Originally Posted by MediaArtist
The Median household income for Washington D.C is $58,526, that's not extremely high, or even much higher than the national average of around $52,000.
The median sold price for a home is $449,000. We're talking a 7.6x income multiplier here.
Washington D.C is completely overpriced, and not a great deal according to empirical data, and economic fundamentals.
LOL. I didn't reference Washington DC - I referenced areas in the Washington DC Metro area. A lot of people live in the surrounding areas outside of the downtown Washington D.C in Northern VA and Maryland.
For example - I referenced Loudoun County. From your the same census date source the median income is $115,574. A lot of people that people that work for the government or support the government in some capacity live outside of Washington DC itself. Hence you have instances like Loudoun, Fairfax, and Howard counties where the incomes are very good.
Likewise for Loudoun the median sold price for a home was 495,000. That's a factor of 4.3. (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51107.html
But aside from the pure numbers... there is more to doing analysis of an area than just looking a couple numbers from the census. Just looking at numbers and not knowing the context or area can be a dangerous thing. Some people look at data like that and take it like it's gospel. Not to mention that census data source has housing values that span the housing market collapse (2006 to 2010)... which I'm sure skews the statistics itself.
Biggest risk to DC area is government jobs. If the government starts cutting programs and positions.. this area could be hurting big time. Government related jobs are in large part what maintain the income around the DC area.