DC Home and Condo Prices Up, But Settlements Way Down

• December 14th 2010

by UrbanTurf Staff

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The latest DC housing statistics are out from the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, and while condo and single-family home prices are up in DC proper, settlements (closings) are down significantly from last November.

In November 2010, the median price for a condo in DC was $371,000, an increase of 4.15 percent over November 2009; the median price for single-family homes increased from $408,000 to $419,000.

Along with these stats came news that settlements for condo units were down just over 40 percent year over year and inventory had increased from 1,129 units on the market in November 2009 to 1,275 in November 2010.

We got in touch with semi-retired DC housing market guru Keith Gibbons to get his perspective on these statistics. Gibbons noted that the settlement numbers, in his opinion, have “little value as a market health metric” as you don’t know when the units went under contract. He also said that, by MRIS numbers, the market is looking pretty healthy compared to a year ago but there are some signals that bear watching:

MRIS’ data shows average condo prices year-over-year were up 21.72% in DC. It’s unclear how the sale of 9 condos for more than $1MM impacted that metric. However, MRIS also shows that there’s more than a seven-month inventory of condos [7.89 months]. It could simply reflect seasonal patterns, but it is significantly higher than the inventory in November 2009 [4.44 months].

If you hadn’t noticed, we are aiming for super-wonky content all day today.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_home_and_condo_prices_up_but_settlements_way_down/2764.