Are People Still Buying Single Family Homes in Arlington?

As we continue to navigate these unprecedented times with social distancing and COVID-19 cases fluctuating up and down, the Northern Virginia real estate market feels largely unaffected. In this article we analyze the real estate data in the area to really understand what is happening.

For this analysis, we compared the real estate data each month in 2020 against its 5-Year Average for that month. This comparison will shed light on how the current market is performing compared against historic performance, while taking into account monthly and seasonal variations.

ARLINGTON COUNTY NEW LISTINGS:

In Arlington County, the new year started out strong with new listings for detached homes in January matching the 5-Year Average. Starting in February, however, the New Listings started to trend downward, dropping about 9% a month, through May where it appears to have leveled off around 65% of the 5-Year Average. The market probably would have rebounded sooner, had it not been for COVID-19 and the Virginia Stay at Home Order in April.

Table 1: New Listings for Detached Homes in Arlington County

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ARLINGTON COUNTY NEW PENDINGS & CLOSED SALES:

New Pending Sales represent the number of homes that went under contract. Once again, a similar trend was observed, where the months of January and February starting off very strong with the number of homes going off the market higher then the 5-Year Average for those months. In March, it dropped to 76%, followed by a another big dip down to 64% in April. As closed sales lag the New Pendings by about 30 days, we do see the increase in Closed Sales for February and March, greater than the 5 Year Average, followed by a drop in April and May.

Table 2: New Pendings for Detached Homes in Arlington County

Table 3: Closed Sales for Detached Homes in Arlington County

ARLINGTON COUNTY ACTIVE LISTINGS:

Active Listings represent the available homes on the market. Historically, the summer months of June and July represent the peak availability of homes on the market. The 5-Year Average of active listings for detached homes in June is 217, which is more than double the 5-Year Average for January. With COVID-19, however, we are not seeing the normal supply of new homes coming on the market (See Table 1), resulting in the 139 Active Listings in May 2020 representing only half of the typical housing supply of detached homes. The bottom line is that the supply of detached homes in Arlington County is at historic lows.

Table 4: Active Listings for Detached Homes in Arlington County

ARLINGTON COUNTY MEDIAN SOLD PRICE & AVERAGE DAYS ON MARKET:

The notable low inventory of homes is supporting a very robust sellers market, maintaining strong home prices and low days on market. In 2020, the median sales price for detached homes peaked at 122% of the 5-Year Average. The median sales price in April and May is still above the 5-Year Average, but prices are trending down. When the June 2020 data becomes available, it will be very interesting to see if this market cooling trend continues or if the low inventory will continue driving prices up.

When we look at the average days on market, the data is clear that homes continue to fly off the market. In April the average days on market of 16 days was 10 days faster than the 5-Year averages. With the historic low inventory of homes and strong buyer demand, there would be no reason to believe this trend will dissipate anytime soon.

Table 5: Median Sold Price for Detached Homes in Arlington County

Table 6: Average Days on Market for Detached Homes in Arlington County

ARLINGTON SINGLE FAMILY HOMES FOR SALE:

In Arlington, we are seeing similar trends as compared to the Arlington County-wide data. For new sales, there was an decrease in the number of homes for sale compared to the 5-year average pre-COVID. Currently, there aren’t as many sellers coming back into the market as we would have expected in a “normal” market. As a result, there haven’t been as many pending and closed sales in April or May, compared to the 5-year average.

Table 7: New Listings for Detached Homes in Arlington

Table 8: New Pendings for Detached Homes in Arlington

Table 9: Closed Sales for Detached Homes in Arlington

ARLINGTON SINGLE FAMILY HOMES TRENDS:

The percentage of Active listings has also gone down in recent months. This, in combination with the fact that days on market are dropping, indicates that we are in a tighter seller’s market than before with more buyers coming back into the market than sellers.

Table 10: Active Listings for Detached Homes in Arlington

Table 11: Median Sold Price for Detached Homes in Arlington

Table 12: Average Days on Market for Detached Homes in Arlington

About Peggy Yee

Peggy Yee is a supervising broker at Frankly Realtors and is a local Top Producer. She has sold over $180 million in sales and was one of Northern Virginia Magazine's Top Realtors since 2015. She has been quoted in the Around Reston Magazine, Washington Post, Money Magazine, Consumer Reports, Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com. Peggy is 100% committed to making your move the best experience possible! Don't just take our word...Click here to see what Peggy's past clients have to say about the experience working with her from Buyer and Seller Video Testimonials and you'll understand why she is one of the top real estate agents in Arlington with dozens of 5 Star Zillow reviews. Click here for Zillow Reviews.

* Data Source: BrightMLS and SmartCharts. Information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.