Sales were down year-over-year owing to affordability and availability issues across Fairfax County, but those homes that did sell in September moved quickly from listing to ratified contract, according to new data.
Despite the briskness, the sluggish market resulted in a 20-percent year-to-year drop in overall market volume for the month.
A total of 830 properties went to closing across Fairfax County in September, down 21 percent from 1,051 a year before, according to figures reported by MarketStats by ShowingTime based on listing activity from Bright MLS.
“It’s a challenging market for borrowers and buyers, especially first-time home buyers,” said Jamie DeSimone of Keller Williams Capital Properties, a member of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors’ board of directors.
“ The increase in interest rates is a primary deterrent for buyers and would-be sellers,” DiSimone said, while “current homeowners have no incentive to forgo their lower interest rate unless they are forced to move. That’s why home-buying options are scarce.”
That scarcity – Fairfax’s inventory is down a third from a year ago – is resulting in buyers paying ever more for homes, even though that may represent a roll of the dice that a significant market correction isn’t in the cards.
For Fairfax, the upward pressure on prices is continuing to put some upward pressure on prices, although that trajectory into the stratosphere wasn’t complete:
• The average sales price of a single-family home that sold during the month was $993,138, up 3 percent from a year before.
• The average price of attached homes (townhouses, rowhouses and condominiums) declined 0.4 percent to $498,479.
• The average price of condominiums rose 4.8 percent to $380,431.
Overall, the average sales price bumped up 2.6 percent to $728,206. A total of 140 homes went to closing for more than $1 million, including three for more than $2.5 million.
Total sales volume for the month stood at just over $601 million, down from $752.8 million a year ago.
Homes that went to closing in September spent 14 days between listing and ratified sales contract. Though that would have been considered sluggish during the hot-hot-hot market of 2021 into early 2022, it today is the most brisk pace of any Northern Virginia locality.
For homes that sold in September across Fairfax, conventional mortgages were the method of consummating deals in 542 cases, followed by a 151 instances where cash was used, along with 95 VA-backed loans and 28 FHA mortgages.
Expect market conditions to remain cool in Fairfax for the next few months at least, as pending sales for September were down by double digits from a year before. Those pendings generally translate into consummated transactions within a month or two.
Across Northern Virginia as a whole – Arlington and Fairfax counties and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church – the situation was much the same, according to the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors:
• The number of closed sales in September 2023 was 1,180 units. This was down 18 percent compared to September 2022 and down 23 percent compared to August 2023. The five-year average for September closed sales is 1,685.
• The total sold volume in September 2023 was $868,927,096. That was down 14 percent compared to September 2022 and down 32 percent compared to August 2023.
• The average sold price for a home in September 2023 was $738,772, an increase of 6 percent from September 2022 but a decrease of 11 percent from August of 2023.
• The number of active listings in September 2023 was 1,661, down 30 percent compared to September 2022. The number of new listings was down 36 percent to 1,368 in September 2023. The five-year average for September active listings is 2,390.
• The total number of new pending sales in September 2023 was 1,220, a 12-percent decrease compared to September 2022.
For information about the Northern Virginia data, see the Website at NVAR.com/public.
Figures represent most, but not all, homes on the market. All September 2023 figures are preliminary and are subject to revision.
