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A Widening Divide Over Lost Deposits
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Builders should understand that the risk to their deposits is a hot, hot button for would-be buyers. Perhaps if builders found a way to help buyers manage the risk of financial loss during the construction period, they would find it easier to move some of that inventory that is dragging down their balance sheets.
Meanwhile, that inventory of ready-to deliver new houses provides buyers an opportunity to get a home without placing tens of thousands of dollars at risk for months on end. Just make sure you have a lawyer review the contract before you sign.
Last week's interview with the founders of two of the area's homegrown real estate brokerages, P. Wesley Foster Jr., of Long & Foster Real Estate, and John McEnearney, of McEnearney Associates, included their opinions about Washington area traffic as a housing issue. In the interview, Foster said, "So many people don't want you to widen roads; they want you to use Metro, public transportation. There's always a big argument going on."
And thus we have the following installment in that big argument.
Bruce Bennett of Vienna wrote: "I am one of those who supports NOT widening community roads. I, and many, many others, have been active for 30 years or more in the Fairfax County process. We have called for serious consideration of ever-increasing planning and zoning densities that fueled the runaway growth scenarios in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Today those decisions have changed our way of life.
"Throughout all those years I do not recall seeing anyone with real estate interests calling for a slowdown [in development] or even for more consideration of the potential damage being done by those political actions. On the contrary, what we have seen is obscene levels of campaign contributions, most of which have originated from real estate interests. And we have been assured by our elected officials that those contributions had no effect on their land-use decisions.
"We have seen a studied abdication of political responsibility by our elected officials for those actions that have enriched real estate interests and worked to create the transportation mess in which we find ourselves today."
E-mail Elizabeth Razzi atrazzie@washpost.com.
