I lived in Reston for a few years. For being a quiet far-away bedroom community, it was funny to see how rents exploded, especially once the metro arrived. Apartments in the awful town center area were asking Dupont Circle prices with the 2 hour x 2 commute and $20/day parking and $10/day tolls it would cost to actually work in Dupont.

DC is becoming an awful place unless you absolutely know where you'll be working for the next 20 years and can buy a home close to the office. Otherwise, you're not going to enjoy the 2.5 hour commute and $12 in tolls when client site location moves from Tysons to Silver Spring, MD. It's so crowded, though, because a lot of government workers and contractors who'd be making $50K in Anywhere, America can earn 6 figures after a bit of seniority in the gov.

I'm planning on bailing for good. I could now only barely afford one of those tiny condos with a $500/month HOA nowhere near a metro in NOVA, but I'd never get to enjoy it as I'd be spending the majority of my day sitting in traffic. And wages in DC for techies aren't really that good compared to SV or NYC, since it's mostly set by government. Maybe Amazon will force the contractors to pay more.

Rent isn't paid with debt, so is very different. You don't get to make magic money out of nothing to pay rent. But with the way the Fed is running things, almost anyone can create magic money out of nothing and buy a house. The money the bank lends you did not exist(save for the reserve requirement) before the loan was created.

Also, inflation requires increasing demand for it to occur. The existence of increasing demand does not mean it's not inflation. That's why goods/services with no increasing demand do not inflate in an inflationary economy. Inflation has always been an uneven phenomenon.

side note: Toyota shut down Scion in 2016