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Arlington Single-Family & Townhouse Mid-Year Real Estate Review

elieliresidentialcom Arlington, Buyer, Home Owner, Investor, Seller , , , 1 Comment
Arlington Single-Family & Townhouse Mid-Year Real Estate Review

Answer: What a wild year it’s been for real estate. After a huge 2019 (SFH/TH review, Condo review), the 2020 market took off in January with prices and competition up sharply. When Coronavirus hit, that momentum tapered off for a couple of months but prices remained steady because of low interest rates and low supply. The Arlington housing supply was down about 400 listings from March-June, but listing activity is surging to historically high levels in July and August, which is traditionally when we see the spring market momentum slow down.

Let’s take a look at how the single-family detached (SFD) and townhouse (TH) market performed in the first half of 2020 using some awesome charts developed by my new partner, the wonderful Alli Torban. We will take a similar look at condos next week.

Note that all of the data used in these charts is based on sales that went under contract from January-June in order to provide the most accurate reflection of the market during the first 6 months. I don’t like using the date a home sold/closed for analysis like this because closing date often lags 30-60 days behind agreement of sale (contract).

Average and median price continued to rise, but not by nearly as much as last year. The total homes transacted in the first six months dropped significantly to 710 from a previous 5-year low of 838, established in 2019.

22207 (most of North Arlington) remains the most expensive place to buy a SFD or TH and 22204 and 22206 (most of South Arlington) remain the most affordable, although we’ve seen strong appreciation in those markets over the last three years.

For new Amazon HQ2 employees hoping to find a SFD or TH to buy within walking distance of your office, your 22202 zip code offers some of the fewest purchase opportunities in the County, so you’ll want to act quickly if you find something you like.

The cost of going from a 4BR homes to a 5BR home is significant in Arlington. This is because most new (read: expensive) homes being built have at least five bedrooms and Arlington’s older housing stock mostly floats between two and four bedrooms. Finding a house with five or more bedrooms under $1M in Arlington is a difficult task.

One of the measures I like taking to gauge market competition is the percentage of homes going under contract within the first week and how much buyers are paying relative to the asking price within that window. An incredible 41% of SFD/TH contracts were accepted within the first week this year and the average buyer paid 2% more than the asking price to secure a home that just hit the market.

The key takeaways are that good homes sell very quickly and if you love a house that has just hit the market, be prepared to pay the asking price or more to secure it because if you don’t, there’s a good chance somebody else will.

As the chart above showed, this is a fast-paced market and it got even faster in 2020 with the median days on market for SFD/TH remaining at seven days and the average dropping below three weeks.

Next week I will have condo data for you. If you’d like to discuss buying or selling strategies, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Eli@EliResidential.com.

Making Up For A Questionable Housing Report

elieliresidentialcom Arlington, Home Owner, Seller , , 0 Comment
Making Up For A Questionable Housing Report

Question: I recently read an article by the Sun Gazette that median price per square foot was down since last year in Arlington and the rest of Northern VA. Is that what you’re seeing in the market, despite reports of prices going up?

Answer: I read that article as well and was equally confused by the statistic that $/sqft was down 6.8% in Arlington in the first nine months of 2019 compared to the first nine months of 2018. While this data point may be technically correct, it doesn’t accurately represent what’s happening in the Arlington/Northern VA marketplace. Even without having access to the data behind it, does anybody believe that with all the news about the Amazon-effect on Arlington’s real estate market, that people are paying less per square foot in 2019?

Price-per-square-foot Is Actually Up (obviously)

The truth is that while the median $/sqft did drop year-over-year in the first nine months of 2019, it was actually due to a shift in the type of inventory that sold, not because buyers are getting more for their money. As I pointed out earlier this year in an article about a national news story on Arlington’s real estate market, it’s easy to find market data that sounds interesting (aka generates reader clicks) but doesn’t tell an accurate story.

When I drilled into the 2018 vs 2019 data on median and average $/sqft, I found that within comparable sub-markets (e.g. 2BR condos, 4BR single-family, etc) median and average $/sqft increased year-over-year. In fact, if you use average $/sqft instead of median, like the article references, there was a 9.5% increase across Arlington. In this case average is a better statistical measure than median, but of course the median $/sqft made for a better story.

Accurate Headlines From The First Nine Months

While I have the data together comparing the first nine months of 2019 to the first nine months of 2018, I’ll go ahead and offer up five headlines that accurately represent the Arlington real estate market through September 2019:

  1. The market is up, but not by as much as you might thing based on some new stories. The average purchase price in Arlington jumped 5.8% to just over $722,000.
  2. A lack of inventory drove total sales down by 8%, with the biggest drop-off showing up in the condo market which suffered from a 12.3% drop in sales, led by a 13.6% drop in two-bedroom condo sales.
  3. The price range of the middle 50% of homes jumped from $380,000-$864,300 in 2018 to $415,000-$916,000 in 2019, a 9.2% increase in the lower limit and a 6% increase in the upper limit. This indicates that the Amazon-effect is impacting lower price points faster than upper price points which makes sense because investors and other speculators are more likely to purchase at lower prices.
  4. Good properties sold much faster in 2019 with 62.7% of homes selling in the first 10 days, compared to 46.4% in 2018. The craziest stat? 85.5% of 2BR townhomes/duplexes sold within the first 10 days.
  5. Price growth in the 22202 zip code, the area surrounding Pentagon City and Crystal City aka National Landing aka Bezosville, led all Arlington zip codes with a 13.7% jump in average sold price.

If you ever run across market data you’re not sure about or would like a customized data analysis, please reach out to me at Eli@EliResidential.com.