It was back to its familiar spot – #2 in the Mid-Atlantic – for the Fairfax County home-sales market in 2022.
With 14,484 home sales during the 12-month period, Fairfax County finished second to Philadelphia (17,274) among the 70-some jurisdictions that are part of the Bright MLS catchment area that includes the District of Columbia, Delaware and portions of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Philadelphia is the traditional sales leader, but in 2020 – with Pennsylvania seeing more aggressive government-imposed lockdowns than Virginia did – fell to second place. For 2020, Fairfax scored 16,739 sales to 16,317 for the purported City of Brotherly Love.
But things reverted to usual in 2021, as Fairfax saw a year-over-year sales boost of 22 percent (compared to 15.9 percent in Fairfax) to regain the crown.
It was a narrow victory that year – 19,904 to 19,407 – but the 2022 verdict turned out to never be in doubt.
Philadelphia had a challenging year in 2022, sales-wise (down 13.2% from 2021) but Fairfax’s drop-off was a much larger 25.4 percent. That’s well above the Mid-Atlantic decline of 18.8 percent for the year.
Four other localities scored more than 10,000 sales during the year:
• Montgomery County, Md., had 12,076 sales, down 23 percent.
• Montgomery County, Pa., had 10,615 sales, down 15.3 percent.
• Baltimore County, Md., had 10,471 sales, down 18.4 percent.
• Prince George’s County, Md., had 10,209 sales, down 18.7 percent.
Because of the rough year for sales, three localities dropped out of the 10,000-transaction club: Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County in Maryland as well as the District of Columbia.
Figures represent most, but not all, sales during the period. All current figures are preliminary and are subject to revision.