The Ten DC Zip Codes Where Homes are Selling the Fastest

• July 14, 2014
• 7 Comments

by Lark Turner

A home on Capitol Hill that sold in six days.

Though the city’s housing market isn’t quite as hot as last year, the difference is slight. Low inventory continues to make DC a seller’s market, and that means properties in the most desirable zip codes continue to sell quickly.

To gauge the neighborhoods where homes are selling the fastest, we used RealEstate Business Intelligence’s new SmartCharts tool to take a look at neighborhood-level data that shows how long homes spent on the market in a given zip code. We used a median days on market measure to exclude major anomalies.

Unlike last year, no zip codes broke the less-than-a-week mark, but four came close:

Affiliated neighborhoods are not exhaustive.

20005, 20010, 20015 and 20036 tied as places where homes were selling in a median of eight days.

Some of the same zip codes made both this year and last year’s list. (Last year’s list can be found here.) Seven of the hottest zip codes from last year made the list again, albeit in a different order; the overlap includes 20002, 20003, 20010, 20015, 20001, 20036 and 20009.

Last year, zip codes including parts of Anacostia (20020), Shepherd Park (20012) and Petworth (20011) made the list; this year, they didn’t. But parts of Southwest Waterfront (20024), Catholic University (20017), Dupont and Adams Morgan (20009) and Shaw (20001) replaced them.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_top_10_dc_zip_codes_where_homes_are_selling_the_fastest/8731

7 Comments

1. gakeats@gmail.com said at 9:04 pm on Monday July 14, 2014:
   What's missing from this data? I'll suggest that the overall number of units sold in each zip code also has something to do with popularity. By omitting that crucial piece, your article is somewhat misleading. We can all be pretty sure that the NUMBER OF UNITS SOLD in Petworth is significantly higher than what sold in Logan Circle.

1. Lark Turner said at 1:05 am on Tuesday July 15, 2014:
   Hi gakeats, Since we're looking just at the median days on the market here, and each zip code had plenty of sales in the time period, these data should be sound regardless of differences in sales volume. It's also probably worth nothing that we're not necessarily saying these are the District's "hottest" zips. There are many ways to measure the intensity of the market, and the days-on-market metric is just one of them. Thanks, Lark

1. DC Home Owner said at 1:53 pm on Tuesday July 15, 2014:
   Something you forgot to note, 20010 actually includes Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant, and all of Park View. Your blog previously had a great write up on the Park View neighborhood here: http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/park_view_its_not_petworth/5851 Would be nice to see Park View accurately represented, nonetheless an interesting article for sure.

1. MJ said at 2:31 pm on Tuesday July 15, 2014:
   Gakeats: There are 139 units active in 20011 and there are only 25 in 20005. Petworth is a good example for the opposite of this article - houses that sit on the market for a while due to the crazy number of flips in the area. There is already a ton of inventory in Petworth. By contrast the zip codes above have low inventories and high demand, and houses sell faster (econ 101 - supply and demand).

1. Lark Turner said at 2:59 pm on Tuesday July 15, 2014:
   Hi DC Home Owner, Thanks for your comment. As we note, the neighborhoods we list for each zip code are not exhaustive, because some neighborhoods cross multiple zips and vice versa. Lark

1. gakeats@gmail.com said at 6:01 pm on Tuesday July 15, 2014:
   Sorry guys, Unless you include number of units sold for the time period, you aren't comparing apples to apples. Supply and demand of course drives pricing, but misleading articles like this serve to artificially create 'demand' by altering the uninformed reader's perceived value. Agreed that the title says 'homes that sell the fastest' but it's incomplete data presentation.

1. MJ said at 8:57 pm on Wednesday July 16, 2014:
   I don't see why you need to know the total number of units sold to derive any conclusions from the zip codes where homes are selling the fastest. Houses are selling way faster in Capitol Hill than in Petworth. Who cares if 40 houses sold in Petworth and 10 in Capitol Hill? It has nothing to do with "value." I would buy a house in any of the zip codes listed above rather than in Petworth because there is less inventory in the zip codes above and houses sell the fastest. Less inventory = less supply = more demand = higher prices = better value. I don’t follow the logic that Petworth is a better value because more units sold there. To me that means that Petworth has more inventory, not that it's more desirable or a better value.