The new year started with the innermost Northern Virginia suburbs seeing significant home-buyer interest but other local areas having challenges in that arena – some of them due to a lack of inventory.
The T3 Home Demand Index, created by the Mid-Atlantic multiple-listing service Bright MLS, uses a variety of data points to settle on a monthly score for the Washington region’s overall homes market all the way down to the ZIP-code level.
In new data reported Feb. 12, the regional index figure stood at 85, up from 69 a month before but well below the 111 of a year ago.
Scratch down to the locality-by-locality levels, and you’ll see wide disparities in buyer interest, with Arlington and Alexandria still hot; the District of Columbia and Prince George’s and Prince William counties warm; and remaining areas sluggish or simply lacking in properties to be perused by prospective purchasers..
Arlington led all jurisdictions with an overall T3 score of 156 for January, with Alexandria next at 135. Both are in the “High”-interest category.
Prince William County (107), the District of Columbia (95) and Prince George’s County (91) were in the “Steady” range, while Fairfax (89), Montgomery (71) and Loudoun (also 71) counties were in the “Slow” tier.
Falls Church (54) and Frederick County (57) were in the “Limited” category due to inventory-availability issues.
With the exception of 22207, Arlington ZIP codes were all in the “High” category, led by the superheated 22206 (258) and followed by 22201 (188), 22203 (178), 22202 (151), 22209 (150), 22213 (149) and 22205 (138). The aforementioned 22207 stood at 100 (Steady).
In the Sun Gazette’s coverage areas of Fairfax County, Dunn Loring’s 22027 (105) and Vienna’s 22181 (101) and 22180 (97) were in the “Steady” category, with Vienna’s 22182 (77) and McLean’s 22102 (74) in the “Slow” column. Oakton’s 22124 (50), McLean’s 22101 (40) and Great Falls’s 22066 (30) each were in the “Limited” category.
Across Northern Virginia, the hot-hot-hottest ZIP for buyer interest in January was Alexandria’s 22311, at 288.
(For the full T3 report, see the Website at www.homedemandindex.com.)
The regional decline from a score of 111 in January 2021 to 85 in January 2022 may provide confirmation of anecdotal evidence and some analytical data that the market last year began moving back to a more seasonal trajectory, with fall and winter traditionally being slower and spring and summer more robust.
That seasonal ebb and flow was knocked higgledy-piggledy by COVID’s arrival in March 2020. The local real estate market went into duck-and-cover mode for several months, then came roaring back with a vengeance from summer 2020 to spring 2021, barely pausing for breath even during traditionally slower periods of the year.