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REALTOR RURSDAY
A Conversation with Karl Trommler of PenFed Realty, LLC in
Washington DC Metro Area
Our Town Washington DC and the surrounding area is a treasure Trove of historical sites, entertainment venues and great restaurants. We feature the nation’s most famous residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, the White House. We are also home to the Smithsonian Museum and all of their facilities like the National Gallery of Art, the National Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Holocaust Museum just to name a few as well as private venues like the Newseum, a recently added museum that features the history of news reporting in the US and is located on New York Avenue NW. ·In fact, you could visit a different area museum every week and take 20 years to cover them all.
Because we house and entertain residents from virtually every culture in the world we also have world class restaurant versions of every possible cuisine. ·Some sample choices include: ·Serbian Crown in Great Falls, the Dubliner Irish Pub in Washington DC near Union Station, L’Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls as well, Passage to India in Bethesda, Maryland, Il Porto in Old Town Alexandria and a wealth of Asian cuisine in the China Town Section of DC and this doesn’t even scratch the surface of possibilities.
Entertainment includes a wide variety of shows at the world renowned Kennedy Center, Concerts and sporting events at the Verizon Center, plays and concerts at Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts and outlying venues like Maryland’s Merriweather-Post Pavilion or Virginia’s Nissan Pavilion. ·You can also visit the National Harbor, a new town center style development on the Maryland side of the Potomac River which features a variety of great restaurants, the world class Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center and an ever growing residential real estate market that features condominiums and town homes in a variety of price ranges. ·They also have a water taxi that runs between the Harbor and Old Town Alexandria where you can visit even more restaurants, clubs, museums and entertainment venues. I have not even covered the National Parks like Great Falls Recreation Area, Manassas Battlefield (one of many Civil War Parks) or Theodore Roosevelt sland Park.
We also feature professional basketball, baseball, football and hockey teams which each have new, state of the art facilities. I could go on and on about all of the suburban areas and their many offerings but whether you choose Loudoun County, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria or hundreds of other communities it is hard to beat northern Virginia when it comes to entertainment.
The People Northern Virginia as a whole is the most ethnically diverse/international and wealthy part of Virginia, and contains three of the ten highest income counties in the U.S. ·About 2 million people (about 1/4th of Virginia’s total population) live in Northern Virginia.
There is extensive further diversity within the groups above with white residents from the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and a host of other nations. Spain, all South American nations and Central American nations and Mexico, among others, are represented in the Hispanic population, our black residents hail from African nations, the middle east as well as Europe and a wide variety of other countries and our Asian community includes people from both Koreas, China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and India just to name a few. We are truly a melting pot of the world’s peoples.
A 2008 study found that northern Virginia has the highest life-expectancy rate in the nation. People in Arlington County, parts of Fairfax County and Alexandria live an average of 82.9 years. That’s five years longer than the average American. So what is it about northern Virginia and its age-defying ways? Good health care, good schools and a healthy lifestyle all contribute to longevity. The area is also more educated and more affluent than the rest of the country, further indicators of how long a person will live. Things like this coupled with relatively low crime rates as compared to similar urban areas, a stable job market, a strong rental market with lots of options and every possible home choice option in a wide variety of price ranges from below $100,000 to $15,000,000+ prices not only attracts new residents but tends to help retain those we have. However, our median price range is among the highest in the country and taxes while certainly not out of line in the northeastern US will tend to be a surprise to someone coming from a less expensive and less populated area of the country.
Schools and Taxes Fairfax County’s public school system includes the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, an award-winning magnet school. 19 of the region’s schools appear in the top 200 of Newsweek’s America’s Top Public High Schools, which excludes schools such as Thomas Jefferson for having selective admissions. In comparison, Washington, Maryland, and the rest of Virginia have 10 schools between them in the top 200.
Although Northern Virginia contains a large portion of the Commonwealth’s population, there are only a handful of colleges and universities in the region. The largest and most well-known is George Mason University in Fairfax, the largest university in Virginia. Other higher education institutions include Northern Virginia Community College (colloquially known as NOVA) in Annandale (with several branch campuses throughout Northern Virginia), and Marymount University in north Arlington. A relatively new addition to the roster of colleges and universities in the region is the University of Northern Virginia in Manassas, established in 1988. In addition, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech maintain a Center in Falls Church, and George Washington University has a campus in Loudoun County. Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems has a satellite campus in Fairfax at the INOVA healthcare system. The Pentagon Education Center also provides degreed programs, with all classes held locally, from institutions as far away as the University of Southern California.
Virginia’s property tax rate of 0.74 percent ranks it the 34th lowest. When based on dollar amounts, Virginia’s median property tax bill last year was $1,862, the 21st-highest in the country. The average property tax bill nationwide last year was $1,917.
Economy and Prices The Federal Government and the many jobs that they create as well as the many industries that have the Government as a major client means that northern Virginia has a large pool of employment opportunities that have relatively unaffected by the recent economic woes. Our real estate market and jobs market remain among the strongest in the country. While real estate prices have dropped, just like everywhere else, the decline was a lot less severe and the improvement has already started. We are seeing activity levels climb at a slight but ever increasing rate.
Going Green Another effect of having the Federal Government and all of the environmental agencies in our backyard is that we tend to lead the nation when it comes to being an environmentally friendly area. Virtually every community has required waste recycling with separate containers for trash and for recycled materials like glass, plastics, cardboard etc. We also feature a wide spectrum of green building initiatives, material and practices in both residential and commercial construction. We also have tight controls on emissions into the air and waterways and a variety of public and private cleanup campaigns occur regularly throughout the area.
The Future Major new transportation and development projects are ongoing with a multibillion dollar addition of new lines to the existing subway system that will extend the services into northern Virginia adding service that runs between downtown DC and Dulles Airport in Loudoun County. There will be several stops added in between which will take thousands of cars off the roads every day and result in significant decreases in emissions and traffic tie ups. There are also several major road projects underway such as the addition of hot lanes to the heavily travelled Capitol Beltway and the addition of an inter-county connector in suburban Maryland. There are also several major new developments underway like One Loudoun Place which will be a mixed use residential/commercial development with tens of thousands of various style residential units planned around a town center style area that will include shopping, entertainment and dining options.
Bottom Out Our area has definitely, barring any major new developments or government blunders, seen the bottom and put it behind us. Private-sector job growth has led to positive net absorption for multifamily properties, with supply constrained markets such as Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia, San Jose and Boston ranking among the best in the country, while markets bombarded by the weak economy and single-family housing collapse such as Florida, Las Vegas, Detroit, Norfolk, and Memphis faring the worst, according to Adam Fox, senior director, U.S. CMBS.
In Arlington County, the average number of days on the market in August was 50 days, down 2 percent from a year earlier. Fairfax County saw a 7 percent drop in days on the market to 39 days. In Prince William County, houses listed for sale sold in an average of just 35 days, down 13 percent from a year ago. Prince William County leads in price gains as well, with the median selling price in August up 13 percent from a year ago. Prices in Loudoun County were up 11 percent, prices in Fairfax County were up 10 percent, and prices in Alexandria were up 4 percent. Arlington County was the only jurisdiction where year-over-year median prices declined, down 11 percent from August 2009.
Preparing to Buy Anyone thinking about entering the northern Virginia housing market had better act sooner rather than later. Investors, who always represent the smart money in real estate, are already very active and prices are increasing as a result. However, the still great prices for this area coupled with the historically low rates make this almost a no brainer. In the case of our market, now more than ever, “he who hesitates loses”.
About Karl Trommler: Karl obtained his first real estate license in 1971 in Pennsylvania. He became a full time Realtor in 1984 in Reston Virginia. He has been involved in the business full time and as an investor since that time. Mr. Trommler has built and ultimately sold two successful agent teams, one in Virginia and one in Scottsdale Arizona. He has held licenses in PA, North and South Carolina, Virginia and Arizona and still has licenses in the last 4 states. He holds the Certified Relocation Professional and Certified Residential Salesperson designations and is a Graduate of the Virginia Real Estate Institute. He also served as a past Director on the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors (NVAR) and Chaired the Housing Needs Committee and the Housing Opportunities Foundation. He was a long term member of the Re/Max Central Atlantic Regional Sales Council, a lifetime Top Producer award winner at NVAR and a member of the Re/Max Hall of Fame. After selling his real estate team and retiring from sales Karl took a position with Long and Foster, the largest independent real estate company in the US, where he ran their SMARTMOVE® real estate affinity program. He currently works as the Manager of Marketing and Business Development for PenFed Realty LLC, the nation’s only Credit Union owned Real Estate Company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Pentagon Federal Credit Union. He was a founding member of the SHARE (Sterling, Herndon, Ashburn, and Reston) marketing network and his real estate marketing system was given an international award in Toronto Canada in 2001. In his sales career he participated in over 2,000 transactions and has helped his clients to make successful real estate investments in their principal residences, secondary homes and for profit real estate investment ventures. Karl Trommler holds undergrad degrees in Economics and Engineering and a Masters in Safety and Systems Management. He also holds advanced designations in the real estate and insurance fields and has worked in the Insurance Industry, the Chemical Industry, and the telecommunications and software industries. PenFed Realty, LLC is the only real estate company in the US owned by a Credit Union. Our parent company, Pentagon Federal Credit Union is the nation’s 3rd largest credit union and has about 1,000,000 members worldwide, many of whom are either active duty military or employed by the government or other industries related to the military. Membership, however, is not restricted to those groups. We offer an industry leading rebate plan to our credit union members that is up to 1% depending upon the specifics of the transaction details.
PenFed Realty, LLC
11864 Sunrise Valley Dr. Suite 101
Reston, VA 20191
(O) 703-716-2900 x 26
(M) 703-638-4480
(F) 703-716-0017
Karl.Trommler@penfedrealty.com
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This guest post is part of our Realtor Thursday Series. We invite realtors from towns and cities all over the country, big or small, to participate. Our goal is to “travel” to as many towns as we can in every state. Every town is unique and wonderful to our readers. If you would like to showcase your town, your neighbors and your talents as a realtor, please contact us at liz@dalesiegel.com