Despite Low Supply, New Condo Sales in DC Area Up 22 Percent

• October 17, 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

A rendering of Buchanan Park, a condo and townhouse development on Capitol Hill.

While the DC area still has a constrained supply of new condos, a recent Delta Associates report shows that sales hit a three-year high in the third quarter of this year.

Overall, condo sales are up 22 percent regionwide over the past year, with DC proper seeing the most sales for a quarter since 2007. The Capitol East sub-market had one of the healthiest sectors, with year-over-year sales up 125 percent. Mideast DC is the only submarket in the city where year-over-year condo sales decreased, down 5.9 percent.

New condo inventory across the region.

As sales remain robust, the supply of new units for sale remains low.

As of September, there was a 9.9-month supply of new condos area-wide — slightly more than the 9.6 months in the second quarter of the year, but still well below the 15.5 months of inventory in the third quarter of 2015. However, things seem to be looking up where supply is concerned, as the 2,674 units that began construction this year are more than twice as many starts as 2015.

Total condo sales in the region.

New unit prices per square foot are up 1.1 percent across the DC area, although prices have dropped 4.7 percent in the District. Despite dropping prices, DC still has prices high enough in many neighborhoods to contend with major cities around the country.

“New condos currently selling in Central DC are priced between those in Seattle and downtown LA,” the report stated. “Compared to other cities in the U.S., per-square-foot prices in Upper NW DC are currently between San Francisco and Queens, New York.”

Sub-market definitions:

• Capitol East DC includes Capitol Hill, Southwest, Foggy Bottom, NoMA, and Trinidad.
• Mideast DC includes Brookland, 16th Street Heights, Petworth, Riggs Park, and Columbia Heights.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/annual_condo_sales_up_22_pct_area-wide/11790