WASHINGTON — Monthly numbers on residential real estate sales can be volatile, and median prices based on just a few hundred sales aren’t necessarily indicative of the market, but year-over-year prices have declined for two consecutive months in Arlington County and were relatively flat earlier this summer.
Arlington County remains the most expensive county for housing in Northern Virginia, but Long & Foster Real Estate Inc. says the median price of a house or condo that sold in Arlington County in September was $515,000, down 10 percent from a year ago.
The median price was based on 219 sales. By that metric, the number of sales in Arlington County was also 15 percent lower than last year.
The 196 sales in Alexandria City last month yielded a median price of $447,500, down 2 percent from September 2015. Sales had fallen 12 percent.
In Fairfax County, which saw a healthy 1,231 sales in September, the median price, at $460,000, was down 1 percent from a year earlier.
“Conservative appraisals and buyers have kept things tempered,” said Gary Lange, managing broker at Weichert Reality in Vienna and a member of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. “Consequently, our prices continue to remain flat.”
Loudoun and Prince William counties were the only Northern Virginia counties to see both sales and median prices rise, compared to a year ago.
The median price in Loudoun County was up four percent to $440,000, with a 2 percent increase in sales. Prince William County’s median price rose 8 percent to $336,000, with a 3 percent increase in sales.
