Wealthiest county? Other numbers tell a different tale

Well I have been saying this for awhile there made be more smoke and mirrors here there reality.

http://www.loudountimes.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=18105316&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=507589&rfi=6

Lee j

 

Lee,

I appreciate reading your frequent posts on this forum. But what is your point in citing this poorly written article?

You often say that loudoun seems richer than it is because it has few poor. This article implies that there are poor here. Although the only statistic he cites that backs his point is the chronically homeless people jumped from 16 to 52 in one year. The other homelessness statistic mentioned is almost the same as the growth rate.

The mortgage default statistics are not compared to national trends. The consumer debt statistic is a national one, tied to Loudoun only by the opinion of the author.

Being the wealthiest counties out of thousands of counties does not really mean anything. It is a snapshot, and a very narrow statistic. It's likely not to be the case with the next census. What is true is that we are a very affluent county. Thats not to say that there will not be economic turbulence in the future, but your assertion that all is false and our wealth bubble will burst is crystal ball fortune telling.

 

True but it does say that the cost of living is high.

What that says to me you need to make a lot more money to stay even with other less costly areas.

I do think the article proves that because there are still very few poor here it skews the statistics in my opinion.

I think my response above is even more poorly written then the times article so what can I say. You can tell I must be having a boring day!!1

Lee j

 

I assumed that you linked the article because it said things were getting worse. If you just meant the homeless numbers by itself meant there are few poor, then I agree with you.

Also, I meant that the article was poorly written because of the author's poor critical thinking and analysis. I don't think typos or spelling errors in a blog make someone a bad writer. If that was the case then I am certainly a bad writer.

I agree that the high cost of living may not make one feel very wealthy. But if one saves a good percentage of their income, it is better to live in a high cost/ high income place. When you finally start winding down on the work when you get older, you can move to a less expensive area.

 

Yanno what, though... I moved here from Boston. That wasn't cheap either. What IS cheap these days? The middle of nowhere. And even some of them aren't cheap either. We do NOT own the market when it comes to high cost of living. New York, California, New England, Hawaii, and lots of other places are ridiculous too. We're not alone there.

 

Thanks for sharing the article, Lee. I had not seen it, and I think it is pretty interesting in its data and conclusions.

 

Agreed. I actually moved back here from California because houses were at least still within my reach unlike the situation there. I was in an apt at the time, unable to afford a TH or SF. THs within 30 miles of my work (silicon valley) were not touchable for anything under $600k and even those were tiny by comparison. Every year I watched the NOVA prices creep up and in 2005 I moved realizing things were on pace to make me incapable of moving back. Unfortunately that happened to be the peak Anyhow my point being that I moved here because real estate was actually significantly cheaper, at least bringing things in the affordable range.

 

Yah,
I grew up in Central CT, not to be confused with Southwestern CT, which is a suburb of NYC. When I visited, I was surprised to see how little house I could buy for the same money as my house here. I stopped complaining about the cost of housing in LOCO immediately.