Sales fall with typical seasonal pattern, however new contracts spike in condo market

OVERVIEW

The inventory shortage continues in the Washington DC Metro Area housing market as we begin 2013.  Active listings for all property segments remain low, and townhomes have the lowest proportion of listings on record.  The short supply is having an impact on median sales prices, which experienced double-digit growth for the 4^th consecutive month.  Townhomes led in median price growth, up 13.3 percent, a $40,000 gain in value. 

The real estate market in the DC Metro, Baltimore Metro, Northern Virginia and Greater DC area continued to strengthen in 2012.  We decided to take a closer look at the year-over-year trends for a variety of metrics and identify some Top Fives per region.  Most Expensive, Most Affordable, Biggest Price Increase, Biggest Increase in Sales, Shortest DOM, Longest DOM, and which ZIP codes had the lowest or highest sales to list price ratio per region. 

Of all ZIP codes analyzed, 22206 in Great Falls had the highest median sale price at $961,250. Baltimore's 21223 had the lowest median price at $18,000. 22205 in Arlington had the lowest Median DOM, where half the homes sold were on the market 10 days or less!