Does a Soft September Mean That DC’s Housing Market is Starting to Slow Down?

• October 10, 2017

by Nena Perry-Brown

Over the past couple months, the DC housing market has done something that it seemingly hasn’t done in years: it’s slowed down from its record-breaking pace.

In July and August, median home prices in the District dropped as inventory increased, and the latest report from Bright MLS shows that September largely hewed to that narrative.

As the median price for the whole DC region hit a decade-high of $405,000 for the month of September, the District was the sole jurisdiction in the area where the median price dropped, falling 6.4 percent year-over-year to $501,000. Prices in August in DC had dropped about 5 percent compared to the previous year.

Change in median sales price in the DC area

In the DC area, September was the 17th straight month of year-over-year inventory declines and the 12th straight month of price increases; however in DC, closed sales fell by almost 14 percent compared to last September, and by month’s end, there were 15.6 percent more new listings on the market, contributing to the greatest increase in overall inventory in the area and the strongest inventory influx for the District since June.

So does this data signal a market slow down for the nation’s capital? Not really says Andrew Strauch, Vice President at Bright MLS.

Year-over-year change in closed sales in the DC area

“The slowdown in sales volume this September was an anomaly as last September’s volume was the highest it has been over the past five years,” Strauch told UrbanTurf. “New listings, active listings and new pending contract are all at five-year highs, and the 611 closed sales in the District in September were just slightly below the five-year average of 620 sales for the city.”

Strauch did note that the number of new listings coming on the market means that price appreciation is not as rampant as it has been in years past, averaging 1 percent year-to-date.

“We expect price appreciation to be in the low single digits over the next several months while inventory continues to grow.”

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/does_a_soft_september_mean_that_dcs_housing_market_is_starting_to_slow/13105