U r b a n T r e k k e r

job, career and eternity

One of the most important things you can do for yourself is to recognize the distinction between your "job" and your "career".  A job puts bread on the table.  It's just a job.  A career is what you were meant to do, what you love to do, whether it makes money or not.  A job focuses on your immediate needs, like money to pay the mortgage.  A career focuses on your wellbeing.  And by extention, the wellbeing of others surrounding you. 

Most peoples jobs, are not their careers.  When you get out of college you think ok, I'm going to get this job in this industry and make a career out of it. Most people get stuck there.  They live their whole life climbing a ladder they know in their gut doesn't really make them happy.  Others recognize the disconnect.  They hate their job.  They think, is this it?  Is this all there is?  What they really hate is the fact that job is keeping them from what they really want to do.  They would love to be doing something else.  Well, that something else, or perhaps something something else, is their real career. 

This Week in Real Estate

Heard it on the news, that Alan Greenspan is considering to raise federal funds from its historically low of 1 percent. The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions lend balances at the Federal Reserve to other depository institutions overnight. Many analysts think that this probably wouldn't happen when member of the Feds meet for their May 4 meeting. But, there is a possibility that it might happen sometime this year.

Whenever Greenspan hinted that interest rate will change, it impacted the overall financial market, sometimes for a short duration but, other times for a much longer duration.

When Greenspan gives us one of these world-changers, in knowledge that he is inducing a bond-market wreck, his delivery is always the same: complete, blinking-through-Coke-bottles innocence. A wreck it was. Bond prices fell, and the 10-year T-note yield leaped almost to 4.5 percent for the first time since last fall. Mortgages rose to 6 percent, but our worst day was today, up to 6.125 percent.

Is this rate rise an overreaction?

Uh-uh.

We knew three weeks ago that the job market had shifted gears, and then got revisions of 1st quarter 2004 inflation measures from sub-1 percent to almost 1.5 percent. This week brought more confirmation of a March sea-change: orders for durable goods doubled the forecast, rising 3.8 percent, and the Fed's "beige book" described a nationwide up-shift in growth. GDP growth in the 1st quarter may have been in excess of 5.5 percent.

How about what's happening in the Washington DC real estate market?

Neighborhood Watch: Shirlington

About Shirlington

Shirlington is one of Arlington County's urban villages in the southern part of the County. It borders with Alexandria, adjacent to Interstate 395 and within minutes from Washington DC. Unlike Clarendon that is close to Metro Station, Shirlington is one the two urban villages in Arlington that is not  built around Metro station but rather served by Metrobus system.

The neighborhood is centered around what used to be Shirlington Shopping Center on 28th Street which was built in the 1940's and it is known today as - Shirlington Village. The village is now the home of more than 10 restaurants, and a local Cineplex Odeon with seven theatres where you can catch foreign movies, indies and other popular movies. Another treasure in this neighborhood is Classica Theater, that features plays and dramas.

This Week in Real Estate

The Washington Post lead the story about the quest for bigger homes that help drives growth in DC exurbs. What is "exurb" anyway? According to wikipedia, the online free encyclopedia services, here is the definition of exurbs:

Exurbs are rural communities that, due to proximity, are becoming suburbs of a major urban area. Exurbs tend to be populated by people that work in the city and bring their capital home to spend on local services. Exurbs are commonly viewed as the only rural communities which are benefiting from the rural exodus. These communities tend to be highly competitive.

Washington DC was the only one among 10 metro areas that added jobs last year. Last year alone, DC added nearly 80,000 new residents to a population of 5.7 million people. As a result, the population growth outstrips the housing supply that drives double digit housing prices in and around this area.

The region pattern reflect a national dynamic in which different types of communities get their population pushed from other sources. Fast-growing outer counties attract people from local or faraway in search of more space and bigger homes they could purchase closer in.