching up he was referring to the housing market. It has been stated several times recently that there is an undersupply of housing in the Hampton Roads market. As long as this is the case, I would say that bubble is pretty much nonexistant. Wouldn't we first have to have an over supply of housing before we have to be concerned about the bottom falling out of the market?

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That was exactly what i was stating. I've heard figures of upwards of 20-30,000 looking for houses with less than 10k housing available.

[vdogg]

Let's not sugar coat things, Hampton Roads is pretty ghetto.

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Nobody's sugar coating anything. We all realize and have stated that there are large areas for improvement in HR. One thing that a lot of people don't realize however is that there is just as much potential in this area. Some choose to focus on bringing that to light rather that just focusing on the negative issues (that's what the news media is for). I'd more call it optimism than sugar coating to be honest.

[urbanvb]

I believe we have the potential to be at least another Richmond but we have to get serious about where we are, where we are going and just what we want to be. I believe that is one of the problems. The identity crisis we suffer from (Hampton Roads, Tidewater) affects everything from media coverage to businesses that may locate here. We have got to find our niche and expand on that. I am mainly speaking of VB but probably other areas could benefit as well. For so many years VB was just a tourist area with beaches and lots of retirees and of course the military. In theory we are still a military town though a very large one. I hope one day we can shed that image and really start to draw in the kinds of businesses that will pay good wages. The peninsula is doing well with Langley and some high-tech businesses that are locating there. Norfolk is on the rebound with tons of housing projects plus the Trader company is building and expanding their presence here. We have a lot of positives around us but somehow we need to unify and grow our area accordingly.

[rusthebuss]

I believe we have the potential to be at least another Richmond but we have to get serious about where we are, where we are going and just what we want to be. I believe that is one of the problems. The identity crisis we suffer from (Hampton Roads, Tidewater) affects everything from media coverage to businesses that may locate here. We have got to find our niche and expand on that. I am mainly speaking of VB but probably other areas could benefit as well. For so many years VB was just a tourist area with beaches and lots of retirees and of course the military. In theory we are still a military town though a very large one. I hope one day we can shed that image and really start to draw in the kinds of businesses that will pay good wages. The peninsula is doing well with Langley and some high-tech businesses that are locating there. Norfolk is on the rebound with tons of housing projects plus the Trader company is building and expanding their presence here. We have a lot of positives around us but somehow we need to unify and grow our area accordingly.

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Very well said but I don't ever think we will shed the military town name until most of the military is gone. Most other areas don't depend on the military as much as we do for their economy. Until we lower the dependency and grow our economy into depending on more commercial companies or private companies.

[Telmnstr]

That was exactly what i was stating. I've heard figures of upwards of 20-30,000 looking for houses with less than 10k housing available.

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I would imagine that most of the large RE development companies are focusing on the hotter markets so they can extract the most money while the market is hot. There seem to be large developments of cardboard crapboxes going up, town houses, and condos...

I'm not an RE expert so I don't know is considered normal for numbers of rentals versus numbers of owned homes. It would be easy enough to extract that data for every zip in HR and graph it, but without having something to compare it against it would be meaningless. With RE appreciating so much, I would imagine much of the transient purchasers (military) that move hold onto their properties and rent. The last place I was in, we rented from a homeowner who couldn't sell when he was relocated. (BAD MISTAKE, guy had no idea how to handle a rental property). This would prevent property from going back on the market.

Perhaps if the market cools nationally, many of these new condo projects will get stuck and rush to liquidate? Condos are nutty. With a house, a huge portion of the value is in the land, with the improvement being the other half. You pay all this money for a condo, and don't own the land, and could be hit with high condo association fees.

Another thing is rents versus price to purchase. My friend rents an apartment for $1200-$1300. The city supposidly says it's worth $280k (after conversion to condo). The numbers don't jive. After 20% downpayment, the monthly mortgage should be slightly below the rent.

I dunno, I guess time will tell. Perhaps if RE deflates in many of the bubble markets people will exit? Also, if gov't spending slows, then that could wipe out many of our higher paying jobs. I know people at NASA are sweating their jobs, there could be some heavy loss up there.

[Telmnstr]

I believe we have the potential to be at least another Richmond but we have to get serious about where we are, where we are going and just what we want to be. I believe that is one of the problems. The identity crisis we suffer from (Hampton Roads, Tidewater) affects everything from media coverage to businesses that may locate here. We have got to find our niche and expand on that. I am mainly speaking of VB but probably other areas could benefit as well. For so many years VB was just a tourist area with beaches and lots of retirees and of course the military. In theory we are still a military town though a very large one. I hope one day we can shed that image and really start to draw in the kinds of businesses that will pay good wages. The peninsula is doing well with Langley and some high-tech businesses that are locating there. Norfolk is on the rebound with tons of housing projects plus the Trader company is building and expanding their presence here. We have a lot of positives around us but somehow we need to unify and grow our area accordingly.

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Richmond has more fortune 500 companies than our 2, correct? The identity crisis might be an issue, but many people know where Norfolk is. I don't think the identity would really help bring new companies. Companies are going to seek out a region for their reasons. Maybe they want to be near suppliers, maybe they want cheap monkey labor, maybe they want to be near clients. Langley I believe will be shedding a large number of jobs, and I'm not sure how many hi-tech businesses are really there. Symmantec lives up there, which grew out of the URLabs aquisition. Trader is nothing more than an existing company bouncing back and forth. They will relocated from the Picus buidling along i264 in Virginia Beach to Norfolk. It is not job gains for the region.

I believe the new port will be heavily automated, so large numbers of new employees won't really be needed. India is the new Silicon Valley.

What are the niche markets for HR? The cruise ship terminal in Norfolk is pretty interesting. I was optimistic about the Maglev project at ODU, but that isn't looking pretty.

Yea, it looks like rap music might be our #1 claim to fame.

[wrldcoupe4]

FYI..In 2005, Richmond had 11 fortune 1000 companies, 6 of which were in the top 500. Including Genworth financial which wasn't included, Richmond should have 12 fortune 1000's and 7 fortune 500's...

Dominion Resources

Circuit City

Performance Food Group

Brink

Edited September 14, 2005 by wrldcoupe4

[Telmnstr]

What are the two in HR? Norfolk Southern and..?

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Smithfield Foods? (It's not HQ in Norfolk, but it is considered HR, or at least that is my impression).

[Greekboy80]

Let's not sugar coat things, Hampton Roads is pretty ghetto.

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Huh? How so?

[rusthebuss]

Actually 600 jobs are relocating in from other states to DT Norfolk and Traders HQ was already in DT Norfolk. So it is gaining jobs to the area! The portion from the beach are internet part of the company.

[Telmnstr]

Actually 600 jobs are relocating in from other states to DT Norfolk and Traders HQ was already in DT Norfolk. So it is gaining jobs to the area! The portion from the beach are internet part of the company.

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Ah. I was going to ask if you worked for Trader Publishing or Trader Online (I believe the 2nd is half owned by Cox, while the first is Landmark). But then I looked at your profile and it says your a Verizon fiber tech. If you don't mind me asking, are you mainly transport or working the FIOS deployment out of the Great Neck CO?

(Telcom nerd, have a small company but we use Cox Fibernet. I dream of occupying a floor in the Bute Street AT&T CO, even though it will never happen).

That is the worst part of the Granby towers, it's going to obstruct the view of the one. I guess it's a good thing AT&T got rid of the microwave horns on top of the building.

Anywho, wish that bandwidth in HR was lower cost on the business tip. I've talked Cox down a good bit but it's still thousands a month for anything approaching real connectivity. Telcove could put some pressure, then all the wireless providers but I have no faith in wireless and prefer to have less between me and the 'net.