The Arlington Virginia Housing Market – 1st Half 2010
July 10th, 2010 Categories: Arlington Dirt, Market Stats
As you might suspect, I get asked a lot “How’s the Market?” and if you’ve heard me answer before, it’s usually “it depends.” With the craziness we’ve been experienced, I’m not even exactly sure myself of the true answer to this question most of the time…
We still have unprecedented, historically low interest rates. It’s beyond me why everyone considering buying doesn’t do so RIGHT NOW! With low interest rates, the dollar stretches so much farther! But for the purposes of this article, actually, that’s neither here nor there.
With the tax credit of 2009 and the last minute extension into 2010, we have artificially messed with the proper order of the world – so who really knows?? I have some data for you in 6 month chunks going back to 2007. Here’s how the single family market has been behaving the last 3 1/2 years:
Crazy, isn’t it? 2008 was a terrible year for units sold – and certainly 2008 moving into the early part of 2009 saw longer days on market than we’d seen in a number of years as well. As for pricing, we’ve stayed fairly flat for the last 2 1/2 years seeing the lows in the 2nd half of 2009… I sure would like to believe we’ve stabilized and are heading back up – but I’d like to know why the numbers are what they are – is it truly that prices are down? Or is it that through the tax credit, we encouraged primarily first time buyers to get busy and for the most part, they are not purchasing $1M+ properties… thus perhaps stimulating the lower end of the single family market? And you know, that will make it appear that prices are trending downward, when perhaps it’s not true at all?? Just a theory.
Let’s look at the same data for the Arlington condo sales market:
Following the trends I outlined above, 2008 was a terrible year – units were down and we saw prices eventually going into 2009 below the $400K mark. Also during 2008 the Days on Market were trending up with the tax credit of 2009/2010 perhaps now affecting days on market as well as unit sales?
In the end, I’m really not sure what’s spurring market activity – but I can tell you anecdotally it has been trailing off. We still have inventory issues – right now we only have 264 single family homes for sale in Arlington; we only have 420 condos for sale. Those are low low low!!! But with these interest rates, potential buyers would be foolish not to get themselves into the market before rates go up. There just are no two ways about it.
If you’d like to explore your buying options, please don’t hesitate to call. We’re never too busy to help our new clients (and past clients and referrals and anyone else who shows up on our doorstep with real estate needs) navigate through the process of home buying, selling or both!
Happy Saturday
Jennifer
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