Foreclosures, failures leave once-booming Manassas struggling Santa Claus rode down the streets of Old Town Manassas in Saturday’s annual Christmas Parade, waving to the hundreds of residents who braved frigid temperatures to attend. Onlookers huddled under blankets and sipped coffee and hot chocolate, cheerfully exchanging greetings of “Merry Christmas” with St. Nick.
But as the route turned onto Center Street into the heart of Old Town, the parade passed two dilapidated buildings and an empty lot on one side of the street — and the Prince William/Manassas Chamber of Commerce on the other.
Though Manassas was one of the big beneficiaries of the Washington area’s booming economy over the last decade, a stale economy and a rash of foreclosures have walloped the city recently, leaving dozens of vacant buildings and empty houses.
“Every time you turn around here, somebody’s getting laid off,” said C.C. Bartholemew, co-chairwoman of the chamber’s Economic Development Committee. “Things [that are] happening are things that nobody could control.”
Wally Covington, the Brentsville representative on the Prince William Board of Supervisors, has a law office in the heart of Old Town Manassas and a firsthand view of the city’s struggles.
“If I’m in Old Town Manassas, there are some vacant buildings that we haven’t seen before — some [vacant] retail space that used to be prime retail space,” he said. “In some of the older areas [of the city], you see more of the difficulty.”
Prompting the exodus of business from Manassas is the foreclosure crisis, with the city having the highest foreclosure rate in the Washington area.
In October, one of every 70 properties in the D.C. metro area had a foreclosure filing, according to the most recent statistics from RealtyTrac, an online real estate tracking company.
The five Washington-area ZIP codes with the highest foreclosure rates so far this year are in Manassas and Woodbridge — three in Manassas, two in Woodbridge, all in the single-digit ratios. The worst area ZIP code is 20110, with 1,937 foreclosures this year and a foreclosure rate of one in every seven properties.
By comparison, Upper Marlboro in Prince George’s County, with 730 foreclosures — equaling one out of 18 houses — ranks sixth. Fort Washington and Capitol Heights also have seen about one in every 20 homes foreclosed this year.
The median sales price for existing homes in Manassas plunged from $257,825 in November 2007 to $124,000 in November 2008, according to data released Wednesday by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
“The subprime mortgage market crisis and investors largely contributed to the current glut,” said Tom Minetree of Weichert Realtors’ Gainesville office.
“In my opinion, the subprime mortgages played a significant role in making mortgage money readily available to unsuspecting homebuyers and unqualified buyers that ended up in over their heads with mortgages they couldn’t afford. … It will most likely get worse before we see signs of recovery,” he said.
As residents are forced out of their homes, local businesses suffer as their customer base shrinks. For example, many businesses along Liberia Road have closed.
“The retail market in that area — everything is so localized,” said Ron Glass, a real estate broker with Long and Foster. At 9836 Liberia Ave. — a property Glass is trying to lease — business cards are stuffed in the door by various entrepreneurs, apparently searching for the right price.
“That Liberia Avenue property — one would have thought it would have been gone by now,” Glass said. “The Manassas market has been slow for whatever reason. I don’t know what to attribute it to.”
Ricky Malik, an immigration lawyer based in Manassas, partially blames Prince William County’s tough crackdown on illegal immigrants for the slowdown in business.
He said there has “definitely [been] a decrease in business overall. Immigrants don’t want to move into this area. … I think [the county’s] tax coffers are a lot lower” as a result.
“If Prince William was to go in the direction toward a non-immigrant inviting place, then immigrants will spread out,” he added. “I’m sure the county government has to consider the financial [effect]. It hurts everybody.”
Joey delos Santos, who owns the Pinoy Oriental Store at 9814 Liberia Ave., said business has been slow since he opened about three months ago.
“When I checked the demographic, 40,000 cars pass every day, and there are a lot of Filipinos in the area,” he said.
But now? “Nobody’s looking for places to rent” in the area, he said. He noted that a nearby telecommunications store moved out about two weeks ago.
“I’m a little bit discouraged — I’m hoping to make money this Christmas,” he said.
Manassas’ October unemployment rate of 4.2 percent was the highest in Northern Virginia, according to the most recent statistics, and significantly higher than its 2.6 percent rate a year ago. Still, it’s well under the national average of 6.1 percent for the month.
“We’re one of the best communities,” said Stephen Nelson, chairman of the board of the Chamber of Commerce. “We live right outside of D.C. D.C. has always been a [great] place to operate a business,” partly because of the federal government, he said.
“Right now, for the last three months …” he said before pausing to laugh. “We’re all kind of scratching our heads now.”
Indeed, the area’s heavy population growth in the 1990s that accompanied a booming Northern Virginia economy has slowed. The city’s population jumped by almost 8,000 between 1990 and 2000, to just more than 35,000. The 2008 estimate, however, is 36,666, and the 2013 projection is 37,543, which would be a screeching halt after the 1990s spike.
Some, though, retained a glimmer of hope during the tough times.
“It’s pockets of problems,” Covington said, “and pockets of retail success that seem to be moving forward.”
Nelson, too, noted a similar contrast.
“My neighbors are still working,” he said. “They’re scared, but they’re still working.”
