Real Estate Market: Heating Up?

By Beth Lawton

The spring real estate market has been hot in the DC metro area, with homes selling faster and at higher prices.

According to Real Estate Business Intelligence:

• The average home is on the market for just 38 days (down from 48 days a year ago).
• The median sold price of DC area homes has risen more than 8 percent from a year ago.
• The number of homes on the market in the DC area is up 20.2 percent from a year ago.

The hottest real estate market in the DC metro area right now?Falls Church, where median sales prices were $623,000 recently.

Despite the growth in listings, there isn’t enough inventory to meet demand, both the National Association of Realtors and individual real estate agents are warning.

“Property buyers in DC right now are chasing a market, facing multiple offers, battling price increases that outpace income increases, competing with out-of-area buyers and are operating out of fear of the inevitable interest rate hike,” wrote in a recent blog post in the Huffington Post’s DC Real Estate section. “Does this remind anyone of 2005? It's like watching the entire city go by in a big circle marked "real estate bubble.”

To put the DC metro area’s market in perspective: Nationwide,sales of existing homes rose in May by 12.9 percent over a year ago—the highest they’ve been since November 2009, NAR data shows.

What’s more—homes are selling quickly: 45 percent of homes sold in May were on the market for less than a month and the average home was on the market for 41 days. (See additional analysis and take-aways here from The Wall Street Journal.)