Real Estate

Northern Virginia Real Estate: Hot, Hot, Hot

Homes are spending less time on the market and selling for more in Arlington and throughout the greater Washington region.

Written by Beth Lawton and Jason Spencer

The greater Washington-area real estate market continues to heat up, with homes selling faster and at higher prices.

According to Real Estate Business Intelligence:
  • The average home is on the market for just 38 days, down from 48 days a year ago.
  • The median sold price of Washington-area homes has risen more than 8 percent from a year ago.
  • The number of homes on the market in the Washington area is up 20.2 percent from a year ago.

The hottest real estate market in the metro area right now? Falls Church, where median sales prices were $623,000 recently.

But this county is doing pretty good for itself, according to Arlington Real Estate News.

According to that site, of the 300 properties that sold here in April, only 13 were short sales or foreclosures. The median sale price is up slightly over last year, 62 percent of sales happened in less than 10 days, and sellers on average got just more than 99 percent of their original asking price. Read more here.

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Despite a growth in listings, though, there still isn’t enough inventory to meet demand, according to the National Association of Realtors and individual real estate agents.

Property buyers in DC right now are chasing a market, facing multiple offers, battling price increases that outpace income increases, competing with out-of-area buyers and are operating out of fear of the inevitable interest rate hike,” Melissa Terzis wrote in a recent blog post in the Huffington Post’s DC Real Estate section. “Does this remind anyone of 2005? It's like watching the entire city go by in a big circle marked 'real estate bubble.' ”

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To put the Washington metro area’s market in perspective: Nationwide, sales of existing homes rose in May by 12.9 percent over a year ago — the highest they’ve been since November 2009, according to the National Association of Realtors.

And homes are selling quickly: 45 percent of homes in the region that sold in May were on the market for less than a month, and the average home was on the market for 41 days.


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