Waghington DC Area Growing

The Washington area’s economy will nearly double over the next 20 years, bringing in more than 1 million new jobs but also forcing local leaders to face tough questions about how to accommodate them, a new study predicts.

The District and its suburbs will see their gross regional product grow by more than 94 percent over the next two decades, George Mason University economist Stephen Fuller predicts in a new study by the 2030 Group, a nonprofit think tank founded by area businessmen. The study, released Thursday, predicts that the Washington area will be one of the nation’s fastest-growing economies, behind Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth, through 2030.

Recovery

Recovery is creeping its head in a few metros according to The Brookings Institute:
McAllen, Texas is the only metropolitan area that saw growth in both employment and output during the first quarter of 2009.

Employment rose in New Haven, Conn. and Baton Rouge, while output also increased in Seattle, Austin, Virginia Beach, Washington, Richmond, San Jose, and Riverside.

Some 38 of the top 100 metro stopped declining in home prices over the past year. Many of these metros might attribute the stalled declines because of below-average employment declines, and lie in the less-affected parts of Pennsylvania and upstate New York and Sun Belt in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. They also exhibit below-average shares of REOs status due to bank foreclosure.

In other good news, Southern California home sales rose for the 11th consecutive month in May as sales of $500,000-plus homes started to come back.