North of $614: The Highest Prices Per Square Foot in DC

• September 6, 2016

by UrbanTurf Staff

Condos regularly sell for above $1,000 a square foot in this West End building.

The neighborhoods in DC with the highest real estate prices per square foot are a regular cast of characters this year.

Leading the way with a price per square foot metric within spitting distance of $800 are West End ($799) and Georgetown ($768). After those two neighborhoods, prices drop off noticeably to the next four neighborhoods on the list: Burleith ($684), Logan Circle ($683), U Street Corridor ($675) and North Cleveland Park ($667). The neighborhoods that saw the largest price per square foot increases this year were North Cleveland Park, followed by Logan Circle.

Click to enlarge.

As UrbanTurf has noted previously, 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 last year.

“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 and legal subdivision data for this article was provided by RealEstate Business Intelligence.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/north_of_614_the_highest_prices_per_square_foot_in_dc/11638