Author: Scott McCaffrey

His counterparts from across the region gathered Dec. 19 for a dinner in honor of retiring Fairfax County Clerk of the Circuit John Frey.

And tasked him with one final duty.

Washington Dulles International Airport hasn’t had quite the year-over-year bump up as has its sibling Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in 2023, but regional aviation leader still have had reason to smile.

Dulles now has the largest number of airlines operating simultaneously in its 61-year history, said Paul Bobson, the Airports Authority’s vice president of airline-business development, speaking at the December meeting of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Listings coming onto the region’s housing market the week ending Dec. 18 showed a holiday dormancy, although they were higher than at the same point last year.

That’s according to Bright MLS, which reported that the 597 new listings for the week represented a 19.4-percent drop from the week prior but were up 3.6 percent from a year ago.

Were Northern Virginia its own independent country – and let’s not give regional leaders any ideas – it would have the world’s 48th largest economy.

That’s according to new figures from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, which calculates the total annual gross domestic product of the counties and cities comprising Northern Virginia at $276 billion.

The average sales price of single-family homes across Fairfax County bumped up 9 percent year-over-year to stand at more than $1 million in November, while the other two segments of the market posted declines, according to new data.

On the sales front, the 734 transactions recorded for the month represented a decline of 13.7 percent from 850 a year ago, as home-buyers continue to face affordability and availability challenges.

After falling below $1 million in September for the first time since last winter, the average sales price of single-family homes across Fairfax County was back in seven-digit territory two months running and stands at its highest point in four months.

That’s according to new data reported by MarketStats by ShowingTime based on listing activity from Bright MLS, as analyzed by the GazetteLeader.

The key issue of Northern Virginia’s 2024 real-estate market could be the same as that of 2023 and 2022 before it – a lack of inventory that will bedeviled prospective purchasers.

“How low can it go? We expect inventories are going to get even tighter. Maybe another 20, 25 percent,” said Terry Clower, director of the George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis, during a 2024 real-estate preview hosted Dec. 13 by the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.

Northern Virginia’s five largest jurisdictions in November mostly posted relatively small drop-offs in sales from a year before, according to new data.

But that in part is a reflection of the weakness of the market for more than a year now, with buyers willing but sometimes unable to pay the high costs coupled with high interest rates, even if they are able to find a home in the current tight-inventory market.

As if there are not enough hands reaching into taxpayers’ wallets, the Fairfax County School Board may want to add itself to the list.

In what effectively already is a dead duck for the 2024 session, Fairfax School Board members in their lengthy list of General Assembly priorities are calling for “fiscal autonomy” for elected School Boards across the commonwealth.

The Fairfax County Democratic Committee will hold its once-every-two-years reorganization meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 9 at 7:30 p.m. at Oakton High School.

At the meeting, elections will be held for leadership posts. The filing deadline for those seeking positions is Dec. 27 at 5 p.m.