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It’s not news by now that developers and landlords are on edge about the wave of new housing stock that will hit next year, after a long drought (that graph at right pretty much sums up the situation). They’re just getting even more strident about it.
“Whenever I have the opportunity of speaking nationally, I tell people how awful the Washington market is, and I encourage other people to do the same thing,” said Tom Bozzuto, whose name you might recognize on a few developments around town, at a Bisnow panel yesterday. “I feel like the captain of the Titanic that just saw the iceberg coming.”
For tenants, the iceberg is more like an oasis: Rents that are less astronomical than they might otherwise be, for a while at least.
“We have too many units coming to be absorbed all at once without extraordinary concessions in the marketplace,” Bozzuto went on. “You better believe that it’s going to be a challenge.”
That’s why you might see some developers taking their time getting started on projects they’ve got in the works. “For us, it’s making sure we can wait out what’s going to hit next year,” said Jair Lynch, who’s got something big going on H Street NE. “It’s going to be a free-for-all in 2013.”