November 27 2018
Amazon's long-awaited HQ2 announcement arrived earlier this month: The tech giant will be splitting their new headquarters between Queens' Long Island City neighborhood in New York City and the Crystal City neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia — with about 25,000 employees expected in each location.
So, what will an influx of these jobs mean for the real estate markets in Long Island City and Crystal City?
If you talk to anyone who's looked for a place to buy or rent in Seattle over the past few years, they'll probably give you an earful about the impact of Amazon on the market. Competition has gone up, and median prices have skyrocketed at a rate outpacing national growth. They've nearly doubled in the span of four years.
Even though the Seattle market cooled a bit this fall, housing remains more expensive than it was a few years ago.
Long Island City is just a subway ride from Manhattan, and people are flocking there for real estate that's more affordable than what's downtown. Old warehouses and shuttered businesses are coming down, and pricey high-rise apartments and condos are going up.
In short, Long Island City was already growing quickly without Amazon – and HQ2 would speed up that process, likely with some growing pains along the way. A bigger question is whether there's another nearby neighborhood that stands to blossom as the workforce in Long Island City expands.
Technically, Amazon is opening an HQ2 in "National Landing" — a new neighborhood that will include parts of Crystal City and Pentagon City. But to keep things simple, we'll call it Crystal City.
Because the Crystal City real estate market had already been expanding, the area has a little more infrastructure in place – a walkable downtown, for example. But similar to Long Island City, housing demand has been on the rise for a while in Crystal City.
This move could drive up prices in more distant Virginia suburbs as people are priced out of the neighborhood. Though, some say this is already happening because of rising housing prices in the DC area.
Like we mentioned above, we don't know what percentage of Amazon employees will be existing residents or people who are new to the area. For people who aren't familiar with the area, there's one place almost all of them are going to look for a real estate agent: Google.
If you're in the New York City or DC metro areas, you should get your Google business profile up and running now so it has plenty of time to grow (building trust with both Google and those who search for you), show up in more search results, and garner positive reviews.
To view the original article, visit the Homesnap blog.