What housing market crash?
That’s what the developers of a spectacular — and spectacularly expensive — luxury home community in Loudoun County are saying when they look at their sales log.
“Our goal this year was to sell 30 lots, and we’ve sold 26 so far,” said Robert Shiels, vice president of sales and marketing for Creighton Farms, which sits on 906 acres just west of Leesburg. An additional five home sites have been reserved, he said.
Creighton Farms, which started selling in January, offers buyers three- to six-acre lots, Ritz Carlton property management services and access to the community’s Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course for prices between $850,000 to $2 million, before monthly dues. That excludes the house, which is custom-built for a separate fee.
The development’s success is emblematic of a regional trend — as overall home sales lag, buyers and sellers dealing with the highest-end residences seem above the fray.
“The housing market slows down [at and below] the $2 million mark, but it doesn’t really affect the $3 million [homes and] on up — where Creighton farms is,” said Jim Brown, owner of local development company Creighton Enterprises. “At the income level they’re at, they’re a little bit immune to the downturn.”
Data from the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, which mostly tracks sales of existing homes and not of new developments, shows that the D.C. area is on track to close at least 115 $3 million-and-up residential real estate deals this year. The area saw 117 such deals last year and 131 in the boom year of 2005.
“A lot of the buyers in that market are homeowners with multiple homes across the U.S. and the world, and they’re not that concerned with changes in the day-to-day market,” said Nancy Itteilag, a top Realtor with Long and Foster.
Itteilag said that sales of existing high-end homes have been consistently strong in Georgetown, close-in Bethesda, close-in Potomac and McLean — areas where demand is heavy but there is little land available for new construction.
But the glut of new construction in the outer suburbs has slowed that luxury market some, she said.
“If you’re in new construction, you need to have a hook,” she said. “It can’t just be the granite kitchen anymore. Every single detail needs to be ‘wow.’ ”
