Home Price Watch: Up 15 Percent in Columbia Heights

• May 5, 2014

by Lark Turner

Homes on Fairmont Street in Columbia Heights

UrbanTurf is using newly segmented data from RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI) to look at the real estate market in specific DC-area neighborhoods. Using a year-over-year snapshot, we’ve covered Capitol Hill, where lower sales volume may have contributed to rising prices; Bloomingdale, where home prices rose 20 percent in the first quarter of 2014; and Chevy Chase DC, where list prices rose 26 percent.

This week, we take a look at Columbia Heights, where indicators show a still-strong market that is stabilizing somewhat, though competition for homes is steep.

While its boundaries are often debated, Columbia Heights — for the purpose of this article — is bounded by Florida Avenue to the south, 16th Street and Georgia Avenue to the west and east, and Spring Road to the north. Each successive year seems to bring a new headline about Columbia Heights real estate. Its renaissance accelerated in 2008, when a shopping mall anchored by a Target opened up near the neighborhood’s Metro station. In 2012, we called it the Year of the Seller in Columbia Heights because of the steeply rising prices and low inventory that characterized the market.

Click to enlarge.

Here are a few takeaways from the RBI data, the most robust neighborhood set that we’ve used thus far given the number of sales this year compared to last (149 in 2014 vs. 107 in 2013).

• Prices rose in Columbia Heights in 2014 by about 15 percent, representing a median $66,000 increase. The median sold price jumped to $525,000 from $459,000.
• List prices on sold homes rose just 6 percent, from $479,902 to $507,681. That means houses are typically selling for roughly $17,000 above their list price.
• Raw dollar volume of homes sold has skyrocketed this year — $76 million versus $51 million in 2013 — a 48 percent increase.
• Homes spent a lot less time on the market in Columbia Heights, something we’ve seen across the DC area in 2014. The days on market metric dropped almost 50 percent, from 51 to 28 days.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/home_price_watch_columbia_heights_15_percent/8444