Row Houses and Rock Creek: DC's Hottest Housing Market

• June 27th 2013

by Mark Wellborn

In the current housing market, almost every neighborhood in DC has homes that garner multiple offers and sell for above their asking price. But Mount Pleasant is in a class of its own.

UrbanTurf is not prone to hyperbole, but the neighborhood adjacent to Rock Creek Park bordering Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights is the most competitive neighborhood housing market in the city right now.

First, the data. In 2013, homes on the market in Mount Pleasant have averaged just six days on the market, the lowest level for any neighborhood in DC. The average sale to list price ratio stands at 107% for the year, and last month, it was 110%. This means that more often than not, homes fetch 10% above their list price. While the average list price in June was approximately $899,000, the average sale price was $80,000 higher ($980,163).

Just a few examples of properties that have sold in recent months that illustrate these numbers:

• 1735 Hobart Street NW was listed in May for $750,000 and sold last week for $911,500 after receiving over 10 offers.
• 2011 Klingle Road NW was listed for $879,000 and sold for $996,000 after a bidding war.
• 3136 17th Street NW was listed for $795,000 last month, and while it has yet to settle, we hear it received 14 offers and went well into the $900,000s.
• One commenter on a recent UrbanTurf article wrote that a home in the neighborhood saw its sale price escalate $206,000 above asking.

“It’s pretty astonishing,” Rob Low of Long & Foster, who has lived in the neighborhood for 40 years, told UrbanTurf. “But, frankly, the market in the neighborhood has been this way for awhile.” Low noted that all of the homes his team has listed so far this year have resulted in multiple offer situations and sold for above the asking price.

“People who won most of the bidding wars remove the inspection and financing contingencies,” Low said. “Buyers are coming in and writing checks for 7-figure properties. I have seen this three times this year.”

The allure of Mount Pleasant has remained fairly constant over the years. It is a self-contained neighborhood near downtown and a variety of transportation lines with a solidly preserved housing stock. But in the last 12-18 months, many house hunters have begun limiting their housing search solely to Mount Pleasant.

Chris Kurz and Mine Senses fit that bill. The couple began looking back in 2007 before the downturn and then resumed their search in early 2012. Between mid-2012 and the end of the year, they wrote offers on three houses, all in Mount Pleasant, and lost out on each. In one instance, a listing received 20 offers. In another, the buyer came to the table with all cash. When they made their fourth offer in February on a house on Adams Mill Road, they came prepared.

“We removed all the contingencies except for financing, wrote in a 20-day settlement date and had an inspector ready to do a pre-inspection,” Kurz said. “We realized we needed to become more competitive based on previous experience.”

Kurz and his wife went under contract on the house three days after it hit the market and now happily call it home. Unfortunately, Kurz explained, their friends now face the current reality of the market.

“They are looking in the neighborhood and the multiple offer situations and competition have only seemed to dramatically intensify over the past few months.”

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/mount_pleasant_dcs_hottest_housing_market/7253.