I'm sure the Metropole condo will be lovely, and I do like the location at 15th and P, but who's really going to want to spend $6 million on a five bedroom Logan Circle condo? It just doesn't seem plausible to me; DC doesn't really have the young rich hedge fund demographic that might buy something like that.
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Nice House
08 May 2008 03:21 pm
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DC doesn't really have the young rich hedge fund demographic that might buy something like that.
It doesn't? Then why do all these assholes act the way they do? I just figured they were loaded.
I used to walk by there (2003) to Whole Foods for lunch, and I would occasionally bum cigarrettes to a homeless guy who hung on that corner. Looks like gentrification has really kicked in there...
Not too suprised though, I lived just NW of there on 14th and R, and it was a strange brew of yuppies, gay guys, and the projects.
Twenty years ago I had a friend living there and we would walk over used syringes and crack vials to get to his apartment building. So yeah, things have changed, but $6 mill is crazy talk.
[W]ho's really going to want to spend $6 million on a five bedroom Logan Circle condo?
Someone who's not paying in dollars.
Consider this an extension of a regular Atrios feature.
With 5 people in some sort of joint partnership that's only like $1.2 million a piece! Maybe the flophouse should consider an upgrade in living standards?
It just doesn't seem plausible to me; DC doesn't really have the young rich hedge fund demographic that might buy something like that.
You'd think not. Yet Yogi Berra reasoning applies in NYC and New Haven; why not DC? Namely, how lower- and middle-class denizens keep getting pushed out of their neighborhoods by rich anuses running rental and purchase prices into the ionosphere. The lower- and middle-class have not been moving up the ladder in large numbers for years now, yet there still seems to be an infinite supply of rich anuses pricing everyone else out of the market. Eventually all the people paid to lick rich people's toilets clean in NYC will have to compress themselves into two dimensions on the Nassau County border, because all those vitally-important traders and fund managers will have made everything else a theme park for rich anuses.
why not DC?
Because for $6 million, your options in DC are legion. You can buy at least 6 3-story rowhouses in the same neighborhood. Compounds used as embassies go for similar prices.
$6 million? Wait...who just signed a check for $6 million?
Maybe this is Hillary's new campaign head quarters?
Did Dupont Circle go from Yuppie to depressed and back in just 30 years? In 1972, I visited a friend who rented a house there, and the whole area was great. My chief impression of DC as a place to live came from his house on Dupont Circle. 30 years seems like too short a time to go from nice to crummy and back again.
I'm betting bums just came to where the money was.
Six million is still a fair chunk of money around here (DC); $1 million's not, but six is.
One could argue that this is a case where size matters-- Five bedrooms in a new downtown building compared with rather smaller and much older units up on Connecticut or Kalorama. Maybe.
Maybe not hedge fund managers, but I hear trust fund scumbags are heavily represented in DC.
Jeffrey,
15th and P was not Dupont Circle back in the day. I lived at 15th and T in 1988 and although it was styled "Dupont Circle East" it was more than a little rough.
I remember the condo site as the Duron Paint Store -- and it was much closer to the projects and homeless shelters on 14th Street than the Circle.
And DC denizen is right -- there are a fair number of people here who can come up with $1 million, but I think very few who can handle $6 million -- and the majority of them are not going to be seeking a condo in an edgy neighborhood.
I predict that this proves to be less than successful.
I actually can't figure out how so many people can buy $1 mill homes in DC.
Then again, I live in a city where people only tend to spend around 2-3 times gross income on their houses, and $1 mill will get you a mansion (in fact, less than that will get you a mansion).
Someone who's not paying in dollars.
Not too long ago, I saw an ad for a similarly pricy Chicago development in some airline seat-back magazine. The copy was a "slice-of-life" run-through of how a resident might use all the building's services --- on a hastily scheduled trip from their primary residence in London.
to tell you the truth, I'm involved with a guy who gave serious consideration to putting in a bid on that Penthouse a couple of years ago when they first started building. I don't know if the asking price was $6 million at the time or how much the market has changed in the past few years (he ended up somewhere else) - but yeah, Matt - there's a very big slice of DC that a 20-something privileged yuppie from Harvard who spends time mulling over whether he should blog outdoors or not just misses out on. Don't mean to be harsh, but in many ways you're very out of step and tone deaf to a lot of DC and it's sometimes very amusing to watch you pontificate about the place as if you've always lived here.
Saudis, or similar. The young scions who don't want to live in the big estate in the 'burbs.
Ethel: tell us more! About the real, hidden, DC!
It's only one unit, anyway, so it doesn't take a whole demographic to buy it. I agree, however, that recently built and under construction condo towers are in trouble in a number of cities. Too many luxury condos are on the market right now. I don't know if DC is an exception.
I'm amazed they're actually going to deliver; the building has been under construction (or not, for a good portion of the time) for the last three years or so.
You'd have to amend that description to "rich, young, DUMB hedge fund trader." Either that, or some flaky pop music artiste with more money than sense.
And I hate to think what taxes on that thing are.
but yeah, Matt - there's a very big slice of DC
A big slice of certain country clubs, maybe.
... a very big slice of DC that a 20-something privileged yuppie from Harvard who spends time mulling over whether he should blog outdoors or not just misses out on.
The funny part about this is that this very big authentic slice of DC is apparently an echelon above Harvard yuppies.
The message is obviously that Matt should spend less time slumming it off U-Street and start getting involved with guys who give serious consideration to plopping down $6 mil on gaudy pieces of shit. Hoorah, Ethel. Keep it up enlightening those tone-deaf proles.
Just let me be clear - I mentioned this the other day to much abuse and derision when I commented upon Matt assumption that people who had "jobs" (Matt's quote, not mine) would not have a problem coming to a 6pm book signing.
Something that Matt appears to be blind to, and that others tend to take an antagonistic view towards is the legal culture in DC - as opposed to the political/journalistic culture which captures most peoples' imaginations of what DC is like. DC is a lawyer's town - more per capita lawyers (and probably more from the best top schools) than anywhere else in the country. People who regularly work long hard hours (and it's not just the associates) and who get paid accordingly. People who don't spend their time in trendy coffee houses or pondering the utility of blogging outside on a gorgeous workday. These people start off with 6 figure salaries in their 20s and only go higher as they get older. By the time they're in the 40s, having made that kind of money for 20 years and successfully upgraded their real estate holdings a few times, that type of condo is definitely in the realm of desire and possibility. Back in the day once they'd arrived at a certain point they might have gone for the estate out in McLain or the townhouse in Georgetown as a sign of status - nowadays, a presitigious downtown condo with a view of the monuments fills the bill. And there are a good number of people, who Matt is evenidently unaware of, who meet this criterion and choose this lifestyle - it's not just a thing for young hedge fund types. The fact that Matt seems to think it is, especially in a place like DC, really does highlight his comparative newness to and seeming ignorance of the area.
Take the Metro at 8pm from Metro Center or Farragut West - almost as full as during rush hour and filled with "suits". In many ways it's a very defining part of DC and DC culture that I don't think our Matt gets at all.
You may all commence with the snarky lawyer comments now.
This post seems awfully 2006. It's not worth $6m until someone pays that much.
Thank you, Ethel, for your valour in defending the impugned honor of big firm D.C. strivers, toiling away in obscurity while politicos and journalists get all the limelight. Is this an elaborate parody? Is the joke on me?
You are not the only one who has been outside Metro Center during rush hour. But not all those white guys wearing ties are partners skimming the billable hours of their indentured associates. There are government lawyers, public servants, and nonprofit attorneys who trade away salary in exchange for the power and influence they obtain to pursue their political goals.
If you are trying to say that lawyers maximizing their powers of consumption are a central part of D.C. culture, you are badly missing the big picture. The fact that you view political commentary as the pasttime of aesthetes appears to be of a piece with you also misapprehending D.C. legal culture. Salary does not track status or power in D.C. This is the defining aspect of D.C. legal culture,especially in comparison to N.Y. lawyers. It is also a defining aspect of D.C. generally. It appears to me that Matt has it dead on -- highly visible consumptive extravagance in D.C. is decidedly out of place.
That was the gorilla in the room. The elephant on the opposite end of the room is this: we ought to reserve the descriptor "out of touch" for someone who fails to attach significance to the fact that D.C. is overwhelmingly working class, majority black, with a large Latino population, one of the nation's homelessness capitals, with some of the most intense gentrification battlegrounds in the nation, home of the Black Broadway, and sporting excellent Ethiopian food, etc.
For the sake of disclosure, Ethel, if my comments veer on the extreme they should be seen as nothing personal to you, and instead are best read as an instance of me acting out my disgust for selfish strivers in the legal community and their backwards metrics of worth, having spent the past three years being bombarded with their solipsistic bullshit, and anticipating a lifetime of the same.
The fact that you view political commentary as the pasttime of aesthetes appears to be of a piece with you also misapprehending D.C. legal culture.
Totally missing the point St Joe. I'm not commenting on Matt's policial commentary - nor am I defending well-paid partners of big-name firms. What I am doing is pointing out that there is a whole class of professional people (and not just lawyers) who populate DC who have nothing to do with politics or journalism, that seem to fall beneath Matt's radar. Things like this are apparent when he, who has lived here a relatively short period of time, and apparently also has a limited frame of reference, opines abject generalizations about the city such as that he can't conceive of a market for an expensive downtown condos because of the lack of young rich hedge fund types here. To me it just shows a complete ignorance of a big slice of what DC is all about (for better or worse) - and it wouldn't be so grating if Matt weren't opining as some voice of authority.
To me it has the feel of some out-of-town type who moves to Brooklyn to become a hipster and who then thinks that he therefore knows everything there is to know about NYC.
Ethel, you've made the right rhetorical move, which is to capitalize on my disgust for hipsters.
I'll concede this,
What I am doing is pointing out that there is a whole class of professional people (and not just lawyers) who populate DC who have nothing to do with politics or journalism, that seem to fall beneath Matt's radar.
while reserving my point that highly visible consumption is not a key part of the D.C. esprit de temps.
Comments closed May 22, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Agent Zero's max contract social lounge and guest house.
Posted by SoCalJustice | May 8, 2008 3:39 PM