DC Home Prices Hit New Record, Approach $500,000 Median

• June 10th 2013

by UrbanTurf Staff

The monthly housing reports for the DC area have been singing the same song for the last few months, and a report out Monday is no different.

Home prices in the District of Columbia rose 8.9 percent between May 2012 and May 2013 to reach a median sales price of $490,000, the highest on record for the city in the month of May, according to a report released by RealEstate Business Intelligence. The median sales price for the entire DC area climbed to $424,800, also a record for the month of May.

Despite rising prices in the region, homes for sale continue to fly off the market.

The median number of days that active listings are spending on the market is just nine, compared to 11 days in April and 15 days in March. To put that number in perspective, homes are now selling about twice as fast as they were a year ago.

The price and days on market numbers seem to finally be attracting sellers to enter a market that has been plagued by historically low inventory. While the number of active listings remains quite low, there was a spike in the number of new listings in May:

There were 7,998 active listings in the DC metro area at the end of May, a drop of over 2,500 listings from May 2012. Despite the continual decline in active listings, new listings are on the rise for the second month in a row. There were 7,276 new listings in May, up 19.6 percent from this time last year, the sharpest gain of any month since April 2010. Condos led all property segments in new listing growth, rising 25.6 percent from last May. New listings of townhomes and single-family detached homes rose 22.2 percent and 15.8 percent, respectively.

Here are a few other interesting statistics from the report:

• The average sales-to-original-list-price ratio reached 98.6 percent in May, the highest ratio since 2005.
• Closed home sales rose 13.6 percent between May 2012 and May 2013, the 14th consecutive month with a year-over-year gain.

The area that RBI analyzes includes DC, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, Alexandria City, Arlington County, Fairfax County, Fairfax City, and Falls Church City.

The thumbnail photo is of a house at 1358 Kenyon Street NW that recently went under contract for $150,000 above its asking price.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_housing_prices_hit_new_record_homes_selling_in_9_days/7173.