Author: Scott McCaffrey

For months, the prevailing theory in local real estate was that sales totals were being held back by a lack of inventory coupled with higher prices and interest rates.

While prices kept rising in August, there was more inventory and lower mortgage rates – yet the D.C. region reporded its lowest number of sales for the month in 16 years.

Might the Vienna town government soon find itself enmeshed in the contentious and at times emotional issue of what to do with what some see as an overabundance of deer in the community?

In a column written for the town government’s September newsletter, Town Council member Chuck Anderson gives a foreshadowing that such a discussion could be on the horizon.

The Fairfax County government’s seasonal archery program to cull the deer herd in the county began Sept. 7 and runs through Feb. 15.

The effort, in effect since 2010, is conducted in public areas of the county under the oversight of the Fairfax County Police Department.

Prospective home-buyers may still have been at the beach in mid-August, but those seeking to sell homes in the fall market across the region are starting to stir – at least in some localities.

The 1,199 homes listed for sale across the D.C. area for the week ending Aug. 18 represented an increase of 3.1 percent from the preceding week and an increase of 6.2 percent from the same period a year before. That’s according to weekly data reported by Bright MLS, the region’s multiple-listing service.

It’s a doldrums-of-summer thing: The median listing price of a home across the Washington region for the week ending July 28 remained just below the $600,000 mark.

The $599,000 figure was down 0.2 percent from a week before but up 4.2 percent from a year ago, according to Bright MLS, the region’s multiple-listing service. And it is about $50,000 lower than the all-time weekly peak, set in May.

It was almost a photo-finish, but the Fairfax County real-estate market edged over the billion-dollar mark in July by a nose.

With 1,220 transactions and an average sales price of $849,736, total market volume for the month stood at $1.025 billion. That’s up 22 percent from the $839.8 million recorded in July 2023, according to figures from Bright MLS, based on data from MarketStats by ShowingTime.

Those in the market to purchase single-family homes across the Washington region are finding both availability and affordability challenges, while on the flip side, the inventory of condominiums across the market has returned to pre-pandemic levels.

And despite the prospect of lower mortgage-interest rates toward the end of the year, sellers are likely to retain the upper hand in the single-family market through 2024, according to analysis by Bright MLS, the region’s multiple-listing network.

The 22101 ZIP code in McLean tied for tops across the Mid-Atlantic region for most home sales in the “ultra-luxury” category during the second quarter of 2024, according to new data.

With 46 transactions in the highest 1 percent, price-wise, of sales in the Washington metro area, 22101 came out on top in the local area and was tied with the 08540 ZIP code in Princeton, N.J., for overall top-tier sales in the April-May-June period.

Hard as it may be for some to believe, July 26 marked 10 years since the opening of the first phase of Metro’s Silver line, which brought five new stations into the region’s transit network. According to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, a total of 63 million trips have been taken through the initial stations since their opening, with nearly half of those at the Wiehle-Reston East station. Counting the second phase of the project, which opened in November 2022, the line now runs from Loudoun County east to Maryland, with 34 stations in total including those shared with other lines of the Metro system.

Owners of more than one in 10 homes on the market across Fairfax County for the week ending July 21 cut their price during the seven-day period, the highest rate in the immediate region.

Fairfax’s rate-cut total of 10.8 percent also was the only one in double digits across the D.C. core, according to figures reported by the Bright MLS multiple-listing services.