A 4% Discount: What Bargain Means in the DC Area Housing Market

• January 7, 2016

by UrbanTurf Staff

A home in Glover Park that sold last year at a slight discount.

When used to describe a home for sale in the DC area, terms like “bargain” might not get you the type of discount that you are expecting.

Trulia published a report on Thursday that looked at where homes listed with the words that imply a bargain or a deal are actually priced at a discount. In the DC area, the study found that listings marketed as a “bargain” only offered about a 4 percent discount from the median listing price for the area. Of course, in a region where the median price clocked in at about $430,000, a $17,274 discount isn’t too shabby.

If you want a real bargain, head to Ohio where homes in Toldeo and Dayton that are marketed as bargains are selling at 18 and 19 percent off the list price.

As for methodology, Trulia looked at homes for sale in metropolitan areas across the country between January 2013 and last month that were described with the words “bargain,” “value”, “deal,” and the phrases “under valued,” and “under priced.” The company then used a “hedonic model” to determine the effect of the terms that imply a bargain on the home’s listing price while controlling for the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, lot size, age, and zip code.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_4_discount_what_bargain_means_in_the_dc_housing_market/10726