Yikes! Is the DC housing market this bad?

[Anonymous]

House history is weird. Sold in July 2024, then listed for rent 6 months later, then tried to sell it, and were overpriced for the spring market, so it went unsold. Finally off-loaded this fall.

Clearly they were motivated sellers for some reason. I wouldn’t use this one oddball scenario as a reflection of the current market.

[Anonymous]

While it’s a beautiful neighborhood, this house is especially ugly (exterior) and the layout is weird. It also has virtually no backyard…the back area is a very steep slope rendering it useless except for that hot tub.

There are better properties without these compromises for people with $2 million to spend, especially in the current market where buyers can be a bit more selective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The sale history also says the 2024 sale was “part of a multi property sale” - I don’t know exactly what that means, but the house was then listed for rent before being listed for sale. So there’s probably more going on than just a small drop in value.

I think this is the right answer. Sometimes you will see weird home price listings where it's transferred to a related trust which then records as a "sale" when in fact it wasn't sold at all. Maybe that's done for property tax purposes.

I recall a house in our neighborhood like 10 years back was listed for like $1MM, sold for like $1.2MM, but was acquired by a trust and somehow showed up on Zillow as sold for $500,000 which was definitely not the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The federal government is being sold for parts. Old workforce and lot of (early) and forced retirements, without backfilling.

It’s a bad time for appreciation in the DC metro

This. I work in grants and they are being terminated left and right which is money to support private sectors who are laying off people in droves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The sale history also says the 2024 sale was “part of a multi property sale” - I don’t know exactly what that means, but the house was then listed for rent before being listed for sale. So there’s probably more going on than just a small drop in value.

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My neighborhood has houses ranging from 900k to over $4 million. The interesting thing is that the $2.5 million+ houses seem to be moving faster than the 900k-$1.3 million houses.

Another sign that the “DC middle class” is disappearing. Soon it will all be the wealthy and the impoverished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My neighborhood has houses ranging from 900k to over $4 million. The interesting thing is that the $2.5 million+ houses seem to be moving faster than the 900k-$1.3 million houses.

You should check what the townhouses are selling for. DCUM seems to hate townhouses, but many buyers would prefer paying $1.3 million for a nice, newer townhouse rather than $1.3 million for an old house, and I'm seeing nice townhouses sell briskly.