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.

The neighborhood is in the School District of Oak View Elementary School, Frost Middle School, and Woodson High School.

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:

Houses for Sale in Fairfax Station

Recent Sales in Fairfax Station

(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)

Useful Links:

Fairfax Station HOA
Fairfax Station Swim and Tennis Club
Fairfax Station Flyers Swim Team
22039 Demographics

Photos of Fairfax Station:

Driving Tour of Fairfax Station Video:

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA,  703-585-5663

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

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 have taken there time and wrote offers in May that hurriedly went under contract at the end of April.  But I also think there were buyers in May that did not qualify for the tax credit (or thought the market was overpriced due to it) that waited until the deadline had passed before negotiating their purchases.  June will be a much more accurate read of our “normal” market as the government incentives to purchase fade into people’s memories and out of their decision making.

Average prices also rose in April.  It’s interesting to note that the break even mark for sellers is about a year and a half behind us.  People who have bought in the last year and a half are above water and people who bought the several years before that have lost money on their homes.  As prices rise and time passes, more and more owners will have the ability to sell without losing money, which will encourage more inventory on the market.  Currently, most owners who bought or cashed out on a refinance from 2004-2008 and want to sell now, either need the cash to cover their losses or are short selling their houses.  Many people see neither of those as good options, so are staying in their homes to wait out the market.

The monthly numbers:

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA,  703-585-5663

An interesting note about the tables and charts below:  the jurisdictions that are furthest from Washington DC are selling more briskly than the ones that are closer to DC, with the exception of Loudoun County which continues to sell slower than Northern Virginia in general.  I believe the reason for this is that buyers continue to find better bargains in places like Prince William County that have dropped so far in price the last couple of years.  Alexandria and Arlington maintained their prices much better through the downturn so they are not as much of a bargain relatively speaking.  Fairfax County is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

Here are the statistics for the month:

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA,  703-585-5663

This problem is compounded by the number of short sales on the market.  Though many short sale listings are selling now, a large part of the market ignores short sales.  People who need a house by a certain date or who hope to move in a reasonable amount of time ignore short sales.  Short Sales have been confined to the investor market and to people who can be extremely flexible due to their current living situation.

Today in Fairfax County there are 2,424 houses listed for sale (If you compare with the chart below, note that the chart has how many were listed the entire month, but each days total will be smaller).  Of those 2,424 only 2,002 are NOT short sales.  So about 17% of the market is ignored by most buyers.  A buyer looking to buy in Fairfax County ( a county of over 1,000,000 people) today has only about 2000 houses to choose from, and that is in all price ranges.

In the $200K-$350K price range, 34% of listings on the market are short sales.  At $350K-$500K the number is $19%.  So if you look in a given market like Burke (with lots of townhomes and inexpensive detached homes normally), you’ll find there are only 6 houses for sale under $350K that are not short sales.  If a house is not selling in a couple weeks in this atmosphere, it’s just overpriced.  Buyers are fighting over correctly priced homes.

Below is the usual chart with the month of November added:

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA,  703-585-5663

You should never assume that because the average price in an area has risen or fallen that the value of houses in that area has done the same.  For example, if you are in an area where all the homes are around $300K, and a builder comes in and builds and sells homes for $900K, the average price in your area is going to go up even if the existing homes are selling for less than they had been.  In other words, average price is affected by both the direction of the market, and by the mix of houses on the market.

That being said, I believe the market value of homes in Northern Virginia is very similar to what they were a year ago.  People who bought a year ago are coming close to breaking even if they sell right now and some are making a profit.  This is not true of people who bought 2 or 3 years ago at this point.  Generally speaking, those people are selling at a loss.

For example, this house sold in March of 2008 (as a foreclosure) for just over $470K.  It was just listed for $600K, and is under contract.  Last year’s listing of this house doesn’t have photos, but even assuming the owners put a lot of improvements into the house, that is a big jump.

Another example is this house that sold (and the pictures show it was in excellent condition) for a net price of $313K in April 2008 and was recently on the market for $308K, and went under contract.  We don’t yet know the final sales price, but it likely won’t be too far off from where it sold last year.

These are worth noting because it’s been several years since a recent buyer could break even or turn a profit in Northern Virginia.  We have now seen a solid six months of escalating prices that have started to make up for some of the losses of the down market.  Here are all the numbers:

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA, 571-482-7817

We continue to see price recovery.  For the first time in several years some areas sold at a higher price that they did the year before.  This was true in August for Prince William and Loudoun Counties and will likely be true for Fairfax County, and the Northern Virginia area as a whole in September.

The next couple of months will likely see increased activity as many first-time buyers are hurriedly trying to find a house and close before the November 30 expiration of the $8,000 tax credit that many of them are eligible for.  I expect activity to increase through the end of October then slow somewhat after that.

I have heard a lot of talk about a “shadow inventory” of houses that will be foreclosed on shortly and hit the market, causing it to be flooded.  It is difficult to get statistics on how much inventory to expect (please comment if you know a source for LOCAL statistics on this!), but our inventory is so low at this point it would allow more buyers to buy and really help our market.  Even with the light inventory currently on the market, buyers are having a hard time actually purchasing many of the houses because of the financial condition of the current owners.  The first question many buyers are asking about a house is “Is this one really for sale?”  More inventory would allow these buyers to get into homes.

Here are the statistics for the past several years through the end of last month:

The other thing that has been going up is interest rates.  It will be interesting to see how buyers react in a higher interest rate environment.  The cost of borrowing money went up about 10% in the first couple weeks of June.  Even though this is true, the biggest complaint I am hearing from buyers is that there are no good houses to see.

The spreadsheet with all the stats for the past couple of years, now including May of 2009 is below.  Note that the supply of homes on the market stayed pretty steady from April to May, while average prices climbed fairly significantly in most jurisdictions.  Make sure you click on the various jurisdictions at the bottom of the spreadsheet to find the area you are most interested in.

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA,  703-585-5663

Prince William County continued to sell at a rapid pace, with over 40% of the homes on the market selling in March, giving the Prince William less that a 2.5 month supply of homes on the market.

The close-to-dc areas of Arlington and Alexadria didn’t see as rapid of a sales pace, but did see prices increases, in terms of average sales price, in March.

Fairfax County saw it pace of sales rise above 30% and coninued to see price stabilization from it’s earlier drop.

See the spreadsheet below for all the numbers.  Please note the bottom of the spreadsheet lists different jurisdictions.  You can click on each one to see the specific market numbers for it.

The hottest market in the area is Prince William County where over 30% of the listings on the market sold in January.  The average price also went up in Prince William County.  There are a lot of inexpensive foreclosures on the market in Prince William right now and buyers are going after them.

The rest of Northern Virginia saw price declines in January.  Some of this is likely due the mix of homes that sold; buyers seem much more satisified with smaller, less decked out homes than they have been in the past.

Below are all the numbers.  Please notice at the bottom of the spreadsheet that you can click on different jurisdictions to see it’s numbers.

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Written by Jeff Royce of Frankly Real Estate, Inc. Fairfax, VA,  703-585-5663