Home Price Watch: Over 200 Homes on the Hill Sold Within 10 Days in 2014

• December 1st 2014

by Lark Turner

In our first edition of Home Price Watch in 2014, published in April, we checked up on the market on Capitol Hill during the first quarter of the year using fine-grained data that had just become available from RealEstate Business Intelligence. Based on the data available at the time, things looked pretty good for the neighborhood: the median price had risen 9.4 percent from the same time in 2013. Now, a couple of quarters later, we’re checking back in to see how the neighborhood has fared over the rest of the year.

The advertised subdivision of Capitol Hill is large; when we looked at the first quarter data, 79 sales had already been recorded. By the end of October, that number rose to 401 sales — a much more robust set of data. That’s exciting (at least by wonky UrbanTurf standards), because it means we can draw some inferences about the market in the neighborhood based on finer data, like the home size and type.

The median sales price in the neighborhood still shows a net gain over 2013 at 6.5 percent, up from $650,000 last year to $692,000 this year. List prices in the neighborhood have risen 4 percent, and homes are spending just a little less time on the market this year — 28 days in 2014 versus 29 in 2013. Here may be the most telling statistic for the neighborhood, though: More than 200 homes that hit the market on the Hill sold in the first ten days on the market; 32 of those sold immediately.

These are all positive indicators for sellers on Capitol Hill, but the established neighborhood isn’t showing the fierce growth exhibited by more up-and-coming areas in the city.

A breakdown of the data shows which homeowners have really done well in the area this year, with a caveat: These breakdowns show the average sales price, not the median, meaning a big or small home sale could be affecting the data.

Condos and co-ops, of which 118 have sold so far this year, have done a little better, pricewise, than the neighborhood as a whole. The average sales price of condos rose 7 percent, from $416,555 to $445,979. Big rowhouses also did well. 64 attached homes with four or more bedrooms have sold so far this year, and their sales price rose 10.5 percent, from $1,048,840 to $1,159,156. Prices for attached three-bedrooms gained by about 9.8 percent, moving from $763,696 to $838,365.

And the biggest gains were reserved for the smallest homes. The average sale price of attached homes with two-bedrooms or less, of which 88 have sold so far this year, rose 13 percent, from $588,362 to $665,673.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/home_price_watch_a_return_to_capitol_hill/9279.