Category Archives: Real Estate

It’s been a while since GM did any deep analysis of Georgetown’s real estate market. But he’s been noticing the prices getting a little out of control recently, so he decided to see whether the stats backed up that observation. And they certainly do.

GM compared the first six months of this year to the first six months of last year (to capture to same annual cycles). And even considering that June isn’t even over yet, volume is up. Price is up too.

From January 1, 2012 to June 30, 2012, there were 94 properties sold in Georgetown. The average price was $1.39 million. But average prices for real estate, especially in Georgetown, can be easily skewed by a few extremely expensive homes. Looking instead to the far more meaningful median number, that was $1.01 million. Even more informative is that the average price per square foot was $689 (the median was only a shade lower at $670). Continue reading →

As GM let you know a couple weeks ago, two of the massive Cooke’s Row houses on Q St. just west of 30th are for sale. That includes the home at 3023 Q St. that was the residence of Henry Cooke himself, the first governor of DC.

And if you can’t pony up the $5 million it’s listed for, don’t worry. It still can be yours temporarily if you can come up with $14,000 $16,000 a month in rent.

Continue reading →

Yet another one of the landmark Cooke’s Row houses is for sale. These houses are a group of seven houses on the north side of Q St. just west of 30th St. They were built in 1868 by Henry Cooke, the first governor of the territory of DC (we were a territory briefly until Cooke’s successor, the infamous Alexander “Boss” Shepard, drove us into bankruptcy with lavish public works projects. We didn’t get home rule back until 1972).

Right now two of the homes are for sale. The first is 3023 Q St., which was occupied by Cooke himself:

These homes are quite large and exquisitely detailed in the then popular Second Empire style (although they also display some elements of Italianate style). Continue reading →

Over GM’s brief paternity leave from posting, the Washington Post snuck up and did his job for him. Namely, the Post published two blog pieces discussing the state of Georgetown real estate.

The writer, Pat Kennedy, was sharp enough not to simply rely on a marketwide average. A sale like Evermay’s $22 million throws off an average wildly, without necessarily telling you anything worthwhile about the other houses sold. Thus herhis chart depicts, high/low sales, averages, medians, and averages taking highs and lows out:

It’s an interesting chart, but for all the thought put into using different measures, the scale of the chart is so high that you can’t really make much use out of the bottom four lines. But in GM’s opinion, this is really the whole point. The top u-shaped line represents the highest sale price per year since 2007. It took big dive right when the overall market did, while most of the market was far below and  just sort of puttered along. Continue reading →