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.

Very surprised in my neighborhood that houses that sat all summer and were delisted in December got relisted in the past month and have all sold. All in the $2.5-$3.5 range and all decent but had slightly at least one undesirable feature- bad street, corner lot, only one bedroom upstairs, 80s house on a block of 30s and 40s houses, etc.

So in my neighborhood at least I’m confused by the market. I thought things would sit but instead it feels like they’re flying, especially compared to last spring.

I drive through a few other areas en route to work with “lower” price points ($900k-$2M) and that stuff is not moving at all. To me it feels like there are two different real estate universes operating in parallel.

Houses in areas with little availability are going under contract within a day. But otherwise, market is stalled. Lots of "price improvements" on houses that are surprising.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!

It is, but it won't be very nice. If you go just a couple miles to the west or south, you'll find exceptionally nice properties at that price, but many folks are obsessed with having that N Arl address.

Nah I’m obsessed with my 20 min door to door N Arlington to DC commute during rush. Priceless. Also fly regularly for work and getting to DCA during rush in 10 minutes is also perfection.

You pay for the convenience and boy do you get it.

Interesting, but those times don't hold for the vast majority of N Arl.

+1

Unless you are living in Rosslyn and working in Georgetown ...

If you live near Rt 50 in Arlington it also holds

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!

It is, but it won't be very nice. If you go just a couple miles to the west or south, you'll find exceptionally nice properties at that price, but many folks are obsessed with having that N Arl address.

Nah I’m obsessed with my 20 min door to door N Arlington to DC commute during rush. Priceless. Also fly regularly for work and getting to DCA during rush in 10 minutes is also perfection.

You pay for the convenience and boy do you get it.

Interesting, but those times don't hold for the vast majority of N Arl.

+1

Unless you are living in Rosslyn and working in Georgetown ...

As above poster, seeing well priced solid houses go quickly in NWDC. This seems partially due to overall low inventory and pent up demand (some people need to buy this season). So it will be interesting to see how things play out over next 2 months as the people who have to buy are off the market. But the margin of error is slim: houses with a couple of imperfections that would’ve also been scooped quickly a few years ago, as well as those with pricing that is too aspirational, seem to sit. It seems like some sellers/agents are guarding against this by pricing low, which is why you are seeing bidding wars relative to ask price.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!

It is, but it won't be very nice. If you go just a couple miles to the west or south, you'll find exceptionally nice properties at that price, but many folks are obsessed with having that N Arl address.

Nah I’m obsessed with my 20 min door to door N Arlington to DC commute during rush. Priceless. Also fly regularly for work and getting to DCA during rush in 10 minutes is also perfection.

You pay for the convenience and boy do you get it.

Interesting, but those times don't hold for the vast majority of N Arl.

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.

In a similar boat. We were looking in Bethesda and N Arlington in that price range and have now expanded our search to DC. It is amazing how much more you can get in DC, and the commute would also be better.

It is because of the schools. If you have kids, make sure you look at schools in DC because many are not good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!

It is, but it won't be very nice. If you go just a couple miles to the west or south, you'll find exceptionally nice properties at that price, but many folks are obsessed with having that N Arl address.

Nah I’m obsessed with my 20 min door to door N Arlington to DC commute during rush. Priceless. Also fly regularly for work and getting to DCA during rush in 10 minutes is also perfection.

You pay for the convenience and boy do you get it.

Anonymous wrote:Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!

It is, but it won't be very nice. If you go just a couple miles to the west or south, you'll find exceptionally nice properties at that price, but many folks are obsessed with having that N Arl address.

Bad!

There were 200 sales under $1 million.

There were 500 sales of single family homes in Arlington last year, so yeah, you can buy a house in Arlington for less than $1.5.

Anonymous wrote:Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!

It’s more than enough but it’s competitive and at $1.5M it’s definitely not going to look like a “million dollar house.”

Average teardown lots in N Arlington are about $1M, give or take a little depending on school zoning and desirability. So $1.5M is really a $1M lot and $500K house (likely 3/2-3 or smaller 4/3)

Wow it’s crazy that 1.5 million isn’t enough to buy a house in Arlington!