Fairfax Station is both a subdivision in Fairfax County and a “postal address” in Fairfax County. The postal address is a fairly large area wedged between Clifton on the west, Lorton in the south, Burke on the east, and Fairfax on the North. This report is on the subdivision called Fairfax Station, which is a collection of about 540 detached homes that sits right at the intersection of Route 123 and the Fairfax County Parkway. These homes sit on lots that are generally between 1/2 acre and 1.5 acres, though some lots in the neighborhood are much larger.
The houses in the neighborhood are mostly colonials, with some large ramblers and cape cods mixed in. The houses are generally 2500-3500 square feet of living space, plus almost all of the houses have basements and garages. Most houses in the neighborhood were built in the early 1980s by a variety of builders. There are some houses that are the same model, but generally there is a large variety of houses in the neighborhood.
There is a private swim club in the neighborhood that many of the residents belong to. It works as the social hub of the neighborhood in the summer months and has swim, dive, and tennis teams that many in the neighborhood are a part of. The Home Owners Association also owns quite a bit of land that includes a small park and Pickett Pond where residents can catch fish from the side.
Ten houses sold in Fairfax Station in the last 12 months for prices that ranged from $557,000 to $855,000. As I write this, there are two houses under contract and five houses for sale in Fairfax Station. The average time on the market of these 10 houses was 49 days, but 4 of them sold in about a week. The houses sold (on average) at 96.5% of their list price. The links below will automatically update and are current when you are reading this:
(note: there are a couple other of areas they may get picked up in the above searches as “Fairfax Station” is used in several different ways in southern Fairfax County)
Everybody is trying to figure out what the real estate market is doing right now and having a hard time. Looking at sales numbers is like looking at the home run numbers of your favorite baseball slugger earlier in the decade and trying to figure out if he would have deserved making it into the hall of fame had he not taken steroids.
The national real estate market just came off the steroids of an $8,000 tax credit paid to first time home buyers and a slightly smaller one paid to move-up buyers. Of course the market isn’t doing as well as it was when the government was handing out money. But ever since the tax credit ended on April 30, the Northern Virginia market has been selling about 25% of it’s inventory each month which correlates to a 4 month supply of homes on the market. That is a fairly fast (though not on fire) selling market by any measure. That tells me that there are still buyers who need homes and there is not a fire sale going on among people in financial difficulty. In other words we have a pretty even, steady market in Northern Virginia as a whole.
As you look at the numbers below for the various jurisdictions, keep in mind that the sales numbers are for houses going under contract, and the pricing numbers are for closed sales. So the large number of sales you see in April were actually closing in May and June. The tax credit inflated sales numbers in April, and inflated closing prices in May and June. July should show us a market that is not influenced by the credit and therefore should become the new baseline month for the future.
Here are the actual numbers:
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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA, 703-585-5663
The real estate market in Northern Virginia has rapidly expanded this spring with most areas selling about twice as many homes in April as were sold in February. This is partly due to the spring selling season that happens annually, but it was a larger jump in sales this year than we see most years. This was mainly due to the combination of the April 30 tax credit deadline that many buyers were trying to meet and the low interest rates that were available.
I believe we would have had a strong spring without the tax credits. I’ll be watching when the May numbers when they come out to see how much the tax credits were effecting the number of sales. May numbers almost surely will not be as high as April. There were clearly some buyers that would Continue Reading »
The Northern Virginia Real Estate market continues to move at a brisk pace. We are seeing about 4 months worth of housing supply on the market. That being said, most houses are selling much quicker than that statistic would imply. For houses that actually closed in February, 52% were on the market for less than 30 days, and 69% for less than 60 days. What that means in the market place is that many of the houses being sold have multiple offers placed on them. There are no records kept for how many offers a house receives, but my experience is that almost every house that is attracting a buyer is attracting multiple buyers. Continue Reading »
