As you know, home values aren’t what they used to be in the Washington area. If you think about it, though, they actually are what they used to be - back in 2003 or 2004.
Ever since the housing boom went bust a few years ago, we’ve had too many homes for sale and not enough buyers. Plus, a ton of foreclosures have come on the market, sometimes in poor condition.
As a result, prices of existing homes slid downward beginning in 2006 - at least in Virginia. More about that in a moment.
You can see the steady decline in home prices in today’s charts, which show median resale prices for jurisdictions in the Washington area for the past three years.
Looking first at Maryland and the District, notice how prices fell steadily for several years and then began to rise again about 10 months ago.
In Virginia, prices hit bottom earlier and began to recover earlier - during the winter of 2008-09.
It’s almost as if Maryland and Virginia are operating in different time zones, separated by 12 to 15 months.
The difference actually goes back to 2006. That’s the year home prices fell in nearly every Virginia jurisdiction because the inventory surged so much when panicked homeowners and investors tried to sell before the market tanked.
But prices rose in Maryland in 2006, in part because Maryland’s inventory hadn’t grown as dramatically as Virginia’s had.
After 2006, prices in Virginia continued to fall quickly. They fell so much that buyers suddenly were interested in buying there again and by 2009 were pushing prices back up.
The same thing is happening in parts of Maryland today; it is just coming more than a year after it did in Virginia.
Buyers, this means the best deals are probably in Maryland right now - but prices haven’t climbed so high in Virginia that you’ve missed the boat. Prices in Fairfax and Loudoun counties, for example, are still about $110,000 lower than their peak in 2005.
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