I think some of my best photography lately has been while sitting at the traffic light at King and Market Streets.  Lightfoot just seems to watch over the courthouse lawn…

Cheers,
Heather 

Image Credit

So I was surprised to see media stories popping up yesterday reporting that Loudoun County Public Schools had brought criminal charges against parents Amy and Mark Denicore for their three children’s habitual tardiness to Waterford Elementary. You can click through and read articles at the Loudoun Times, the Washington Post, msnbc.com, USA Today, and WTOP. Numerous other blogs and sites have commented as well…it’s certainly struck a nerve. Based on what I’ve read in the articles, I’ve pieced together the following:

• All three kids are under 10 and attend the same school, Waterford Elementary
• The tardiness issue has been going on since at least last year, with combined 150 lates for all 3 kids
• Each has been late around 25 or so times this year
• Parents were arraigned this week and trial date is set for March 14th
• Charged with a Class 3 misdemeanor under the state’s compulsory education law
• LCPS says the parents were warned numerous times about the issue

The court of public opinion has been noisy in the comments sections of these stories, and seems to be divided into two camps: there should be parental consequences for the habitual lateness, or the school system is ridiculously overreacting. My take is that there should be some sort of middle ground on this.

There is no excuse whatsoever for your children being late to school that many times. Period.

I don’t care how many children you have, what their ages are, whether you work or stay at home.  The habitual late arrivals are a disruption to the teacher, the classmates, and to the children themselves.  I say this as a mom of four children who have not been late more than once or twice, each, their entire school careers. And mine are split between two schools. (I’m also the child of a retired high school teacher.)

Of course it’s hard and crazy and requires a lot of coordination, scheduling, cajoling, and hustling. Welcome to parenting a large family.

That being said, I’m amazed that the school system took the step to bring criminal charges against the parents. I’ve never heard of this happening anywhere across the country before. I’m curious what Loudoun County schools did to help these parents before they filed charges. What type of warnings were issued? Did they try to help the parents with this at the school level?

I’m parked and following this story; if anyone can provide some insight into what steps were taken before the charges were filed, I think we’d all love to hear it.

Cheers,
Heather

Because the Loudoun County annual property tax assessments were just mailed, it’s probably a good time to take a look at whether your new assessed value matches up with the recent market data… Hop over to the post I just published at LoCoMarketStats.com that has the charts with the most up to date information:

From LoCoMarketStats:

Are you thinking about selling this spring? Or do you just want to make sure that your new property tax assessment matches up with market value? This should help: here’s the data for single family homes in Loudoun. If you want information targeted directly to your home and neighborhood, click here to schedule a consultation or sign up for an emailed market report.

Click here to see the charts…

Cheers,
Heather 

Bear with me today, I’m going to take a detour from our regularly scheduled programming, because this struck a nerve. Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I received the following email from our daughters’ elementary school:

In keeping with current practices designed to protect the health and safety of all children, elementary students in Loudoun County Public Schools are not permitted to distribute candy or other food items to classmates.  As Valentine’s Day approaches, it is important for parents to understand that candy brought to school by students, including candy attached to Valentine’s Day cards, will be returned to the parent.

Perhaps it was this way last year, too, but I don’t recall getting a strongly worded notice before the holiday. My reaction was “are you kidding me?!” followed with wondering if there was anything I could do to change this. Or at least make my voice heard.

Trust me, I understand that the intent behind this is to protect the students that have food allergies…but as parents we are informed at the beginning of the year if our child is in a classroom with a student that needs to be protected. In our tight knit community, I’m sure we could handle sending in appropriate treats that wouldn’t be a danger. (We manage to make it through lunch every day without incident.)

The candy at Valentine’s day issue is not the whole problem, unfortunately. We can’t send in treats for our child’s birthday. We can’t have a Christmas party, it’s a holiday party. The Halloween parade in the school is now a ‘spirit parade’ with themed costumes… (I think my middle schoolers dressed up as “math nerds”?) Most disturbing to me is that the time honored tradition of Field Day now awards ‘participation ribbons’. There is no first, second, or third place. On American Education Week, we are ‘strongly encouraged’ to show up at pre-assigned times for scheduled performances…just dropping in to observe our child’s classroom in action would be too disruptive, and is discouraged.

I don’t think that school administrators or school boards have malicious intent, but they have stripped so much of the fun of childhood out of the elementary school experience. I can promise you that my life wasn’t ruined, nor did I need therapy, when I didn’t win first prize in the water balloon toss. I sure as hell remember getting first place in the three -legged race, though, and those ribbons are in my scrapbook. And I remember my class parties from elementary school…we all knew what it meant if a boy gave you a small box of chocolates instead of a lollipop with your card! (The teasing was good natured, I assure you!)

Each of these smaller policies are not such a big deal when taken individually, but add them all together and we’ve chipped away at the experience that helps shape these little people into who they will become as adults. At what point do we stand up and say, enough already?

~Heather

With the mild winter weather, the spring real estate market is already showing signs of life in Loudoun County. Buyers are out and about, beginning to check out what homes are available. Sellers are deciding on pricing and when to list their homes as active on the market. And everyone thinking about a move, whether as a buyer or a seller, is trying to gauge the market to see where it’s trending.  If you are basing your thinking on the national news regarding the real estate market, you  are going to have a problem this spring: Loudoun County is NOT a buyer’s market. In fact, it’s edging very close to a seller’s market right now.

(I’m going to give you a moment to digest that.)

Sure, we’ve seen some articles recently that talk about how strong and insulated the Washington DC metro area  real estate market is, but I want to give it to you on a usable level…what’s happening in Montgomery and Prince George’s County (or heck, even Fauquier) doesn’t necessarily apply here. Looking at our absorption rate (the rate at which homes are selling) shows us that we have 3.9 months of inventory, and 3 months or less is a seller’s market.

Absorption rate is calculated by taking the number of active listings and dividing it by the number of homes that have gone under contract within the last 30 days. Six months or more is a buyer’s market, 3 to 6 months is a balanced market, and under 3 months is a seller’s market.

As of today, there are 1290 active listings, and 326 homes under contract in 30 days or less. That’s 3.95 months of inventory. (That matches with the most recent sales data from December, homes sold last month averaged just 69 days on market.) Now, that figure includes the new construction market. Some of those ‘active’ listings are just placeholder listings for models within communities: builders put in one active listing to represent all available lots with that model.  So their listings tend to skew the data on active homes.

Looking strictly at the resale market, removing the new construction listings and contracts, there are only 893 homes for sale in ALL of Loudoun County right now. Resale contracts in the last 30 days total 254…which puts the resale absorption rate at 3.51 months of inventory. Even closer to a sellers’ market!

What does that mean for you? If you are thinking about buying this spring, be prepared…if inventory levels do not increase, we will continue to see homes going under contract quickly, with the potential for multiple offer situations. (Yes, we have been seeing this for the last couple of months!) Be prepared and organized when you are doing your home search so that you can act quickly when you decide you are ready to offer on a home.

As a seller? We are not going to see the run-up in pricing that accompanied the craziness of the market in 2004 and 2005.  However, you can expect that if your home is priced appropriately and is prepared for showing and sale, you should be able to successfully sell within 3 to 4 months at the most.

Certainly, if everybody and their brother puts their home on the market next week and our inventory count goes drastically higher, that will affect our absorption rates for this spring.  This is obviously an overview for all of LoCo; different price points, home types, and neighborhoods will have different situations. If you want to know how this applies specifically to your home and your neighborhood (or the neighborhood you are looking to move to) you can click here to schedule a consultation.

Cheers,
Heather

Median Home Price for Loudoun County