North of $680: The Highest Prices Per Square Foot in DC

• July 2nd 2019

by UrbanTurf Staff

The neighborhoods in DC with the highest real estate prices per square foot in 2019 are concentrated in the NW quadrant of the city.

Leading the way with a median price per square foot of $800 is West End. Coming in second at $722 a square foot is Georgetown, and rounding out the top four are Logan Circle ($704) and the U Street Corridor ($684). Despite the high prices, this metric has dropped over the last year in all of the above areas in all but one (Mount Vernon Square) of the neighborhoods in the top ten.

As UrbanTurf has previously noted, price per square foot is one of those tricky measures in real estate. In DC, a home’s square footage consists of the above-grade finished living area. According to the DC Property Tax Division, that is “comprised of the finished areas of the main floor (kitchen, living room, dining room, etc.) and any finished areas above the main floor.” However, there is no exact science when it comes to measuring square footage, something that UrbanTurf commenter skidrowedc pointed out a couple years ago.

“Price per square foot has value as a general statistical indicator, tracking movements at neighborhood and regional scales. But overemphasis on price per square foot, combined with no legal standard for how to calculate square footage, creates an incentive to cheat the footage upward. Moreover, at the scale of an individual condo or house, it’s as much about how well the square footage is laid out than the actual quantity of square feet.”

The advertised subdivision data for this article was provided by MarketStats by ShowingTime.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/north-of-680-the-highest-prices-per-square-foot-in-dc/15616.