WASHINGTON — Northern Virginia’s most expensive county has been getting less expensive lately, at least based on the median price of what’s been selling.
The median price of a house or a condo that sold in Arlington County in October fell below $500,000, the first time that has happened in 2 1/2 years.
Long & Foster Real Estate says the median price last month was $497,000, down 9 percent from a year earlier. Just four months ago, the median price of a sale in Arlington County reached $627,000.
Arlington County’s year-over-year median price has declined for three consecutive months now.
These are median sales price figures, and it may be Arlington’s high-end that’s dragging those numbers down.
“The number of sales in the upper-bracket end, at $1 million or $1.5 million and up, has dropped off much more rapidly than the number of sales in the entry level house and condo market, so that affects the median number,” Bob Adamson, with real estate firm McEnearney Associates, told WTOP.
“I’m looking at numbers across the board in different price ranges year to year, and if you average it out it’s not nearly that big of a drop,” said Adamson, who is also chairman-elect of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.
Arlington County remains one of the most sought-after housing areas, however, and sellers are still largely getting what they want. Long & Foster data show the average selling price in Arlington County last month was 98.7 percent of list. And the number of closed sales was up 12 percent from a year ago.
There is really not much on the market for potential buyers to look at in Arlington County either, with just 630 active listings at the end of October. That is down 17 percent from a year ago.
“The Arlington market is hot. It’s a good market still,” Adamson said.
