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Episode 2 January 2019 Market Update

Are you curious about the local real estate market in Northern Virginia? We’ve got you covered! We just published our January 2019 market update with all the latest info.

Inventory

One of the things obviously we’re tracking this time of the year is the inventory, the number of homes that are actually on the market, As is usually the case this time of year, inventory is very low. People took off their homes off the market for the holidays and waiting for things to pick back up. Inventory tends to be a little tight so there’s not much competition for sellers right now.

Interest Rates

Good news with interest rates is we’ve definitely seen them creeping up. We actually saw them drop a little bit at the end of the year but over time, we do know that they are going to keep going up so it’s a great time to buy right now. Right now they’re hovering around the mid to high fours depending on your loan type and really how much you’re putting down, and what you qualify for.

We always tell people on interest rates. It’s great to compare. We want them to get the best rates possible, but make sure do it on the same day because sometimes something happens in the bond market, something happens politically and you have one guy being the best rate one day, and the next day the person you compare them to is different.

Lenders

We stay in close touch with a number of different top lenders in the area and we have a feel on the market of how many buyers they’re talking to. They come to us when it’s slow. They come to us when they’re really busy. Right now, the ones that we’ve talked to have quite a few people in the pipeline that are looking to buy in 2019 which bodes well.

First and Second Quarters

During the last four years,  what we’ve seen is that sellers in the first quarter and the second quarter of the year have actually had higher prices for their home sales. They’ve gotten higher prices for their homes than the folks later in the year. Will that be in effect in 2019? Too early to say but usually because of low inventory, people that took their houses off the market for the holidays and people that haven’t gone on yet because they want their kids to finish the school year, usually there’s a real sweet spot in the beginning of the year for sellers to get top dollar.

Yes and that’s why we say the spring market in our area really starts earlier. We’re not quite as seasonal as a lot of markets. Obviously the DC Metro area is a little bit more transient than a lot of metro markets. Our spring market, really middle to the end of January is when we start to see that momentum start building. With that lower inventory this time of the year, we start to see the buyer demands increasing and the sellers, the inventory actually lags a little bit behind. That contributes to sellers doing really well the first and second quarter.

Areas and Price Range

In terms of a couple of areas, if you were taking the Kingstowne/Alexandria area versus McLean or Old Town, there are different prices for the first time buyers and even move up buyers. There are price ranges that are hotter than others and some like the high luxury seems like it’s a little bit slower.

It just really comes down to how big the buyer pool is that they’re pooling from. Your lower priced condos, definitely the townhouses and single family’s on the lower end of the price range, you’re going to have higher demand for those. You’re going to have a larger buyer pool but there’s always going to be more competition versus getting up to that higher range especially your luxury market, 800, 900 definitely over a million. Where financing options there’s not as many. There’s not as many looking at those price ranges so you tend to have a little less demand, higher days on the market. Some of those are a little more seasonal as well, with some people waiting until the kids get out of school.

I tend to think of it so in our area, our office is in zip code 22310 and any nice, just take single family homes, anything nice from the high five hundreds to say 750 if it looks good and it’s priced right, it’s going to sell quite quickly. But, if you took anything over 800 in this area and certainly over 900, you better make sure you’re positioned correctly. Whereas, if you’re looking in Vienna, McLean, parts of Great Falls, if you’re 800 or 900 that translates to what our 700 or 800 is.

Real estates vary locally within the same market so you know having an expert that knows the area, really going to help you out, figure out where to price and what to do with the home to sell quickly and for top dollar.

Tale of 2 markets

Even though the market that we’re describing is the way it is right now, no matter if it’s hot or slow, we think of it as a tale of two markets. A home that is in excellent condition that’s priced correctly, exactly where it should be is going to generally sell within 30 to 45 days. However, in any market it could be the hottest market going and there’s always people who, their homes been on the market of a hundred, 200 days and the reason’s always the same. Either, they didn’t do what they needed to do to make their home show well or they were overly ambitious on the price and they just stuck to that price without realizing that it was being rejected by the market place.

Are you thinking about selling

If you’re thinking about selling this year, even if you’re not entirely sure but you want some ideas, maybe you want to know where it might be valued, and really what you can do in order to get top dollar and show really well the market so that you can sell quickly whether you’re relocating, moving up, moving down, we’d love to help you out. Feel free, give us a call at 703-822-0207. No cost, no obligation consultation. We can come over and walk you through where are some things that might help you and obviously what to expect in the process.

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