DC area home prices reach record high

Home For Sale Real Estate Sign in Front of Beautiful New House.(Getty Images/iStockphoto/Feverpitched)

The median price of a home that sold in the Washington, D.C. region in 2020 was $500,000 — up 8.7% from 2019, and an all-time high, according to listing service Bright MLS.

The total sales dollar volume for residential sales in the D.C. metro last year reached $34.6 billion, up 11.7% from 2019.

Prices eased modestly in December, with the median selling price of $490,000, down 2% from November.

Bright MLS expects median prices this month to decline by another 5% compared to December.

In December, there were 5,291 closed residential sales, 25% more than in December 2019.

Alexandria City and Arlington County in Virginia saw the biggest year-over-year increase in sales, up 39.2% and 33%, respectively.

Pending sales throughout the D.C. region in December — contracts signed by sales not yet closed — totaled 3,980, a 30.3% increase compared to a year earlier.

What sells, sells quickly: The average days-on-market in December was nine days, and for all of 2020, the average time it took to get a contract on a new listing was just eight days.

Below are month-over-month and year-over-year sales price comparisons in the Washington region, as well as the D.C. metro’s 10-year trend. Data provided by ShowingTime, based on listing activity from Bright MLS.

Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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