It’s never too early to invest in your dream house!

If dorm living’s got you down and you’ve heard the horror stories about local landlords, the Washington Times has a new solution for you: go buy a house (or, more precisely, go get your parents to buy one for you).

The Times ran a whole feature story on the new trend of parents buying homes for their college-age kids to live in while they’re at school.  While buying a house seems like a drastic step, the article explains that with the rent and dorm prices rising and the housing market in shambles, buying a house and selling it off or renting it out to other students after graduation often makes financial sense.

While the phenomenon is most widespread in the Midwest where real estate is the cheapest, but it’s also gaining ground here in D.C.  The article features one real estate agent who sells as many as eight houses per year to Georgetown and GW students.  The piece also profiles recent Georgetown Law grad Jim Pyle, whose mother bought him a house on Capitol Hill which they sold for about $200,000 more than they paid.

You, too, can be puttin’ on the Ritz … for a cool $7 million

A penthouse in the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton may have just become the most expensive condo ever to be sold in the District, City Paper’s Ruth Samuelson reports.

The condo, which sold last week, went for 7.295 million  big ones. The second highest-selling condo is also one of the Georgetown Ritz-Carlton’s residences at 3150 South Street, which is right by the AMC Loews Georgetown. Several of its 28 residence overlook the Potomac River—and who wouldn’t want a view of the scenic Whitehurst Freeway?)

Photo taken from Flickr user Monica & Tim under a Creative Commons license.

That’s what I’ve decided after checking out And Now, Anacostia’s images of planned Anacostia development. Vacants are becoming office buildings, barbed wire fences are coming down, and Anacostia is going to look better and be safer.

To see what’s coming up, look at the difference between this picture of Martin Luther King Avenue:

and the proposed changes:

Add that to the proposed streetcars, and Anacostia is going to get downright walkable. As I discovered in the Anacostia story to end all Anacostia stories, currently trying to get somewhere in Anacostia ends in sweat-stained shirts and sadness.

The Georgetown house where Alan Senitt was murdered is going on sale, and its owner isn’t deterred by the property’s notoriety. According to Washingtonian, the house is priced at $28 million, which is $13 million more than the most expensive house sale in Washington’s history.

Last year’s murder of aspiring British politician Senitt in the house’s driveway set off DC’s crime emergency. If you want to pop in for an open house, it’s at 31st and Q.

Posted by Will Sommer. Link via Wonkette.