Real Estate News

It just depends upon where you live. Some areas of the country (notable Florida and California) are experiencing huge decreases in real estate prices. Other areas of the country are holding steady or even slightly increasing. Still others are somewhere in between.

I live in Northern Virginia, where this same diversity of pricing is reduced to a microcosm. The closer you live to Washington, DC, the more stable prices have been in bordering counties like Arlington and Alexandria, which have experienced slight overall increases in prices over the page couple of years as measured in median pricing. In Arlington County, two years ago the median price for a single family home was $674,000. Today, two years later, the median price in Arlington is $695,000, a slight increase of about 3.1%. In Alexandria County, the current median price is $663,950, compared to $600,000 two years ago, a 10.7% increase.

But move further out from DC, and the changes are significantly different. I live in Fauquier County, about 45 miles WSW of DC. Two years ago, the median price of single family homes here was $420,000. Today, that same median price is down to $271,000, a drop of 35.47%.

In nearby Prince William County, which is one county closer to DC, the drop has been almost as dramatic, down to $285,000 now compared to $400,000 two years ago, a 28.75% drop.

Thus, we see that the closer your home is to a major metropolitan area, the more likely it is to hold its price in the current market. It's the more distant suburbs that are getting harder hit.

The question is...can those areas of the country that have held their pricing levels continue to do so, even as overall national price levels continue to slide downward? My guess is that the answer is no, especially after officers of Freddie Mac said earlier this week that the worst in foreclosures is still ahead of us.

Source: Northern Virginia Association of Realtors Reports