Within five days, Musser said, they’d put together offers on three sight-unseen properties, none of which was officially on the market. Hours before Musser spoke to The Washington Post, the client and a seller had put one of the properties under contract.
As the D.C. area enters the spring home-buying season, uncertainty dominates the outlook. The possibility of a decrease in interest rates after months of increases is keeping some would-be buyers on the sidelines for now. And the March 2024 settlement of a class-action suit against the National Association of Realtors (NAR) is expected to give buyers and sellers more control over commissions, though the extent and the timing of that impact is unclear.
Federal workers, meanwhile, expect a sweeping return-to-office order that may curtail the pandemic-spurred trend of shopping for a better deal at the outer edge of the commute to D.C.
But analysts say people eager to find a new home now should be ready to act fast — and looking for creative ways to afford the purchase as prices continue to climb and demand to outstrip supply.
According to data released in March by Bright MLS, a multiple listing service in the Mid-Atlantic region, the shortage of housing inventory in the D.C. area showed signs of easing at the end of February, with an overall increase of about 275 active listings, or about 5.5 percent, over February 2023. However, that inventory growth is attributable to condominium units arriving on the market. Year-over-year, condo inventory increased 19.4 percent, according to Bright MLS, while townhouse listings were up a modest 0.4 percent and listings of single-family houses declined by 2.5 percent.
The overall increase in active listings is also heavily concentrated in D.C. Bright MLS data show a year-over-year listings increase in the capital city of 20.4 percent, with double-digit decreases in the city of Alexandria and Arlington County, both in Virginia. One notable outlier in Virginia is Loudoun County, about an hour west of D.C., which saw a 408, or 9.1 percent, year-over-year increase in active listings, in February.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR, suggested that the market may be affected already by expectations that employers will end covid-19-related remote-work policies.
“Some people may have bought a home in the second or third county away from D.C.,” he said. “But now, as the federal government is saying, ‘Well, soon you’ll come back to the office,’ maybe the commuting distance is too far and they want to look at something closer.”
Looking to this spring and beyond, analysts predict a slightly better outlook for housing supply. New listings are up 7.2 percent year-over-year in the D.C. area, and the region is expected to see a listings increase of about 9 percent by the end of the year, said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Bright MLS.
That jump will be driven, Sturtevant said, by potential sellers who have been hanging on to low-interest mortgages when they realize that it’s no longer practical to stay out of the market.
“I do think that 2024 is going to be the year of ‘life happens,’ ” Sturtevant said. “You have that third kid, and you’re living in that two-bedroom house. And, yeah, you have a 2.75 percent mortgage, but you also want to maintain your sanity. So you’ve got to go out and take the plunge and list your home for sale.”
Prices, meanwhile, continue to climb almost everywhere around D.C.
Across the metropolitan area, the median home sale price is up 4.7 percent year-over-year, from $535,000 to $560,000, for all kinds of housing,…
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