Being a homebuyer in Greater Washington often means facing the cold, hard reality of soaring prices and low inventory.
“Some buyers don’t understand what half a million dollars will get you in our area,” said Cary Garcia, a broker for Coldwell Banker in Alexandria, who often finds himself having to explain the realities of the housing market in Greater Washington — a reality that includes sky-high prices in some neighborhoods or a hefty commute.
As a result, there are neighborhoods — hot neighborhoods — that prove to be more affordable while offering many of the qualities of places closer to the heart of the D.C. Meanwhile, some of the hottest neighborhoods are farther away, the continuing tradeoff between affordability and location.
So what makes for a hot neighborhood?
We crunched the numbers and ranked every subdivision in Greater Washington by the increase in median sales price year over year, the decrease in the median number of days these houses sat on the market before being sold, and the increase in price per square foot. We then weeded out neighborhoods that had a negative score in any of those categories, and those with too few home sales, and came up with the 19 hottest neighborhoods.
These neighborhoods stood out as places buyers wanted to be even during the height of winter, when homebuying activity and prices tend to be lower. The D.C. metro area saw median sale prices climb about 10.6 percent year over year to $589,000, while the price per square foot climbed about 7 percent. But the number of days homes sat on the market climbed to 32 days, up 15 percent.
Glover Park, which neighbors Georgetown, topped our list with a median sale price of about $650,000 and an average 35 days on market.
Garcia described Glover Park as a “sleepy center” that’s relatively affordable given its proximity to other highly coveted neighborhoods such as Dupont, Georgetown and Kalorama. But he says that won’t be the case for long.
“It’s a lot more affordable than Georgetown but also is starting to become expensive,” Garcia said. “In the next couple of years it’s going to be unreachable.”
Most hot neighborhoods, however, are located in and around the edges of Beltway where properties offer more square footage but are less expensive.
Brittany Patterson, an agent with TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, said she’s recently received extremely high demand for a home in Waynewood, Virginia — a quaint community south of Alexandria in Fairfax County.
“The buyer pool seems to be people that live here and have decided to jump in,” said Patterson.
She said sellers from Alexandria and Arlington often look to places such as Waynewood, which ranked 11th on our list, when looking for more space at an more affordable price point. This is also the case for neighborhoods like South Riding, Carriage Park, Laurel, Cherrydale, Oxon Hill and Hyattsville’s Palmer Park.
“Hyattsville’s growth is coming from College Park and its expansion,” said Joseph Olatunde Seriki of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty. “You have an area that’s affordable and that people can buy into and renovate.”
The emergence of Amazon’s HQ2 has the future of the housing market thrown into question. For Garcia, there’s not much of a question, saying that a vast majority of Amazon employees that move here will rent as opposed to buy — leaving the market relatively unaffected early on.
Patterson believes Amazon employees will slowly start buying after at least a year of renting, making newer houses in these neighborhoods extremely desirable to young buyers who do not want to spend money on renovations or upkeep.
By Katishi Maake and Andy Medici
