Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Market Cooling in Northern Virginia

The housing market is cooling in Northern Virginia ( DC suburbs). Here are some highlights:

Home sales in Fairfax County dropped 7.7 percent in July compared to last year. In Arlington, they tumbled nearly 19 percent due to a sharp decline in condo sales. Loudoun County fell 12.3 percent.

It's something we've been waiting for. It's just a natural market balance. We thought it was coming last year," said Amy Ritsko-Warren, spokeswoman for the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors.

The rising inventory, along with fewer sales, helped push July's average price of a single-family home or townhome in Fairfax County down $19,000 from June, to $597,255.

DC is a special market in that there has been strong high paying job growth in the past 4 years. The DC area is likely to see stagnating prices with home price appreciation being near to inflation.