The metro-area real estate market saw a slight uptick in April as the spring season, typically real estate’s busiest time of the year, got
underway.
“Everybody seemed to feel like April was very different. … We may be looking backward at the bottom of the market,” real estate broker Donna Evers said of the market in the District and the close-in suburbs.
For areas farther out, however, the bottom of the market might not have arrived just yet a rate adjustment period for some mortgage loans is coming up this summer, said Evers, who owns Washington-based Evers and Co. Evers was a speaker at a conference on Friday hosted by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
Greg Leisch, the chief operating officer of Delta Associates who presented an analysis of the MRIS data to the same meeting, told the audience it would be two to four years before the prices in the farther-out and outermost suburbs got “traction.”
New MRIS housing prices for April indicate that median prices rose or held steady over the last month.
In Washington the median house price rose 9.64 percent from $399,500 in March to $438,000 in April.
In Maryland, Montgomery County also saw a price increase of 4.22 percent, from $402,500 to $419,500, along with Prince George’s County, where prices rose 1.58 percent, from $285,500 to $290,000.
Fairfax County had a price jump of 1.27 percent, from $395,000 to $400,000. Fairfax City’s median prices spiked 6.77 percent, and Alexandria’s prices rose 2.17 percent.
Arlington County, Loudoun County and Prince William County faced modest price declines of 2.06 percent, 2.3 percent and 3.94 percent, respectively.
Falls Church and Manassas Park, which had fewer than 35 unit sales each for April 2008, March 2008 and April 2007, typically see wild price fluctuations.
However, prices are still down considerably from a year ago in most areas, except for Washington, where prices rose 4.53 percent
from April 2007.
But supply is decreasing inside the Beltway, which bodes well for higher prices.
Evers said that for areas inside the Beltway, including Washington, Montgomery County, Fairfax County, Arlington County, Alexandria and Falls Church, there is a 5.7 months’ supply in inventory in April, compared with a nine months’ supply in December.
But Realtors have to wait until the end of August to really see how soon a recovery will start, said Paul Carrillo, assistant professor of economics at George Washington University. “Only then will we be able to see if there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”
