More potential home buyers in the D.C. area came off the sidelines in January, and real estate agents were booked with appointments.
Listing service Bright MLS reports 145,310 showings of houses and condos for sale in the D.C. region last month, a 42.5% jump from showings in December. There was also more to show, with new listings up 24.1% from the previous month.
More of those potential buyers looking in January found something as well, with new pending sales, or contracts signed, up 9.7% from the previous month.
Bright MLS’s home demand index, which measures forward-looking factors such as online search activity, remained in the “slow” category across the D.C. metro, though the index rose 23% from the previous month. And, its home demand index in Virginia’s Arlington County and Alexandria was “high.”
Townhouses in Alexandria sold for a record median price of $820,000 in January, up 12% from a year earlier.
Even with 5,010 new listings coming to market in January, the month’s supply of homes for sale — or the time it would take to sell homes on the market at the current selling pace — fell to just 0.5 months. That is almost half the already tight months of supply on the market in January 2021.
Virginia’s Loudoun County recorded an all-time high for prices in January, with the median price of a single-family home reaching $860,000. Bright MLS says Loudoun County ended the month with just one week’s worth of single-family home inventory for sale, and homes that sold went under contract for an average 101.5% of original list price.
The median price of all property types that sold in Loudoun County in January was $585,000, up 18.2% from a year earlier.
By jurisdiction, Falls Church had the highest median selling price last month of $980,000. That was more than double the median selling price in Falls Church in January 2020 and up 19.5% from January 2021, though it was also based on just four sales.
Maryland’s Prince George’s County remains the most affordable housing market by jurisdiction, but home selling prices there are also rising quickly. Based on 745 sales, the median selling price in Prince George’s County in January was $385,000, up 10% from a year earlier, and up 20.3% from January 2020.
Across the D.C. metro, the median selling price was $499.000, up 4% from a year earlier.
Below are median selling prices, by jurisdiction, for January 2021, courtesy of Bright MLS:
