Sales in the Maryland portion of the Washington metro area really have improved in those four years, particularly when compared them to the Virginia side.
Maryland’s sales from January through April increased from 8,104 in 2008 to 13,635 this year. By comparison, Virginia sales only increased from 12,185 to 14,016.
To see how that came about, let’s compare two of the region’s largest real estate markets: Fairfax County in Virginia and Prince George’s County in Maryland.
In 2008, about 4,500 homes were sold from January through April in Fairfax. During those same four months, fewer than 1,500 homes were sold in Prince George’s County.
Of course, Fairfax has a population 20 percent larger than Prince George’s, but that doesn’t account for sales that were 200 percent higher.
What happened in Fairfax was the growing interest among homebuyers looking for good deals. Prices had fallen more in Northern Virginia than in Maryland, so investors and residential buyers responded.
But, since 2008, prices have begun to climb again in Northern Virginia, while prices in Prince George’s County continued to decline. That caused some buyer activity to shift eastward across the Potomac.
This year, 5,349 homes were sold in Fairfax from January through April, while 4,442 were sold in Prince George’s County.
Guess what that works out to? Sales in Fairfax are 20 percent higher this year than in Prince George’s. And because Fairfax has 20 percent more people, we can see that the markets are now equally active.
One caveat: Prince George’s County has a larger number of unsold homes on the market, so sales chances are lower there than in Fairfax. The number of actual sales might be proportionate to Fairfax, but buyers are less competitive in Prince George’s right now because the supply and demand ratio is more in their favor there.
The affordability of homes in Prince George’s should help whittle away at that unsold inventory. The median price for homes sold in Prince George’s in April was just $156,500, compared to $400,000 in Fairfax County.
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