D.C. real estate

I am continually amazed by the real estate market in this area:

Now, with property values skyrocketing across the region, the center stands to lose even this humble home. The building is owned by a real estate speculator who paid about $900,000 for the property, along with the building next door, three years ago. In July, he plans to execute a contract to sell the properties for four times that amount.

Update: According to Thomas Sowell D.C. has nothing on the Bay Area:

One of these localities is the peninsula stretching from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, about 30 miles to the south. This is an area where housing prices are more than three times the national average and are rising rapidly. It is not that housing in this area is more grand than elsewhere, but that very ordinary houses have very grand prices. There are communities on the peninsula where the average home price is a million dollars and where it would be hard to find a house that anyone would call a mansion.

It's worth reading the whole article.