SPRING MARKET!! What's the vibe?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not the DC to Ashburn corridor (is that a thing?) but a house on my block just put up the under contract sign, less than two weeks from listing (probably less time - they picked up the staging furniture 2 days ago). Don't know if it sold for full price but guessing pretty close to it.

I mean, this is … normal. What’s remarkable about someone selling a house 2 weeks after listing it?

And why be so cryptic about the location. It’s an anonymous forum.

Apologies, I thought I’d put that in. Bethesda 20816. The house was listed for $1.8m.

This Mclean house was under contract in 3 days, open house was cancelled. Built in 1956, 0.4 acres

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6156-Tompkins-Dr-Mc-Lean-VA-22101/51757639_zpid/

It was the perfect house for empty nesters. The public spaces and primary suite were large and well done. Main level had two very small bedrooms and a bath. The lower level felt more 1970s and had a huge indoor infinity pool that was sold as is. Most of the yard was in the side but it was fine.

[Anonymous]

Wow, this Alexandria house in Del Ray: https://redf.in/4BUrzQ

Listed for $1.19

Sold today for $1.34

[Anonymous]

Rockville here

Zestimate has been skyrocketing yet the nearby identical houses to mine have dropped price. I think it’s due to higher interest rates chilling buyers. We’re in a nicer neighborhood

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, this Alexandria house in Del Ray: https://redf.in/4BUrzQ

Listed for $1.19

Sold today for $1.34

How do you know what it sold for? Did you bid on it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, this Alexandria house in Del Ray: https://redf.in/4BUrzQ

Listed for $1.19

Sold today for $1.34

How do you know what it sold for? Did you bid on it?

Oh, I see it lists the price. Did it close the day it sold or something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, this Alexandria house in Del Ray: https://redf.in/4BUrzQ

Listed for $1.19

Sold today for $1.34

How do you know what it sold for? Did you bid on it?

Oh, I see it lists the price. Did it close the day it sold or something?

I’m just a neighbor that lives up the street.

All of this info is publicly available on the Redfin/Zillow listing. It says it was listed February 26 and closed March 13.

This is a pretty big spread between asking and final sale price compared to SFH sales in this neighborhood in 2025. Last year most houses were going for around asking, sometimes a bit more or a bit less.

I think two things are true in my small market of Alexandria City:

1) It seems real estate agents are convincing their clients to underprice listings and let people bid it up, with this house being an example of that

2) There seems to be more hungry buyers out there right now and that’s creating more competition. It’s not Fall 2020 wild, but it only takes a handful of serious buyers interested in a house to bid it up like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The pricey new builds simply reflect that the builders are constantly pushing the market to see what they can get away with. The profit margins on those houses are insane (new builds in places like Bowie go for $750K -- see https://southlakebowie.com -- and they look virtually indistinguishable from the new builds in desirable areas, so land cost alone cannot account for the difference). In past years, builders have pushed the market and gotten away with it, so every year, they inch up more to see if buyers will accept the higher prices or balk.

I'm sure there is greed but hasn't the price of all materials gone up too with the tariffs? I feel like new builds could be cheaper and they should be. Everything is so expensive now. Don't get me started on restaurant prices...ugh

Labor and materials in Bowie is this much cheaper than in Vienna or Mclean? Please. It costs at least 1.5 mil to build a house (without cost of land) in the affluent NOVA burbs for a basic house. If you want anything nice or high end it's north of 2 mil for build alone. If you find a high end new construction home for a total of 1.5 mil within the 50-100 mile radius what does it tell you? It tells you that construction cost of 2 mil alone carries a "land premium" that your builder wants to collect to add to the profit, not just profit on labor/materials. Because to build the same house that with land price included costs 1.5 mil elsewhere they will charge half this. There is no way materials and labor is this much cheaper just 50-100s miles away. Workers who labor on the houses in premium DC suburbs don't live in them, they commute from cheaper far out places.

Builders will always charge what they know they can get away with. And it's basically a cartel where builders don't want to undercut each other, which would put all of their fat margins at risk. I'm not blaming builders -- if I were them, I would absolutely do the same thing. Why would I price a house at $2 million when I know that I can get a buyer at $2.5 million? Buyers in desirable areas keep paying the higher prices, so builders will continue to price the houses accordingly.

I am talking about the price of construction alone, not the cost of land. If someone already owns their land or an older home and wants to rebuild or remodel, but don't have the deep pockets of the new buyers, they will be eventually looking elsewhere for the builders, which should create competitive environment for the local builders who think they "monopolize" the area. Having construction costs blow up also is bad for the people who paid premium for their new construction homes to live in an area that will continue having uglier older housing stock (since people cannot afford to improve) or having uglier cheaper new construction next to them. At some point this will hurt the contractors working in the area too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The pricey new builds simply reflect that the builders are constantly pushing the market to see what they can get away with. The profit margins on those houses are insane (new builds in places like Bowie go for $750K -- see https://southlakebowie.com -- and they look virtually indistinguishable from the new builds in desirable areas, so land cost alone cannot account for the difference). In past years, builders have pushed the market and gotten away with it, so every year, they inch up more to see if buyers will accept the higher prices or balk.

a lot of new homes north of 4 mil are sitting for many months if not over a year before they find a buyer. Not sure what builders are going to do when they have to eat the costs of these homes sitting and will start competing with external (out of the area) construction companies who will underbid them to build the same homes. Bowie contractors will see the opportunity to profit more going into the wealthy area to build for the existing home owners (wanting to upgrade) even if charging less than the local builders used to the gravy train

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to like old houses but I like this one. The vaulted ceiling with skylights in the family room, Miele/Sub Zero/Wolf appliances, pretty exterior, other interesting details you don’t see in new construction. The primary bath looks dated as does some of the paint colors, but those are easy fixes. I wish stuff like this existed when I was looking in Arlington.

I bet it went for 2 - 2.1 million.

People will start remodeling older homes. This likely used to be like a lot of other old ramblers around, the owner raised the roof and renovated. If you can buy a fixer upper/tear down older home for the price of land (that's what they go for), then you can save a lot of money renovating vs. building a new home or buying new construction, which in this area goes for $$$ and is catering to luxury home buyers. If you don't need a huge house like they build now, it's the way to go. It's also easier to find an external renovation company that isn't local to the area, so that you can avoid price gouging by the local contractors.

Am I wrong here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve been actively looking in Falls Church / N Arlington area and houses are being bid $100-200k over asking with a few places that have been bought sight unseen.

We’re wondering if we should renew our lease so that we can resume our search in a few months / next year.

What’s your price range

$1.3-1.5M. It's so bad in VA that we're actually looking at buying in D.C.

Watch the 1.1 to 1.3 listings like a hawk (or have your agent doing this), see it immediately the day it goes live and your agent can take you, and bid way up with an escalation clause.

Better yet: drive your desired neighborhood a couple of times per week and watch for houses with lots of work trucks but that seem to be otherwise quiet. If you have a dog you can do this less conspicuously. On our dog’s billion walks per day we started to notice a hour with handyman trucks, then painting company trucks, then the garage would be open and we realized it looked really cleaned out. The lights were never on at night and I told DH we had to move money around and call our mortgage broker.

When the house was listed, we had already been pre-approved for the mortgage and our real estate agent had already contacted their real estate agent. We got the house.

You sound just a LITTLE like the narrator of Best Offer Yet- a novel set in DC about a … very persistent homebuyer.

LOL I had the same thought. Loved that unhinged book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The pricey new builds simply reflect that the builders are constantly pushing the market to see what they can get away with. The profit margins on those houses are insane (new builds in places like Bowie go for $750K -- see https://southlakebowie.com -- and they look virtually indistinguishable from the new builds in desirable areas, so land cost alone cannot account for the difference). In past years, builders have pushed the market and gotten away with it, so every year, they inch up more to see if buyers will accept the higher prices or balk.

I'm sure there is greed but hasn't the price of all materials gone up too with the tariffs? I feel like new builds could be cheaper and they should be. Everything is so expensive now. Don't get me started on restaurant prices...ugh

Tariffs effect every area equally. There is no reason why materials in Bowie would cost half or 1/3 of what they would cost in the premium suburbs of inner beltway. There is no "toll" on materials and trucks to cross the beltway

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to like old houses but I like this one. The vaulted ceiling with skylights in the family room, Miele/Sub Zero/Wolf appliances, pretty exterior, other interesting details you don’t see in new construction. The primary bath looks dated as does some of the paint colors, but those are easy fixes. I wish stuff like this existed when I was looking in Arlington.

I bet it went for 2 - 2.1 million.

People will start remodeling older homes. This likely used to be like a lot of other old ramblers around, the owner raised the roof and renovated. If you can buy a fixer upper/tear down older home for the price of land (that's what they go for), then you can save a lot of money renovating vs. building a new home or buying new construction, which in this area goes for $$$ and is catering to luxury home buyers. If you don't need a huge house like they build now, it's the way to go. It's also easier to find an external renovation company that isn't local to the area, so that you can avoid price gouging by the local contractors.

Am I wrong here?

We priced a gut remodel vs full teardown and rebuild across multiple firms and remodel was significantly more. Maybe if we used bottom feeder firms it would be less but we weren’t willing to take that risk. That said I know this wasn’t always the case - we’ve got lots of people on our street who did full gut renos for a lot less but it’s different now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to like old houses but I like this one. The vaulted ceiling with skylights in the family room, Miele/Sub Zero/Wolf appliances, pretty exterior, other interesting details you don’t see in new construction. The primary bath looks dated as does some of the paint colors, but those are easy fixes. I wish stuff like this existed when I was looking in Arlington.

I bet it went for 2 - 2.1 million.

People will start remodeling older homes. This likely used to be like a lot of other old ramblers around, the owner raised the roof and renovated. If you can buy a fixer upper/tear down older home for the price of land (that's what they go for), then you can save a lot of money renovating vs. building a new home or buying new construction, which in this area goes for $$$ and is catering to luxury home buyers. If you don't need a huge house like they build now, it's the way to go. It's also easier to find an external renovation company that isn't local to the area, so that you can avoid price gouging by the local contractors.

Am I wrong here?

We priced a gut remodel vs full teardown and rebuild across multiple firms and remodel was significantly more. Maybe if we used bottom feeder firms it would be less but we weren’t willing to take that risk. That said I know this wasn’t always the case - we’ve got lots of people on our street who did full gut renos for a lot less but it’s different now.

Remodel contractors jack up their prices too if your remodel is located in a very $$$ area. So do all the other types of contractors including landscapers. You have to seek people from the outside and get quotes without disclosing the address or by having your friends who live elsewhere hook you up with their contractors. Or you have stamina to be your own general contractor. Not for everyone.

[Anonymous]

We just bought in NW DC around 1.5-1.7. House went on market and offer was accepted the next day. Five competing offers. The 1.5-1.7 price point in NW is tough- we didn’t see much and there is basically nothing within easy walking distance of Metro. We feel like we got really lucky!

[Anonymous]

what's the HHI range for 1.5-1.7?

Anonymous wrote:We just bought in NW DC around 1.5-1.7. House went on market and offer was accepted the next day. Five competing offers. The 1.5-1.7 price point in NW is tough- we didn’t see much and there is basically nothing within easy walking distance of Metro. We feel like we got really lucky!