December 2018 Northern Virginia Real Estate Update

Amazon’s HQ2 announcement is finally showing up during in the closed transactions. 2018 Northern Virginia Real Estate market ended with a bang with the longest Government Shutdown in history still going on at the time of this article.

Before we geek out about December numbers, you should know that Northern Virginia closed sales increased by 8% from the previous year. That’s a significant jump considering we’ve had lower sales numbers throughout the year.

Overview

Let’s look at a quick overview of December 2018 numbers:

Closed Sales

1601

+ 8% Year over Year

Closed sales increased relative to last December 2017 numbers.

 

Days on Market

76

+ 30% Year over Year

Marketing time increased by17 days compared to last year.

 

Average Sales Price

$590,247

+ 4% Year over Year

Average Sales Price increased 4.4% compared to December 2018

 

Even through closed sales for the calendar year (January – December) are down compared to 2017, December 2018 sales are up by 112 transactions. This increase can be attributed to Amazon’s HQ2 announcement in mid-November. No one predicted that the announcement would lead to an immediate jump in sales.

Home buyers may have used the news about the new headquarter as motivation to jump in the market now versus the spring season. Expect for January sales to continue this trend of increased sales. The government shutdown happened at the end of December which won’t show in our closed sales numbers.

$4,325,000 is the highest sales price and $87,500 is the lowest sales price in the last month of the year. On average homeowner’s sold their home for 97.2% of the original list price

Seller subsidy increased by 54% to $6,256 in December 2018. This represents a $2,181 increase from the previous year. With the average sales price only increasing by 0.4% to $590,247, homeowners netted less money this year than last year.

Summary

December numbers show that Northern Virginia homeowners have a slight increase in equity from the same time last year. We’re already starting to see the Amazon affect in the sale numbers. Keep an eye on this when we look over January’s numbers. The government shutdown will not impact the closed sales numbers until February’s report.