Ethical Homes» falls-church

Easily Contact Hypothermia Shelters in the DC area

sweth — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:35:38 +0000

As we prepare in the DC area for what’s expected to be our first big snowfall of the season, many of the area’s homeless population will find themselves without adequate shelter; here are some phone numbers that every local resident should keep handy so that they can request assistance for anyone they see who might need it during the upcoming weeks.

DC’s hypothermia hotline is the model that all other local jurisdictions should seek to emulate; if you see a homeless person in need of assistance inside the District, just call their hotline and they will send someone out to provide them with blankets, gloves, etc., as well as transportation to the nearest shelter if needed.

DC Hypothermia Hotline: 800-535-7252

Unfortunately, most Northern Virginia jurisdictions appear to rely solely on individual (often privately-run) shelters to assist with hypothermia during the winter and do not have any sort of specific centralized hotline that you can call. In our experience, however, calls in those jurisdictions to the local non-emergency police numbers will usually result in an officer at least checking on the person in need of assistance and often assisting in getting them to shelter. Those non-emergency police numbers are:

Alexandria Non-Emergency Police: 703-838-4444
Arlington County Non-Emergency Police: 240-777-4000
Fairfax County Non-Emergency Police: 703-691-2131
Falls Church Non-Emergency Police: 703-241-5053

Local Maryland jurisdictions do have centralized hotlines, but the staffs at those hotlines often can’t assist in the pickup of people in need, so we are providing the numbers for both the hotlines and the local non-emergency police dispatchers:

Montgomery County Community Crisis Center: 240-777-4000
Montgomery County Non-Emergency Police: 301-279-8000
Prince George’s County Homeless Hotline: 888-731-0999
Prince George’s County Non-Emergency Police: 301-333-4000

(These are the contact numbers for the jurisdictions closest to Washington DC; if you know of the appropriate contact info for other jurisdictions in the Metro DC area, please let us know and we would be glad to add them to this page.)

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Foreclosure Listings Temporarily On Hold

sweth — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:54:16 +0000

Due to some technical issues that we’re currently trying to resolve, we’ve had to put the public foreclosure listings on hold temporarily; in the interim, if you’re interested in seeing the foreclosure listings for a specific area, please contact us and let us know what area you’re interested in and we can send you those listings directly or set you up with an automatic search to email them to you regularly.

For those who are interested, the specific problem is that MRIS, the local multiple listing company through whom we were posting those foreclosure listings, recently added some features to their software, including the ability for users to tag properties that they might be interested in. The problem is that for public listings like these, that “feature” was more of a bug, since there is no way for their software to distinguish between the hundreds of different anonymous visitors who were reviewing the listings; as a result, everyone’s “favorite” properties were all mixed together, so that everyone could see each others’ listings and there was no way to know which ones were yours.

Unfortunately, there’s currently no simple way to turn those features off, and the confusion among the people who were contacting us after they saw other people’s listings in “their” list was just too much to deal with, so for now we’ve had to suspend the public listings. It’s a perfect example of unintended consequences–MRIS had simply never thought about the possibility that more than one person would be viewing a particular posted set of listings–and we’re busy working with them to get this resolved in a way that will let us resume those postings, hopefully this week.

Again, if you’re interested in seeing the foreclosure listings for a specific area, please contact us and let us know what area you’re interested in.

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Bank-Owned Foreclosure Inventory in Arlington County & the City of Falls Church (Week of 8/2/09)

sweth — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 16:18:21 +0000

As a public service for buyers, Ethical Homes is glad to publish a list of all of the available bank-owned foreclosure properties in Arlington, VA and Falls Church, VA for the week of 8/2.

Basic information for each new or changed bank-owned property from the last week is provided in that list, as well as pictures and virtual tours (if available); we also include the address, so if you are potentially interested, you can feel free to drive by the property to take a look from the outside on your own.

(If you’re new to our bank-owned inventory lists, be sure to check the archives for any listings from previous weeks that might still be available.)

If you would like more details about any of these properties or would like to explore your opportunities for purchasing one of them, let us know.

We are also in the process of setting up regular tours of all of the foreclosure inventory in Arlington & Falls Church; if you would be interested in participating in one of those tours, please contact us and we’d be glad to notify you when those tours begin.

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Bank-Owned Foreclosure Inventory in Arlington County & the City of Falls Church (Week of 7/26/09)

sweth — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:51:33 +0000

As a public service for buyers, Ethical Homes is glad to publish a list of all of the available bank-owned foreclosure properties in Arlington, VA and Falls Church, VA for the week of 7/26.

(If you’re new to our bank-owned inventory lists, be sure to check the archives for any listings from previous weeks that might still be available.)

If you would like more details about any of these properties or would like to explore your opportunities for purchasing one of them, let us know.

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Bank-Owned Foreclosure Inventory in Arlington & Falls Church (Week of 7/19/09)

sweth — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:24:10 +0000

As a public service for buyers, Ethical Homes is glad to publish a list of all of the available bank-owned foreclosure properties in Arlington County and the City of Falls Church.

Basic information for each property is provided in that list, as well as pictures and virtual tours (if available); we also include the address, so if you are potentially interested, you can feel free to drive by the property to take a look from the outside on your own. If you would like more details about any of these properties or would like to explore your opportunities for purchasing one of them, let us know.

We are also in the process of setting up regular tours of all of the foreclosure inventory in Arlington and Falls Church; if you would be interested in participating in one of those tours, please contact us and we’d be glad to notify you when those tours begin.

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Bank-Owned Foreclosure Inventory in Arlington & Falls Church (Week of 7/12/09)

sweth — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 12:48:09 +0000

As a public service for buyers, Ethical Homes is glad to publish a list of all of the available bank-owned foreclosure properties in Arlington County and the City of Falls Church.

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June 2009 NoVa Housing Statistics

sweth — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 12:17:30 +0000

The June 2009 statistics are in for the Northern Virginia housing market.

Here are the initial NVAR/MRIS statistics for June 2009 home sales activity for Fairfax and Arlington counties, the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church and the towns of Vienna, Herndon and Clifton.

A total of 2,169 homes sold in June 2009, a 14.16 percent increase above June 2008 home sales of 1,900.
Active listings decreased by 27 percent from last year, with 7,617 active listings in June, compared with 10,440 homes available in June 2008. The average days on market (DOM) for homes in June 2009 decreased by 14.46 percent to 71 days, compared with 83 days in June 2008.
Sales prices continue to remain lower than those realized last year. The average sales price in June fell by 7.42 percent from June 2008, to $451,354, compared with last June’s average of $487,549.
The median price of homes sold in Northern Virginia in June was $392,367, which is a decline of 5.68 percent compared with June 2008′s median price of $416,000.
The number of pending home sales in Northern Virginia in June shows an increase of 17.12 percent at 2,463 compared to 2,103 in June 2008.

Sales activity in Greater Northern Virginia (the above jurisdictions plus Prince William, Loudoun and the Greater Piedmont counties) for June 2009 shows a very slight increase from June 2008.

The number of Greater Northern Virginia region homes sold in June was 3,657, a 2 percent increase from June 2008′s total of 3,586 sales.
Along with the increase in home sales for June, there was also an increase in the number of pending home sales, from June 2008′s 4,054 to 4,465 pending sales in June 2009, a 10.14 percent climb.
The average sales price of $382,980 in June 2009 continues to lag behind the 2008 average by only 6.91 percent. The June 2008 average sales price was $411,388.
Across Greater Northern Virginia, the number of listings showed a decrease from 2008 numbers, with 14,730 listings active, which is 34.54 percent less than this time last year, when 22,501 homes were available.
The average DOM for a home sold in June 2009 was 75 compared with last year’s 99 DOM, a decrease of 23.88 percent.

These numbers reflect a summary of a wide variety of areas; market trends in individual area within the larger market can vary significantly from the summary values, sometimes by as much as 50% or more. Here are links to the statistics for individual jurisdictions within Northern Virginia:

If you would like to see the statistics for other specific cities or counties, or for a specific zip code or neighborhood, let us know and we’d be glad to send them to you.

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DC Area Property Taxes

sweth — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:13:53 +0000

Real estate taxes for properties in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area can be levied at up to four levels: by the state; by the county/city; by the town or other locality; and/or by a special tax district. Here is a quick review of the current property tax rates for metro DC area jurisdictions.

An overview of the real estate tax rates for the jurisdictions in the metro DC area where most of our clients are purchasing real estate is given below, along with links to the appropriate websites for the jurisdictions in question. Unless otherwise noted, taxes are cumulative between overlapping jurisdictions. For example, the taxes levied by the Town of Herndon (in Fairfax County, VA) are in addition to the taxes levied by Fairfax County; similarly, the taxes levied by Montgomery County, MD, are in addition to the taxes levied by the State of Maryland.

Some jurisdictions also create special tax districts that impose additional taxes on properties within those districts, to fund specific local projects such as maintenance or improvement of a specific transportation corridor; we note those jurisdictions below. If a special tax district covers all (or nearly all) of the jurisdiction in question, we include those additional taxes in the rate shown for the jurisdiction, and note that fact.

The information provided here is compiled from official sources published by the jurisdictions in question or (where necessary) reputable news sources, and is believed to be correct as of the date indicated. This information is not guaranteed, however, and buyers who are concerned about their potential tax burden when purchasing a home should always contact the appropriate taxing authorities to confirm all applicable tax information about the property in question.

District of Columbia: 0.8500% (last verified 7/1/2009)

DC Office of Tax & Revenue

DC Property Tax Rates
Maryland: 0.1120% (last verified 7/1/2009)

(Note: 2009 values not officially published as of 7/1/2009, but they appear to have remained at 0.112% as they were for the previous 3 years.)

MD Department of Assessments and Taxation

MD State Property Tax Rates

MD County/Locality Property Tax Rates
- Howard County: 1.0140% (as of 7/1/2009)
  
  Howard County Department of Finance
- Montgomery County: 0.8630%-2.7230% (as of 7/1/2009)
  
  Montgomery County Department of Finance–County Taxes
  
  Note: Montgomery County calculates real estate taxes based on a property’s classification into one of 46 tax classes spanning 39 special tax districts that can levy up to twelve “special service area” taxes. Specific rates for a given property can vary from as low as 0.8630% to as high as 2.723% (not including the additional tax levied by the State of Maryland); a rough summary of those rates can be found online at the MD County/Locality property tax site linked to above, and a more detailed table is available on the Montgomery County Dept. of Finance website, but it is imperative that a prospective buyer of a property in Montgomery County check with the county and the public record to verify the specific tax rate in effect for that specific property.
- Prince George’s County: 0.9600% (as of 7/31/2009)
  
  PG County Department of Finance–Real Property
  
  Note: Prince George’s County calculates real estate taxes based on a system almost as arcane as that of Montgomery County, and further complicates issues by not publishing their tax tables on their website. The rate listed above is the base rate as claimed by the state, but specific rates for a given property can vary from that value significantly depending on the locality of a particular property; a rough summary of those rates can be found online at the MD County/Locality property tax site linked to above, and a more detailed table is available on the Montgomery County Dept. of Finance website, but it is imperative that a prospective buyer of a property in Prince George’s County check with the county and the public record to verify the specific tax rate in effect for that specific property.
Virginia: No state-wide tax
- Arlington County: 0.8750% (as of 8/1/2009)
  
  Arlington Department of Real Estate–Tax Assessment Rates
  
  Note: The Arlington County base tax rate is 0.8650%; however, a county-wide Sanitary District tax was created in 2009 that adds an additional 0.0100% to the tax rate, resulting in the rate listed above. This additional levy is not currently (as of 8/1/09) reflected on the Arlington DRE website, but the assessor’s office confirms that levy, and local settlement companies are including it in their calculations.
- Alexandria (City of): 0.9030% (as of 5/1/2009)
  
  Alexandria Department of Finance–Real Estate Tax
- Fairfax County: 1.0510% (as of 8/1/2009); special tax district rates may also apply.
  
  Fairfax County Department of Tax Administration–Tax Rates
  
  Fairfax County DTA–Other Tax Districts
  
  Note: The Fairfax County base tax rate is 1.0400%; however, a county-wide Stormwater District tax was created in 2009 that adds an additional 0.0100% to the tax rate, as well as an existing county-wide Pest Prevention tax district of 0.0010%, resulting in the rate listed above. Note that additional tax districts are common in Fairfax County; please verify the specific tax amount for any property that you are considering purchasing.
  - Herndon (Town of): 0.2400% (as of 7/1/2009)
    
    Town of Herndon–Taxes/Licenses
  - Vienna (Town of): 0.2281% (as of 7/1/2009)
    
    Town of Vienna–Real Estate Taxes
- Fairfax (City of): 0.8800% (as of 8/1/2009)
  
  City of Fairfax–Real Estate Tax
  
  Note: The City of Fairfax does not list their current tax rate on their website; the value given above is the value shown in an example on that website, and was confirmed to us when we called the City Treasurer’s office, but since the City of Fairfax does not officially publish this rate anywhere, extra caution should be used when estimating taxes using this number.
- Falls Church (City of): 1.0700%
- Loudoun County: 1.2450% (as of 7/1/2009); special tax districts may also apply.
  
  Loudoun County–Taxes and Decals
  
  To check the special tax district status of a given property, look up the property on the Loudoun County tax assessor website and click on “Tax History” to see what tax districts the property is in.
- Manassas (City of): 1.3500% (as of 5/1/2009); special tax districts may also apply.
  
  City of Manassas–Tax Rate Schedule
- Manassas Park (City of): 1.6500% (as of 5/30/2009)
  
  City of Manassas Park–Treasurer
  
  Note: The City of Manassas Park does not list their current tax rate on their website; the value given above is the value reported in news sources and public documents, but to confirm an exact value, the City Treasurer’s office should be contacted directly.
- Prince William County: 1.12891% (as of 7/1/2009); special tax districts may also apply.
  
  Prince William County–Tax Rates
  
  Note: The Prince William County base tax rate is 1.212%; however, a county-wide special tax district to fund Gypsy Moth control and another nearly-county-wide (excluding the Town of Quantico) district to fund Fire & Rescue services have been created that add an additional 0.0025% and 0.0746% respectively to the tax rate, resulting in the rate listed above. Additional special tax districts may also apply.

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