Thanks KPW
$12,000 a Year: The Hidden Costs of Owning a Home in the DC Area
While buying a home may be cheaper than renting for those staying put for at least seven years, homeownership costs extend beyond mortgage payments. The most recent Zillow and Thumbtack analysis breaks down the hidden costs associated with homeownership.
The report finds homeowners nationwide can expect to pay nearly $9,400 annually in hidden costs associated with owning and maintaining their home — an increase of $320 from last year. Mandatory costs such as property taxes ($2,239), utilities ($3,001) and homeowner's insurance ($1,087) make up $6,327 of that total. The remaining costs are for "optional" maintenance, rangin from gutter cleaning to HVAC repair and lawn care.
Given that home prices are high in the DC area compared to the rest of the country, homeownership's unavoidable annual costs are similarly higher, totaling $9,234 ($4,056 for property taxes, $3,181 for utilities and $1,998 for homeowner's insurance). Optional maintenance in the DC area is less costly, however, coming in at $2,790 annually. Below is a table showing how those costs break down in the DC area.
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Data from Zillow and Thumbtack. Click to enlarge.
You have to add extermination, chimney cleaning, snow removal and monthly repairs another $500 per year.
Utility costs are from UtilityScore's zip code-level data; maintenance costs are metro-wide averages of thousands of quotes from service providers on the six most popular services in each area. Homeowner's insurance figures are based on 0.5 percent of the median home value for the metro area.
Don Peebles: D.C. Entering A New Wave Of Luxury Hotel Development
Join newly appointed Hilton President, Americas Danny Hughes, The Cordish Cos. Chairman David Cordish, Interstate Hotels & Resorts CEO Mike Deitemeyer, Peebles Co. founder Don Peebles and more at Bisnow's Lodging Investment Summit!
DC Metro Retail
November 14, 2018 | Register Now
Featured Speaker
Andy Shallal
Founder & CEO, Busboys and Poets
Don Peebles, a national real estate developer who began his career in D.C. in the 1980s, has seen the nation's capital go through several distinct waves of hospitality development. The latest iteration, Peebles said, is the introduction of luxury brands typically associated with larger cities like New York or Los Angeles.
"The next wave to D.C. is the high-end, luxury, lifestyle hotels that have the capability of competing for a much broader demographic. Business leaders and political leaders will find the luxury lifestyle hotels attractive," said Peebles, a keynote speaker at the Bisnow Lodging Investment Series East full-day conference Oct. 23.. "It's the contemporary version of the Hay-Adams."
Peebles plans to break ground this fall on one of those new luxury hotels, the SLS Hotel at 901 Fifth St. NW. The 176-room hotel will be the first project featuring the high-end SLS brand in D.C. The luxury brand coming to Mount Vernon Triangle, plus several other high-end hotels coming to areas like the Southwest Waterfront and Union Market, marks a new era of the D.C. hospitality market that Peebles said would have been hard to imagine when he started in the business over three decades ago.
Before the 1980s, Peebles said, D.C.'s hotel market was centered around large-scale group hotels on the western side of town, such as the Omni Shoreham Hotel, the Wardman Park Hotel and the Washington Hilton. Then, in the early 1980s when the old D.C. convention center was built on the site now occupied by CityCenterDC, development shifted east and new hotels around the venue began to compete with the older hotels for group business.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Peebles said, another shift occurred, in which the size of hotels being developed began to shrink. Hotels were being constructed on corner and mid-block sites with much smaller footprints than their large-scale predecessors.
The real estate downturn caused by the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1990s halted D.C. hotel development for a period, Peebles said, and it was followed by another significant shift. With the economy not supporting development of office buildings or high-end hotels, he said cheaper, select-service hotels were built on prime downtown sites. An example of this was the Courtyard by Marriott at Ninth and F streets NW, which Peebles converted from a vacant office building in 1992 and sold just last year.
The next wave to hit the D.C. market, Peebles said, was boutique lifestyle hotels opening in the 2000s. These hotels included the Hotel George and the Kimpton Hotel Monaco, which opened in 2002. Boutique hotels continue to open in the D.C. market, but over the past few years, there has been a significant rise of luxury brands entering the D.C. market.
The supply of luxury hotel rooms available in D.C. has grown by roughly 17% since August 2012, according to data firm STR. The next two tiers below luxury, defined by STR as upper upscale and upscale, have grown by a combined 19% in the last six years. This growth is not slowing down. STR identified another 2,400 hotel rooms under construction or in planning across the three high-end segments of the market.
One of the largest luxury hotels to deliver in recent years was the InterContinental Hotel at The Wharf. Developed by Carr Hospitality, the 278-room hotel opened in October 2017. The hotel was ranked the No. 1 D.C. hotel in Condé Nast's readers' choice awards, released Tuesday, beating out the Four Seasons and the Trump International, another new luxury hotel that opened in 2016.
Carr Hospitality President Austin Flajser said he sees three reasons why luxury hotels have been on the rise in D.C.
The scarcity of land and high construction costs make it necessary to achieve high rates to get a return on investment. The perception of D.C. has changed from a government town to a more vibrant city with entertainment that brings in demand for high-end hotels. And the growing number of large-scale, mixed-use projects like The Wharf makes developers want to bring in the best hotel brands to complement the other components.
"If it's being built as part of mixed-use project, it's seen as being a part of placemaking," Flajser said. "You wouldn't want to build an economy hotel in the same project as a trophy office building. That's not to say there isn't room for both separately. But we're seeing it driven as a tool for placemaking and to support the cost of investment."
Another luxury hotel is under construction at CityCenterDC, the major mixed-use development on the site of the original convention center that brought D.C.'s hotel market to the East End. The Conrad Hotel will be the first property in D.C. with the luxury brand from Hilton. The 370-room hotel, featuring a restaurant from celebrity chef Bryan Voltaggio, is accepting reservations starting March 15, according to its website.
Two additional high-end brands have announced deals over the last year to open in D.C. neighborhoods not traditionally known for luxury hotels. In Northeast D.C.'s Union Market neighborhood, Virgin Hotels plans to open its first D.C. hotel, a 178-room project at 411 New York Ave. NE, next fall. In Southeast D.C.'s Capitol Riverfront neighborhood, Thompson Hotels signed on in March to bring its luxury brand to a 225-room hotel at The Yards development.
In addition to the growth of the luxury hotel market, D.C. developers see another major hospitality trend taking place in the city: an increased focus on social spaces over the hotel rooms themselves.
Abdo Development seized on this trend when it build D.C.'s first micro-hotel, the Hotel Hive in Foggy Bottom. With rooms from 125 SF to 250 SF, the hotel emphasizes its food and beverage offerings. It features popular pizza brand &Pizza and Hive Bar, which has an indoor lounge and rooftop bar.
The developer has achieved success with the first iteration of the brand, operating around 95% occupancy, and now is working to expand it nationally. Abdo is working on a Hive Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, has two more planned in yet-to-be-announced cities, and ultimately has much larger ambitions, having secured trademarks for the brand in the U.S. and Europe. Abdo CEO Jim Abdo said the trend of growing social spaces is beginning to take hold of the larger hospitality market beyond just the micro-hotel concept.
"Even when you look at conventional hotels, they're starting to rethink what their public spaces look like and how that interfaces with the hotel," Abdo said. "When you look at new generations that are going to be filling hotels going forward, you better take notice of this. You have to be fluid enough to recognize what the public is saying."
Foxhall Partners principal Matt Wexler also sees a growing trend toward public, socializing spaces happening in the D.C. hospitality market. The 220-room Line D.C. hotel, a redevelopment of a former church that Foxhall built with Sydell Group in Adams Morgan, represents a prime example of that trend. The hotel, which opened in December, features a large, public atrium with three restaurants, two bars and a coffee shop. It also has a community radio station that broadcasts live from the hotel lobby.
"Activating public spaces and making them feel welcoming, not just a place for hotel guests but for the community, that's something from a neighborhood perspective that has been lacking in D.C. and now it's becoming somewhat fashionable," Wexler said.
Peebles, Flajser, Abdo and Wexler, plus executives from Hilton, Trump Hotels and other top hospitality companies, will speak Oct. 23 at the Bisnow Lodging Investment Summit East event at the Hilton McLean Tysons.
Emergency Legislation Halts Providence Hospital Closure | | The Washington Informer
https://washingtoninformer.com/emergency-legislation-halts-providence-hospital-closure/
Thanks Dr. Roscoe Moore
20 Disturbing Pictures That Show What Life in the U.S Looked Like Under Jim Crow Laws ~ vintage everyday
https://www.vintag.es/2018/10/life-under-jim-crow-laws.html
Thanks Januwa Nelson
A Century Later, a Little-Known Mass Hanging of Black Soldiers Still Haunts Us - Progressive.org
http://progressive.org/dispatches/a-century-later-a-little-known-mass-hanging-of-black-soldier/
FYI.....Not in the history books.
Thanks KPW
Mary Cheh Introduces Bill to Seal Eviction Records, Give Tenants Notice of Eviction Filing
"The harm caused by these sometimes permanent records can be particularly acute for low income residents," Cheh says.
Darrow MontgomeryWard 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced a bill during Tuesday's Committee of the Whole meeting to reform how D.C. Superior Court handles and maintains records of eviction proceedings, an effort to ameliorate the sometimes "lasting, dramatic impact" an eviction can have on a tenant's life, Cheh said. The bill will also require landlords to notify tenants of their intent to file an eviction lawsuit 30 days before they do so.
"District law does not currently provide for eviction records to be sealed or expunged. As such, they follow a tenant indefinitely, impeding a tenant's ability to find housing," Cheh said during the Council's hearing on Tuesday. "The harm caused by these sometimes permanent records can be particularly acute for low income residents and those who have experienced homelessness."
The bill, co-introduced by At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds will require D.C. Superior Court to seal the eviction records of tenants after four years, as well as in a number of other cases, including if the housing provider receives a judgment of $500 or less, if the tenant was evicted from a locally or federally subsidized housing program, if the housing provider violated D.C.'s housing code, or if the housing provider sued a tenant for eviction after an act of domestic violence or stalking. The bill includes a clause that would give the court discretion to determine whether it should seal those records under other circumstances as well.
Cheh's bill also implements a number of measures that aim to protect the privacy of the evicted tenant, banning "a person or business entity" from publishing the contents of a sealed eviction record if that person "knows or should know that an order to seal a record has been issued under this section." That person would be liable for actual and compensatory damages, as well as attorney's fees, if they publish the contents of those records anyway.
"We're in a period of time, at least at the local level, where especially post-Ferguson, I think there's a far greater sensitivity to things like criminalizing petty behaviors, evictions ... how can you recover from some of these things? This is a piece of a greater sensitivity to how poor people, people without means, struggle in ways that maybe we haven't been sensitive to in the past," Cheh says. "We have expungement for criminal records, and bankruptcy we have fresh start. Why don't we have something here?" (She cites reading Matthew Desmond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted as an impetus for thinking about the "disturbing social harm" evictions can cause.)
The issue of how to make eviction proceedings more humane occupied much of the Council's time during its last legislative session. In April, City Paper reported that the U.S. Marshals Service––the federal law enforcement body responsible for carrying out evictions in D.C.––planned to change its eviction proceedings, and would no longer direct landlords to toss tenants' belongings onto the sidewalk after an eviction.
And in May, the Council began to weigh how it should legislate around the Marshals' new policy, considering a series of both emergency and longer-term measures to establish guidelines for the removal and storage of evicted tenants' belongings. A September hearing of the Council's housing committee provided little indication of whether a consensus approach between lawmakers and advocates exists.
For now, Cheh also says she'd like to tweak the bill, making clear that housing providers cannot discriminate against prospective tenants based on their eviction history. "Should they suffer an eviction, there should be an end at some point" to the consequences, Cheh says. "But we're starting a conversation." The bill was jointly referred to the Council's housing and judiciary committees.
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