Home prices in Washington, D.C. have skyrocketed so high that lower and middle income families are being priced out of the area, a new report finds.
Statistics show that whereas 31 percent of lower income families owned their homes in 2001, now that number has fallen to only 19 percent. That, as the Washington Post noted, is a precipitous fall of 40 percent.
As homeownership among the city’s lower income levels has fallen, the percentage of ownership among middle class has remained constant, but that means it hasn’t grown either. Despite that fact, the paper seemed to think that ownership is “shifting” toward the middle classes (and the rich) despite that the middle class saw no growth in ownership.
But none of this should be very surprising. After all, many of the richest cities in America are clustered around the Washington, D.C. area.
Another report found that some of the richest counties in the nation are also in the vicinity of D.C.
Already the cost of living in D.C. has become so high that it takes over $108,000 a year to live comfortably in the District.
In January, the Post reported that “D.C. has the third-highest percentage of households earning at least $150,000 a year among cities with at least 500,000 people.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com