Photo by PGCist

The news today is as cheery as the weather is dreadful. These Zephyrian blasts that are pushing you and me around as we try to cross the District’s long avenues? They are blowing in resumes, signing bonuses, and real estate speculators!

The Washington Post reports that Deloitte, which has a new headquarters in the old (current?) Corporative Executive Board in Rosslyn, has issued a quarterly survey of U.S. employers. Their findings are upbeat. A huge boom in federal hiring is predicted for the New Year. Deloitte also says that the timing may be right to leave your job, if you’ve got one. Better still, more than one-fourth of surveyed employers plan to increase pay this year, and employers are discussing bonuses — signing bonuses, referral bonuses, performance bonuses — without sneering in sarcasm.

Is the Great Recession over? The Washington Business Journal asked some prominent area business leaders, and many of them indicated that the District had good reason to be optimistic: ““I think it’s going to be probably late this year.” “The recovery has already begun.” “The panic is already subsiding.” “In D.C., we’ve basically already hit that point.”

And count among the 10,000 residents who came to the District in 2009 those investors making all-cash offers on the supply-heavy housing market. The Washington Post reports that their arrival may signal that the housing market has finally hit bottom, at least in this region:

Investors have reemerged with brute force in the Washington region’s real estate market over the past few months, triggering bidding wars in some neighborhoods teeming with foreclosed properties and hindering traditional home buyers. . . .

Is this a healthy market? It seems like the answer is yes. If houses are being sold increasingly to investors who buy with all-cash offers, that increases the strain on buyers who must compete with one another for credit and homes. So investors frustrate would-be homeowners. That said, they are investing with all-cash offers and not credit, meaning that the market seems to have arrived at an actual value for homes in the areas and that the market has learned the lesson of the credit-enabled home flipper. Better jobs will better suit homeowners to buy these investment properties and from new homeowners flow all sorts of economic benefits into a community.