Eastern Market on Capitol Hill is said to be one of the few places, if not the only part, of Washington where the three resident communities of the American capital mix – the international contingent (embassy staff and IMF/World Bank types), the politicos working around the nearby US Congress and locals bringing a broad ethnic mix.
After moving to Washington with my wife and two young daughters from Stoneybatter in Dublin in January 2013, we wanted to live somewhere that had its own self- contained community but that was not far from the city, or Reagan National Airport and Union Station for all the travel that the role of a US correspondent involves.
Our home is five blocks east of Eastern Market, the indoor food market and home to a vibrant flea market, a stop on the tourist trail.
Parts of Capitol Hill, particularly the broad, tree-lined boulevard of the grand East Capitol Street running up to the Capitol, remind me of Ballsbridge, though the neighbourhood is closer in feel to Rathmines.
The charming late 19th-century and early 20th-century architecture of the two and three-storey red-brick townhouse terraces on “The Hill” and the very family-friendly parks, along with the spate of new restaurants, make this neighbourhood a very comfortable place to live.
The historical racial mix gave Washington, the first city in the country to have an African-American majority, the nickname Chocolate City accentuated by its predominantly vanilla suburbs.
Gentrification has turned this classification on its head in recent years. In 2011 a demographer at Washington think tank the Brookings Institution estimated that the city’s black population slipped below 50 per cent, 51 years after it gained a majority.
While the city is nothing as dangerous as it was in the 1980s and 1990s when, for a time, it was the murder capital of the US, Washington still has some very deprived neighbourhoods, in the southeast and northeast, both on the edges of the Hill. Blocks not far east of the Capitol were regarded as no-go areas about 15-20 years ago.
Things have dramatically changed since then, though random incidents of crime on the Hill remind residents of the area’s recent past.
Being the seat of the federal government, Washington was insulated from some of the sharp property price declines that other parts of the country experienced in the 2008-2009 financial crisis. On the upswing, real estate values have rebounded more significantly than elsewhere.
The city has fared particularly well over the past 13 years from the boom in the military industry and associated businesses that have sprung up to service the country’s involvement in two major international wars and the accompanying security costs at home.
The Department of Homeland Security, for example, was an entire new wing of government established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Washington has also been swept up in the general desire among Generation X-ers and Millennials across the US to return from the suburbs to embrace urban living. This, in addition to the attraction of free pre-school (three-year-olds) and pre-kindergarten (four-year-olds) in the city’s rapidly-improving public schools, has accelerated the gentrification of the city and turned Capitol Hill in particular into a much sought-after address.
The Hill is also a draw because people can walk or take the Metro, the underground railway, to work and avoid nightmarish bumper-to-bumper commutes on the notorious Beltway, Washington’s answer to the M50, out to the leafier suburbs of Virginia and Maryland.
The average house price on Capitol Hill is $688,100 (€502,000) and prices have risen by 9 per cent over the past year, according to US property website Zillow, though the closer you get to the Capitol, particularly along the western end of East Capitol Street, the bigger townhouses can sell for well above this average.
Max Baucus, the former Senator for Montana, asked for $1.2 million for his 195sq m (2,100sq ft) three-bedroom house near Eastern Market this year when he put it on the market after being appointed US ambassador to China. He bought the house in 2009 for $968,999.
Rental market
“We have seen steady growth in our real estate market for the last five years,” says Rick Hoffman, a regional vice president at property agent, Coldwell Banker. “What got us into trouble, much like Dublin, is that real estate property prices escalated so quickly. There was an auction house mentality where people felt that they had to buy immediately. We are seeing more of a tempering.”
The popularity of Capitol Hill has priced many prospective house-buyers out of this neighbourhood, sending them northeast to the areas such as H Street and Trinidad and further out to Brookland and Brentwood, and Petworth to the north.
Being so close to Congress, Capitol Hill enjoys a strong rental market with a big changeover in properties every summer with the influx of new political interns and the biennial electoral upheaval.
“There is always turnover on Capitol Hill because there is always a turnover of Congress – that is every two years,” says Tim Burr, information manager at Capitol Hill property management company Yarmouth. The next turnover falls in the three- month period after the next midterm congressional elections in November.
New apartment blocks or condominium developments that have sprung up around Navy Yard to the south, H Street and other parts of downtown Washington have kept a lid on Capitol Hill’s rents. Buying a property here, like in Ireland, involves a deposit of 20 per cent of the purchase price, though this can fall to as low as 3.5 per cent if you qualify for a grant from the Federal Housing Administration. An “earnest money deposit” – similar to a booking fee in Ireland – is paid to secure the property and it goes into the closing calculations.
Rubbish removal is provided free of charge by the District of Columbia for small residential properties but not for large apartment buildings where the cost is covered by the “condo fee”. Electricity, gas and water charges are all paid for by the homeowner.
The annual property tax works out at roughly $850 a year for every $100,000 that your property is worth. Given how property prices have increased, there are exemptions and caps. A friend recently had his house in the city appraised at more than $600,000 but his annual property tax is $2,800, based on an 2013 assessed value of $331,000.
For families with young children, picking a place to live is driven more and more by the catchment “in-bounds” area for particular local public schools. Some schools have better track records than others, making the lottery process more competitive each year.
These logistical considerations aside, Capitol Hill will – outside of the bitterly cold winter months – enchant new residents by the changing kaleidoscope of the area’s colourful fauna. The neighbourhood explodes into life in the spring with the blooming magnolias and cherry blossoms followed by the azaleas, roses and lillies of summer and the autumn hues of the changing leaves on Capitol Hill’s majestic trees in October and November.
Against the backdrop of the Capitol's resplendent white dome, it's hard not to be charmed by this friendly neighbourhood.
Living in Washington
HIGHS
- Washington’s never-ending offering of public talks on politics, public and foreign policy and other hot-button topical issues
- Free preschool education in Capitol Hill’s public schools
- Superb free museums, galleries and other attractions, particularly for children
- Excellent outdoor spaces in nearby Virginia and Maryland, including waterfalls, national parks and orchards
- Fireflies – better known among local children as “lightning bugs”
LOWS
-Bitterly cold winters and oppressively humid days at the height of summer in July and August
-The exasperating bureaucracy associated with basic civic and public services – the Department of Motor Vehicles, for example, involves a Kafkaesque battle with red tape and surly staff
-The short summer evenings (short compared to Ireland)
-Mosquitos on the soupiest of summer days and nights
