Bridget Obikoya knows how hard it can be to buy a house—any house—in Arlington on a middle-class salary. “Public servants don’t make a lot of money,” says Obikoya, who handles parking and site plan reviews as a design engineer for Arlington County. “I can tell you the opportunity to buy a house in Arlington is almost nonexistent.”
Almost. She lucked out in 2015 while looking at homes with her mother in Green Valley.
“A house was being sold for $490,000,” she recalls, “and I asked the owner about her side yard. She said, ‘That’s not my yard. That’s an empty lot.’ ”
Obikoya found the lot’s owner, called him and made an offer on the narrow property, which he accepted after a second phone call.
Today, she’s serving as project manager on the construction of a 15-foot-wide shotgun-style home, which she designed herself with help from her architect sister and others.
“It was serendipity at its finest,” says Obikoya, a native of Alabama, where skinny shotgun houses are common. She expects to finish construction this spring and move into the new place with her mother and son.
She’s aware that her good fortune is a bit of an anomaly. Unfortunately, the chances of such serendipitous discoveries are quickly vanishing in Arlington, at least for moderate-income buyers. While housing has always been a hot topic in the county, the price crunch for many is intensifying, thanks to rising incomes, the increasing pace of teardowns and skyrocketing sales prices for single-family homes.
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