What will $400 buy you in local real estate?
When it comes to the local market in February, it would have garnered you just 0.77 square feet of living space in the District of Columbia but 1.68 square feet in Prince William County, based on new sales data.
Average home-sales prices on a per-square-foot basis for February were reported March 10 by MarketStats by ShowingTime based on listing activity from Bright MLS and analyzed by the GazetteLeader. And as is normal, there were wide variations across the region, both in overall prices and in swings compared to a year before.
Having fallen behind Falls Church last month, the District of Columbia was back atop the leader board, with an average per-square-foot price of $520. That’s down 3.4 percent from $538 in February 2022, however.
Arlington retained its traditional second-place standing, but saw a drop of 10.3 percent from $497 per square foot to $446, while Alexandria dipped a more modest 1.2 percent from $431 to $426.
Falls Church fell back in the pack from its February leader position, with its average per-square-foot price of $401 placing it fourth in the region. It was down 11.9 percent from a year before (when it stood at $455); that’s the highest swing up or down in the region, but the relatively small number of sales in a month in the “Little City” can lead to some pretty major variations not just year-over-year, but also month-over-month.
Fairfax County’s per-square-foot cost of $330 this February was down just 0.3 percent from $331 a year before, while in Loudoun and Prince William counties, rates went up, rising 1.5 percent to $274 in the former and 0.9 percent to $227 in the latter.
In the two major suburban-Maryland locales, Montgomery County saw a per-square-foot price of $289, down 1.4 percent, while the $238 average in Prince George’s County was up 1.3 percent.
For the entire Bright MLS catchment area across the Mid-Atlantic, the average per-square-foot cost of $226 in February was unchanged from a year before.
Figures represent most, but not all, homes on the market. All February 2023 figures are preliminary and are subject to revision.
