3701 5TH ST S #507
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $91,000
Prior Sale: $185,000 9/28/2006
Listing Date: 06/27/08
-50.8%
1503 GEORGE MASON DR S #2
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $159,900
Prior Sale: $295,000 12/13/2005
Listing Date: 06/23/08
-45.8%
1503 GEORGE MASON DR S #22
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $159,000
Prior Sale: $272,000 6/3/2005
Listing Date: 06/26/08
-41.5%
1934 LOWELL ST
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $339,900
Prior Sale: $575,000 8/29/2006
Listing Date: 07/01/08
-40.9%
4505 9TH ST S
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $299,900
Prior Sale: $484,000 2/10/2006
Listing Date: 06/23/08
-38.0%
5226 10TH PL S
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $215,000
Prior Sale: $326,000 6/20/2005
Listing Date: 06/24/08
-34.0%
2022 MONROE ST S
ARLINGTON, VA 22204
List Price: $305,000
Prior Sale: $410,000 7/24/2006
Listing Date: 06/30/08
-25.6%
See Arlington County 7/7/2008 for more comparisons from this week's listings.
(Links by FranklyMLS.com)
Monday, July 7, 2008
Arlington County -- On the Market
Posted by Harriet at 10:06 AM
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36 comments:
So what effect will these prices have on 22201?
maybe tom is right - NoAr prices will never go down!
1762 RHODES ST N #6-352
ARLINGTON, VA 22201
List Price: $289,900
Prior Sale: $178,000 9/27/2002
Listing Date: 06/25/08
+62.9% or, a $111,900 profit
4371 LEE HWY #102
ARLINGTON, VA 22207
List Price: $327,000
Prior Sale: $210,000 8/19/2003
Listing Date: 06/25/08
+55.7% or, a $117,000 profit
2121 MONROE ST N #A
ARLINGTON, VA 22207
List Price: $429,500
Prior Sale: $322,500 8/19/2003
Listing Date: 06/27/08
+33.2% or, a $107,000 profit
1804 LEE HWY #92
ARLINGTON, VA 22201
List Price: $293,975
Prior Sale: $245,000 7/9/2004
Listing Date: 06/26/08
+20.0%
2001 15TH ST N #514
ARLINGTON, VA 22201
List Price: $375,000
Prior Sale: $314,000 5/31/2006
Listing Date: 07/03/08
+19.4%
1680 QUINN ST
ARLINGTON, VA 22209
List Price: $989,000
Prior Sale: $831,500 10/30/2003
Listing Date: 07/02/08
+18.9%
(this is a daring price, IMO)
1730 ARLINGTON BLVD #105
ARLINGTON, VA 22209
List Price: $299,900
Prior Sale: $275,900 6/6/2005
Listing Date: 06/24/08
+8.7%
but maybe tom is wrong -
1021 GARFIELD ST N #604
ARLINGTON, VA 22201
List Price: $359,900
Prior Sale: $412,400 7/29/2005
Listing Date: 07/01/08
-12.7%
1020 STAFFORD ST N #402
ARLINGTON, VA 22201
List Price: $449,900
Prior Sale: $486,000 7/27/2005
Listing Date: 06/27/08
-7.4%
1011 ARLINGTON BLVD #648
ARLINGTON, VA 22209
List Price: $159,000
Prior Sale: $160,000 7/10/2006
Listing Date: 07/01/08
-0.6%
maybe it's neither???
2078 OAKLAND ST N
ARLINGTON, VA 22207
List Price: $849,900
Prior Sale: $849,900 9/19/2005
Listing Date: 06/25/08
+0.0%
i love this site!
Hey MM,
That is my building that you are talking about (1021). yep that is a bank owned 1 bedroom. Not too shabby.
Frank
Blog.FranklyRealty.com
Or, what effect will these prices have on 22314.
North Arlington on average is going down, slightly.
But it will never see the across the board declines that PWC saw because the substitution effect is garbage.
...and so is gravity, and that whole "round earth" thing...
Hi and Doug:
In 22201 the average price in May was down 19% over last year, median sold price down 11% over the same period and total dollar volume down 57%.
Since so many people are following Arlington I decided to add it to my spreadsheet. Over the last 24 months, median prices have been up 8 times. They have been up double digits twice in that time. They have been down double digits 4 times. I'll check my figures and share them on google when I'm finished.
"But it will never see the across the board declines that PWC saw because the substitution effect is garbage."
I can see we are dealing with a formidable intellect.
The ball is in your court Leroy.
I have been waiting for months for you to offer something up, but all you have is rhetoric.
You said it is happening, but you have no evidence.
You should either shut up or show us what you are claiming to be fact.
Oh and Leroy, as far as intellect goes, shall I find the post where you said lawyers in DC make 30-50k a year!
ROFL!
Because thats probably what you make!
Doug,
If memory serves, the the 30-50K comment regarding lawyers in this area was for the bottom 5-10% of the group.
You have chosen to ignore this context, quote the 6-figure number for the high end, and then pat yourself on the back for this weakly constructed rebuttle.
Gotta love intellect.
My $0.02
Eye-balling the full list puts the current price roll-back date somewhere in 2005. While the steep discounts are heartening, we need to go back a couple more years to reach reasonable affordability levels. I'm not buying for more than 3% appreciation on 2001 prices. Just not gonna do it. There is still way too much kool aid flowing out there.
(although I am not interested in Arlington personally, either, so may stand a better shot at getting my own version of WTF prices)
The substitution effect, by definition, is not instantaneous, but has a delay.
"I have been waiting for months for you to offer something up, but all you have is rhetoric."
Offer something up?
You mean like the current real estate bust?
There are now mountains of data that show what is happening. There is reasonable debate about exactly how the bust will unfold, but at this point the basic facts of the bust are widely recognized.
If you insist on living in an alternate reality you can, but don't expect us to take you seriously.
"If memory serves, the the 30-50K comment regarding lawyers in this area was for the bottom 5-10% of the group.
You have chosen to ignore this context, quote the 6-figure number for the high end, and then pat yourself on the back for this weakly constructed rebuttle.
Gotta love intellect."
Thanks mytwocents...
That is exactly the context of that number.
I guess I should be glad that the best he can do is try to misquote me but I would prefer if we could just have an honest discussion about the market.
terminator-x, as a Realtor explained it to me, contingent - no kick out usually does not refer to a home sale contingency, but rather to inspection, financing, etc., whereas contingent - kick out usually refers to a contract with a home sale contingency. The former are common but the latter still are not.
Ace:
How embarrassing! Thanks for the correction; it seems that I was misinformed. [Serves me right for doing research on the internet!]. I've deleted the post.
Interestingly, some websites do not accurately reflect the "CONTG/KO" or "CONTG/NO KO" status. Homesdatabase.com is realiable:
http://tinyurl.com/65rkfp
Does anyone seriously expect Arlington to suffer a bubble burst? Setting the condo segment aside, Arlington is really a well-established community with a relatively low level of new construction compared to most suburbs that are really taking a hit. There appear to be low levels of foreclosures and most homeowners are not upside down (unlike newer communities). Prices have been strong, too, so what is all the fuss about? I'm sure someone could point to specific examples of price depreciation, but it would be just as easy to show examples of price appreciation. Overall, prices seem stable. And with gas prices as high as they are, won't that provide a stimulus for higher prices or at least a buffer to any potential price decline?
--Remy
"Remy said...
Does anyone seriously expect Arlington to suffer a bubble burst?"
Remy - I think we are seeing it right before our eyes. Fact of the matter is Alrington prices were too high, and they are coming down now.
The issue now is a matter of degree. Compared to the spectacular bubble explosion now taking place out west, the "bursting" of Arlington's bubble isnt really that exciting.
Remy - as an example of what I am saying, I just looked up foreclosures in Loudon County, zip code 20176. This one single zipcode, with only 7,000 houses total has more foreclosure listings than the entire population of all of Alexandria City combined!!!
"Does anyone seriously expect Arlington to suffer a bubble burst? Setting the condo segment aside, Arlington is really a well-established community with a relatively low level of new construction compared to most suburbs that are really taking a hit."
Arlington saw the same huge run-up in prices as the rest of the region for the same reasons. In the end prices will fall in Arlington just like they are pretty much everywhere else at this point.
I think it is safe to say that Arlington is going to see a slower and smaller bust than was seen out west. The price increases during the bubble were smaller as a percentage in Arlington than places out west and as you pointed out, a smaller portion of Arlington homes were purchased during the bubble years.
(Though we are seeing LOTS of "established communities" getting hit hard.)
Remy said...Arlington is really a well-established community with a relatively low level of new construction compared to most suburbs that are really taking a hit.
Remy, while it's true that most (not all) of the worst hit places in Virginia have a lot of new construction (and thus, relatively more new loans) I've been following older, established parts of Montgomery County as well. These are single family home neighborhoods with houses built mostly in the 70's and within easy walking distance of the metro. As recently as last fall these places were still showing year over year gains. Median prices were in the low 400's. Now they are in the low 300's and falling fast. Believe me I was watching, and it turned on a dime! I'm still splashing water on my face.
If you want an example of this in NoVa, take a look at Manassas. For the first half of 2006 prices were up double digits nearly every month. Median prices were in the mid $300's. Last month the median price was $178,550.
It's a little early to say for sure, but it looks to me like the same pattern is beginning to show up in Alexandria and Arlington now: Alexandria's prices have fallen for 5 straight months and in Arlington 6 of the last 7 months have been down.
Remy - if you want to know if Arlington & Alexandria are going to suffer the same fate that Manassas & Montgomery county have, look to months of inventory. (i.e. supply & demand).
Montgomery & Manassas had big, sustained overhangs of inventory that preceeded their significant price drops. To date neither Arlington nor Alexandria has had that problem.
If Arlington & Alexandria see sustained periods of 8-12 months of inventory, yes they will see significant price drops as Sarah suggests.
If they do not, they will act as Leroy suggests, in which case they will experience a slower and smaller burn down overall. This is what we are seeing now, and really have been seeing for about 2 years now. Again, its just not very spectacular, without the imbalance of supply & demand.
crt-- I'm curious about the inventory in the places that have fallen. Do you have any handle on how large the inventory overhang was in Manassas and Montgomery county and by how many months it preceded the price declines?
You may have mentioned it before, but could you tell me how you are calculating it? Sales as a percentage of active listings? Active listings minus sales?
Thanks.
Sarah - I look at active listings over sales, using the same source that Harriet does for her "decade of sales" series:
http://www.mris.com/reports/stats/
Recognizing some of the problems with median prices that have been noted here and elsewhere, In some ways, I rely as much on absorbtion rates as anything to tell me what a market is doing.
You will note that Montgomery was doing about as well as Arlington & Alexandria in absorbtion rates (below 6 months) until Sept of last year. At that point, while all went up significantly, Montgomery leapfrogged close in areas and has remained at a higher absorbtion rate since.
I also note that all areas had their worst month in January 2008 (Arl 9.14, Alex 10.18 & Mont 12.56). If you look back at Harriets post that February, I was about as pessimistic as anyone saying in essence "this is it, the close in areas are cooked". Since then however, all areas have steadily improved, but Montgomery still lagged (now Arl has 4.62, Alex 5.00 & Mont 8.92). This along with steadily declining inventory leads me to believe that there is no delay in time between close in and far our areas anymore. All have been hit, just some places harder than others.
I have not tracked Manassas separately, but if its anything like PWC, it has suffered under double digit months of inventory for nearly 2 years. To me, its no surprise that the areas with massive overhangs have suffered much more than those that have not.
I think it's a mistake to rely exclusively on months of inventory, since both supply and demand can be lower than they might otherwise be, due to would-be sellers and would-be buyers' concerns about future price drops, availability and cost of financing, ability to sell one's current home in order to buy a new one, etc. I believe that that is the case, at least in some close-in areas now, but we have no direct measures of these things, which is unfortunate. You really need to look at other (incomplete) data besides months of inventory to get a clearer but still foggy picture. For example, the YOY sales in many Arlington zipcodes is *way* down in April and May. It will be interesting to see what happens in June. In a few zips where the sales aren't down much, the prices are down. Both of these sets of data suggest that Arlington prices are declining and that this may continue. Of course, we don't know how much this is attributable to the different mix of homes for sale in each year and other factors.
Finally, if you own a home in Arlington (or anywhere else), you can get some pretty good evidence by having a Realtor do a market analysis with comparables. People I've talked to in my neighborhood (within walking distance to two metros) believe prices have declined by more than 15% since the peak.
i just wanted to add that i don't look at Arlington as a single market. just like DC, there's NW DC and the rest of DC. In Arlington, there's North Arlington and South Arlington. Plentiful of sizable declines in zip codes other than 2221, 22207, and 22209. Even 22203, 22205 have seen big price drops.
so somebody could argue that 'Arlington will never see big price drop' and could be proven right, and the other side could argue the opposite and could be right, too. it's all about how you slice and dice data.
case in point:
1680 QUINN ST
ARLINGTON, VA 22209
List Price: $989,000
Prior Sale: $831,500 10/30/2003
Listing Date: 07/02/08
+18.9%
i really doubt this home will stay active if it ever comes down to the 03 sales price.
"Ace said...
I think it's a mistake to rely exclusively on months of inventory, since both supply and demand can be lower than they might otherwise be, due to would-be sellers and would-be buyers' concerns about future price drops, availability and cost of financing, ability to sell one's current home in order to buy a new one, etc."
Ace - what you said was true, but that has always been the case and that is built in to the metric. There have always been some sellers who hold out for better prices (even in good times), and some buyers who refuse to buy because they fear lowering prices, etc. Sure they are in higher numbers now, but that is exactly why this metric is so important. How bad are the stress levels? How far apart are buyers and sellers from achieving a "market clearing" price? In sum this is what makes the market, the "market" at any given point in time.
Further, this is true everywhere, meaning (all other things being equal) if one area experiences much higher, sustained imbalances of months of supply, and the other does not, we can safely conclude that the one area is suffering more than the other.
crt, it's not "built into" the metric of months of inventory, and it is a factor that can vary substantially from one period to another, so it should not be dismissed as a constant. Months of inventory simply reflects how many homes are currently on the market and how many homes sold in the given period. There is no accounting at all for how many homes are withheld from the market and how many buyers are not looking because of concerns about risk in the present and future economic conditions. This is a very significant factor right now and any attempt to read the current market that does not take it into account when describing the current market will be flawed and incomplete, IMHO.
Ace - I disagree. The metric looks at those two groups in relation to one another. Are they still in balance or has the balance of WILLING buyers and sellers shifted?
For example, Assume in a normal market there were 6000 sellers and 1,000 buyers. Inventory level would be 6.0 correct. Now, what if more sellers (12,000 total) listed, BUT more buyers (2,000) showed up? Again, 6.0 - a balanced market. Same thing if it goes to 600 sellers and 100 buyers. Again in each case it is a measure of the pulse of willing buyers IN RELATION TO willing sellers.
By contrast, if the same 6,000 sellers were out there, but MORE buyers than average got nervous and decided to wait (for whatever reason), the sales slip to 500, and now the absorbtion rate is 12.0 a market that is out of balance in favor of buyers.
By contrast, if 3,000 sellers held out BUT the number of buyers remained constant (1,000), the absorbtion rate falls to 3.0 a market that is out of balance in favor of the sellers.
Factors like (a) the lack of credit, (b) the likelyhood of continually falling prices, (c)inability to sell their current home, (d) the probability that the city suffers a nuclear attack (e) the probability that there are huge deposits of oil underground, etc. etc. etc. All these factors are baked in, and show up if one group is not out of balance with the other.
I agree with Ace that there are major problems with relying on the months of inventory metric.
While that metric works reasonably well as a rule of thumb I think what is taking place right now extremely unusual and the normal months of inventory rule does not appear to be fitting what we are seeing.
It appears most sellers aren't even trying to list their properties in many cases, or listing them only to pull them from the market later.
As you yourself pointed out CRT, the months of inventory was very high this winter, but has since dropped down to "normal" levels.
The problem is that sales were at 10+ year lows during that whole timeframe. I think it is safe to say those houses weren't sold and "absorbed," they were instead pulled from the market or in many cases never listed in the first place.
I don't anticipate seeing anything like what happened in PWC in Arlington, but at the same time I don't think months of inventory is telling the story right now.
crt-- Thanks. From what you say, it looks like absorption rates are more of coincident than a leading indicator, though. At least in the case of Montgomery Co.-- September was the month the price declines began.
"All these factors are baked in, and show up if one group is not out of balance with the other."
Then why are we seeing price declines in areas where the months of supply metric indicates it should be a healthy if not a seller's market?
Then why are we seeing price declines in areas where the months of supply metric indicates it should be a healthy if not a seller's market?
Leroy - as you noted its not a perfect metric. If 6000 sellers all sumultaneously dropped their price to $100, but yet only 1,000 buyers still bought, we have a market that appears "in balance" despite the fact that prices dropped 99%.
The point I am trying to make here is that for all its failings, it is still the best measure of supply and demand available to us. Perhaps I can get Guido Calabresi or some other nobel lauerate to explain why it doesnt work in some circumstances. Perhaps in a declining market, you need 3.0 months of inventory to prop up prices? Maybe? Who knows?
That said, if market A suffers 24 months of double digit inventory, and if furing that same time, market B has spent most of that time below 6.0 months, it is very certain that market A has suffered much more than market B. I doubt there is an economist on the face of the earth that would state otherwise.
Incidentally, here are a couple of scatter charts from calculated risk that do a pretty good job of plotting the relationship.
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/05/scatter-graphs-months-of-supply-vs.html
CR seems to think you need 7 months to have declining prices. I have heard others say you need 5 or less, thus I think alot of people use 6 months as a good go between.
Note to that from the chart, the relationship is not perfect. There have been periods where there was less than 6 months supply and declining prices, or greater than 7 months supply and increasing prices. That said, when you average them out and plot them it looks like a pretty close fitting relationship.
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