Fort Meade - Severn - Odenton Gambrills area new homes development

The Fort Meade real estate community is abuzz with BRAC talk.  But, interestingly enough, everyone seems to be a bit confused about numbers of new households versus jobs, when folks will be arriving, where they will be distributed throughout Maryland and most importantly what impact these BRAC newcomers will have on the Fort Meade area and Anne Arundel county housing market.   I've done some digging on the Internet and here's what I've come up with.   These are the latest BRAC figures as outlined on the Anne Arundel County BRAC web site (see link below)  for Fort Meade show an anticipated distribution by county of the nearly 29,000 projected new "households" for Maryland at 6/13/2007

PROJECTED NEW HOUSEHOLDS BY COUNTY FOR MARYLAND BRAC
26%     Harford County 
18%     Anne Arundel County
24%     Baltimore County & City
09%     Montgomery County
08%     Cecil County
08%     Prince George's County
07%     Howard County

These figures are a little surprising as I would have expected that Bowie, Laurel and other cities in Northern Prince George's County as well as Columbia and Ellicott City in Howard county would have ranked a bit higher.  We see a lot of homebuyers and sellers that are stationed on Fort Meade requesting these areas.

The base distribution for these households shows Aberdeen Proving ground with the lion's share on the Maryland BRAC pie.  Per AA county website at 7/2007

DISTRIBUTION OF MARYLAND BRAC HOUSEHOLDS BY BASE
14,159     Aberdeen Proving Ground    
10,679     Fort Meade  (updated
      474     Andrews AFB

The latest jobs/positions info which is from the July meeting notes provided on the Anne Arundel County BRAC website shows just over 22,000 new positions expected and broken down as shown below:

ESTIMATED FORT MEADE BRAC JOBS TO BE ADDED BETWEEN 2008 - 2011
  5,692     BRAC
  4,000     NSA
  2,000     Additional organizations (DISA, etc.)
10,000    Enhanced use lease office complex to be located on Ft. Meade land

We are seeing many home owners in our market remove their "for sale" home listings and convert them to rental listings in part due to the anticipated impact/influx of homebuyers that they hope will be coming to Ft. Meade on BRAC growth and reassignment.   Those home sellers that I've spoken with seem to be a bit more optimistic than I am about reduced days on market and increased real estate values in the near future.  I think BRAC will have a stabilizing effect on the Fort Meade area housing market.  I do not think it will be our knight in shining armor.  Simply put, home prices now exceed what even two income families in our area can afford.  A minor downward adjustment is still in order.  Smart home owners are recognizing this with generous concessions on price and closing cost help to their ready, willing and able buyers.  Concessions are at a level that we haven't seen in 6 years.  You can't expect to get the deal of a lifetime, but maybe the decade?  It really is a great time to be a home buyer.  Shop all the homes, pick the best and get a great deal.

Unnecessarily bad press on the overall housing market and loan and interest rate hype are also contributing factors.  And, with a current inventory of homes for sale that would take over 12 months to absorb based on current sales activity this sluggish market isn't going away in the short-term.  

Laura Roskelly, Realtor ABR, ASR, E-Pro
Accredited Staging Professional
RE/MAX Leading Edge
www.FortMeadeHomes.com