The 8-Year Path of Anacostia and Hillcrest Prices in Three Charts

• April 26th 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

While the 2008 recession didn’t affect the DC housing market as drastically as the rest of the country, prices in the area were affected — some more than others. UrbanTurf has spent the first few months of 2016 looking at a sample of neighborhoods around the region to see how housing prices have fared over the past eight years.

We have analyzed Capitol Hill; the zip code that includes Shaw, Bloomingdale, LeDroit Park and Mount Vernon Square; Chevy Chase DC; and Trinidad and Columbia Heights. This week, we are looking East of the River to see how home prices fared in 20020, the zip code that includes Historic Anacostia, Naylor Gardens and Hillcrest.

(While we would prefer to cover each of these neighborhoods individually, there is not enough historical data for the individual subdivisions to do an appropriate analysis of each.)

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Two-Bedroom Prices Down 21 Percent

There may not be an abundance of two-bedroom homes in the 20020 zip code, but their median price dropped considerably since 2008. The median price for this property size at the beginning of this year was $177,832 — a 21 percent drop from the second quarter 2008 price of $225,354. Prices peaked in the first quarter of 2009, at an inflation-adjusted $227,299, before plummeting in 2011. The closest that 20020 has come to its 2009 high was in the second quarter of 2014, when prices reached $218,727. The good news is that current prices are a 221.8 percent recovery from the 2011 low-point, and that the overall market has been stabilizing in the high $100,000s with the only notable exception being the second quarter of 2015 when prices dipped back to $102,731.

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A Nine Percent Price Drop for Three-Bedrooms

While a raw look at the numbers indicates that prices for three-bedroom homes in 20020 recently returned to their pre-recession levels, when adjusted for inflation, it becomes clear that prices have actually dipped. The median price for three-bedrooms in the second quarter of 2008 was $291,000 compared to $290,000 in the last quarter of 2015. However, when the 2008 figure is adjusted for inflation it comes to over $321,000 — higher than the peak median price in this submarket seen in the third quarter of 2014. Prices do seem to be on an upward trajectory but only time will tell whether the market here will strengthen over the long-term, as prices have averaged a little below $250,000 for the past eight years.

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A Shakier Market for Four Bedrooms

Price for four-bedroom homes in this zip code have been unpredictable in recent years. At their lowest point, the median price for this property type was an inflation-adjusted $144,152 in the second quarter of 2010, down from an inflation-adjusted median of $459,000 in 2008. The closest prices have come to returning to pre-recession levels was the first quarter of 2015 when they hit $432,000, but that number seems more like a momentary blip in the big picture. However, prices did jump to $302,500 in the second quarter of 2013, and have not dropped more than six percent from that point since then.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_8-year_price_recovery_in_anacostia_and_hillcrest/11153.