If the process sounds bewildering, Housing Counseling Services in Adams Morgan is holding workshops for first-time homebuyers several times in the coming month:

November 12—11:00 AM

November 19—11:00 AM

December 2—6:00 P.M.

December 3—11:00 AM

December 10—11:00 AM

December 17 –11:00 AM

A bit more information from the group:

Housing Counseling Services, Inc. (HCS) a HUD approved non-profit, now offers FREE weekly Pre-Purchase Orientations for first-time homebuyers. HCS housing specialists provide a detailed walkthrough of the purchase process and explain how to make your transition from renter to homeowner easier.  The orientation will also discuss the Home Purchase Assistance Program (HPAP) and the Employer Assisted Housing Program (EAHP), DC government programs that provide 0% loans for down payment and closing costs.

For more information contact Elsa Zambrano: @ (202) 667-7604; The Housing Counseling Service office is located at 2410 17th Street NW Suite #100; Adams Alley Entrance

2008 Third Quarter: 333.0

2008 Fourth Quarter: 295.1

2009 First Quarter: 279.4

2009, Second Quarter: 319.2

2009 Third Quarter: 324.7

Check out the guy, center of the road, toward the back: Uh, oh.

For all the District’s talk of dangerous pedestrian corridors—and it’s commendable, absolutely— we’re doing pretty well here.  I suspect that this has much less to do with road maps than overall drivers’ attitudes: They know people and vehicles share the road. We look for each other, wave in acknowledgment, and gesture to suggest “No, no, you wait—I’m gonna keep walking now.”

It works.  They apparently have a different way of going about things in Florida, though. Behold, below, a ranking of the worse cities for pedestrians. It’s part of a report, out yesterday, put together by Transportation for America.

D.C.’s below the jump.

Image by Transportation for America, Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License.

The Peebles Corp. wants to build a hotel at the site of the old Stevens School.

A while back, I wrote about the proliferation of boutique hotels–both recently-opened and in the works–in Washington D.C. and drew up a list of all the new options flooding downtown with their sleek leather furniture and funky lighting (and annoying websites with intolerable ambient music).

At my latest count, there are eight–EIGHT!–sites to consider in the District. For the whole list, check below the jump.

National Public Radio has an explanation for this madness in a recent story. At one point before the recession, customers were willing to pay about $80 more to stay in these special hotels rather than generic chain places. Boutique brand managers just expect that one day, it will all turn around again.:

[Reed Woodworth, a hotel industry analyst for PKF Consulting] says investing in new locations during a downturn can keep customers loyal and interested. But it’s risky.

“It’s still pretty much the wisdom in the hospitality world that this is going to be a rather slow climb out of this hole,” he says. “So while they are riding the upswing as it were, it still looks to be a very gradual upswing over the next few years.”

That means it could be a long time before these hotels make money. After all, people have gotten used to paying low rates for high-end hotels.

There are several proposed hotels in the works:

• In Adams Morgan, there’s a hotel planned the corner of Champlain and Euclid Streets.
• On U Street, there’s a hotel planned for the corner of U and 13th Streets.
• The Franklin School building downtown could go hotel.
• The neighbors in the West End are dying for a boutique hotel in the old Stevens School.
• One finalist to redevelop Hine Junior High School pitched a Kimpton Hotel for the Eastern Market area (…but they didn’t win the site, after all).
• The Me by Melia chain is expecting to open a location in Mount Vernon Square, as a commenter pointed out.

Plus several new additions:

• Starwood Hotels’ W brand just opened up a hotel, next to the White House, and the CEO envisions more Washington D.C. hotels, according to the Washington Business Journal.
• Plus, Thompson Hotels opened up the Donovan House by Thomas Circle in early 2008.
• The Jefferson Hotel on 16th Street just reopened.

Image by Peebles Corporation

After writing yesterday about the four vacant, city-owned homes recently listed for sale, I talked to the real estate agent for the properties, Matt Cooper of Alex Cooper Auctioneers, which ran January’s auction of roughly 30 similar houses. (These four homes, in fact, were snapped up during the initial auction; but the buyers couldn’t follow through.)

Cooper says the properties were made available late last week, and that his company is hoping to entice investors “that we’ve worked with before”—though, of course, he’ll take a regular homebuyer not afraid of purchasing a property “in grave need of rehab.”

All offers must be in by Feb. 5, 2010, though Cooper says the District is ready to sell as soon as the price is right, be that tomorrow or by the final deadline.

Images courtesy Alex Cooper Auctioneers.

100 Bryant St. N.W. in Bloomingdale, which was bid up to
$380,000 in a January Auction.

Back in January, the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) held an auction for some 30 vacant homes and properties around D.C.

Sure, most were slummy—boarded up windows, austere yards, watermarked brick—but buyers recognized the few jewels, and in two cases threw down nearly $400,000.

In total, the properties could have generated up to $4.845 million if all the sales went through. Unfortunately, some didn’t.

But today, DHCD announced that it had hired Alex Cooper Real Estate to market four remaining properties. The four properties are:

• 475 Florida Avenue NW (Listing price: $225,000; Shaw)
• 3620 Rock Creek Church Road NW (Listing price: $125,000; Columbia Heights/Petworth)
• 805 7th Street NE (Listing price: $225,000; H Street corridor)
• 627 Keefer Place NW (Listing price: $175,000; Park View)

The Florida Ave. property is not in a bad location, in my opinion. It’s near the Shaw-Howard Metro Station, within walking distance from the center of the U Street corridor, and close to Bloomingdale’s little charms. It is in need of “extensive rehabilitation” though, according to listing materials.

The Northeast house is also well-situated near H Street, but it’s not much of  a home per se. District officials are in the process of demolishing the structure, and are really just selling the “extra deep lot” with room for a two-car garage or carriage house, according to the listing materials.

Image from the Department of Housing and Community Development

In D.C., roughly one out of every 445 people filed for the credit. In the entire state of Maryland, 23,679 have filed for the credit, roughly one out of every 237 residents.  In Virginia, 40,527 have filed for the credit, roughly one out of every 191 locals. (I calculated these numbers comparing the original figures with population estimates from the Census Bureau’s 2008 survey.)

The tax credit information comes from Jim Dupree, a spokesperson with the Internal Revenue Service. (I’ve blogged about the homebuyer credit frequently in the last few weeks as the newest version of the popular credit was making its way through Congress.)

So 1,329—not terribly impressive?

I wouldn’t say that.

First, there are a few points of explanation and caveats to note:

These figures include people that applied for 2008’s first-time homebuyer tax credit for up to $ 7,500, in addition to the people filing for the  $8,000 credit, which arrived later on.

The numbers also only take into account people that filed for their credit on or before August 22 of this year.  And there are, presumably, plenty of people who bought houses in anticipation of filing for the credit with their 2009 tax documents, due next April. You can apply for a reimbursement immediately—but you don’t need to.

So these numbers are, well, only indicative of the scale of the credit’s impact in each area’s market.

Also, naturally, Maryland and Virginia are going to see more first-time homebuyers combing through their foreclosure-ravaged communities. Home values in D.C. have barely dropped in comparison to those in Prince William County and Prince George’s County.

I’m writing about the first-time homebuyer credit in my column this week. I talked to one Capitol Hill agent that worked with 11 first-time homebuyers in the last few months; eight have been in D.C.    Of his clientele, most are “nonprofit folks, government employees,” looking for houses priced at $250,000 and below.

Think about which neighborhoods in D.C. will meet his clients’ criteria. Not many.

Just like they did on H Street back in August, the D.C. Department of Transportation is now laying down tracks in Anacostia. The trains on this line are expected to be up and running by 2012.

Starting today, traffic by the intersection of South Capitol Street and Firth Sterling Avenue, will be subject to a half mile detour. (For more detailing information, see DDOT’s advisory.)

This phase of construction will last through Nov. 21. But, additional work will continue in the area until mid-January. The Department advises:

All motorists are encouraged to use alternate routes to avoid delays, including:

I-295 North to Suitland Parkway to South Capitol Street SE

Malcolm X Avenue SE to Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue to W Street to 13th Street to I-295 North

South Capitol Street SE to Suitland Parkway to I-295 South

I-295 to 11th Street Bridge to Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue to South Capitol Street

Image from DDOT

Okay, in truth, the following list should read Real World, Real World, Affordable Condos, Real World, Real World, First-time Homebuyer Tax Credit, Real World, Real World, Real World, Real World. It’s an unstoppable force! as I predicted.

But in the name of variety and, well, a “housing complex,” I’ll leave most of the Real World posts to be discovered by Googlers and those that click on the top link. All the bios I wrote about the various roommates are collected there.

(1) Here They Are D.C., Your Seven (Eight, Actually) Strangers!

(2) D.C.’s Designated Affordable Condos Are Great—Just Don’t Move Any Time Soon

(3) Congress May Pass New Homebuyer Tax Credit This Week

(4) Homebuyer Tax Credit Will Extend Through July

(5) First-Time Homebuyer Credit Will Be Extended…But How?

(6) Now That’s What I Call a Sidewalk!

Image from MTV