Today’s charts compare the average prices of all the homes sold in 2011 with those sold in 2010. Looking at data for a full year is the best way to study price trends, because monthly data is prone to jumping up and down quite a bit.
Each home type is broken into two categories (new and resale), and I’ve given data on three types of homes, detached, (also known as “single family”), attached (town homes and row houses), and condominiums.
Most home shoppers have a limit on how much they can spend. When the amount you can spend is capped, you have to balance location with the kind of home you want to live in. If you can spend about $350,000 on a resale home, for example, you can buy a single-family home in a few jurisdictions, a town home in a few more places or a condo in many areas.
For those who really want a new home, the choices are a little more constrained. But, if you are willing to drive a bit, $350,000 will buy you a brand-new condo or town home in a number of Washington-area communities.
Of course, the median income in this area is quite high, so many can afford more than $350,000. That’s the reason so many new detached homes were sold in Northern Virginia for more than $1 million last year. It was the first year ever, in fact, that the average price for a detached new home was more than $1 million in Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax at the same time.
On top of this, 2011 was the first year since 2006 that the average price of detached resale homes was more than $700,000 in Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax. Obviously, folks in Northern Virginia have more flexibility about what they can buy and where.
You’ll notice in the charts that new homes generally cost more than resales. That’s no surprise. But there were two exceptions last year, both in the District.
Still, you shouldn’t get too excited to read that you can buy a new single-family home in the District for only $363,900, compared to $1.3 million in Arlington.
Only five new single-family homes were sold in the District last year. So that low price reflects the small number of homes that happened to be built last year, not the true value of new homes in the District as a whole.
The same is true of condominium prices for the District. Builders apparently built and sold some relatively affordable condos last year. Yet the 2,622 resale condos sold last year cost $30,000 more, on average, than the 416 new ones.
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