The 30-Year Price Map: What $600K Bought You in DC in 1995, 2005, 2015, and Today

• April 1st

by UrbanTurf Staff

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A $600,000 budget once bought you a rowhouse in Georgetown; now it gets you a one-bedroom condo in most places around the city. Below, UrbanTurf tracks how that budget has evolved in the city since 1995.

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1995 

Thirty years ago, if you had a $600,000 budget for a home, you had a lot to choose from.

This budget would get you a four-bedroom, three-bath Federal rowhouse with a walled garden on Capitol Hill. In Georgetown, you could buy one of the neighborhood's more modest townhomes off P Street, and in Cleveland Park, that budget got you a detached Colonial with an actual garage, walking distance to the Metro.

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2005

In 2005, federal spending was pouring into the area and young professionals had discovered Capitol Hill and U Street. $600,000 still bought you a rowhouse — but you were working harder for it.

On the Hill, that budget was competitive rather than comfortable, which means a solid three-bedroom on the Senate side. A large condo in Dupont or Kalorama was in range; a rowhouse there was not. In Columbia Heights, $600,000 could get you one of the larger rowhouses in the neighborhood. 

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2015

By 2015, the $600,000 budget was solidly mid-market in a way that would have seemed absurd twenty years earlier.

A two-bedroom rowhouse in Hill East or Eckington — neighborhoods that weren't in most buyers' vocabularies in 1995 — was now in this range. You might also be able to get a two-bedroom condo in Navy Yard for around this price point. Capitol Hill had repriced itself out of the conversation entirely — the same blocks that sold for $580,000 in 2005 were now upwards of $900,000.

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2026

These days, $600,000 puts you firmly in condo territory in most places in DC: a well-appointed one-bedroom in Logan Circle or a newer building in NoMa. A rowhouse in Shaw or Petworth? You're $200,000 to $400,000 short in most cases.

There are still pockets where the budget travels. Parts of Deanwood and Marshall Heights in Ward 7 offer rowhouses with real square footage. Neighborhoods like Trinidad and Riggs Park still have semi-detached houses in this range. But those neighborhoods are increasingly the exception, not the entry point.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_30-year_price_map_what_600k_bought_you_in_dc_in_1995_2005_2015_and_toda/24480.