Category Archives: Real Estate

GM received this great photo from reader Michael Kessler this weekend. It’s of a house on 33rd just north of Prospect. They’ve painted several spots on the front of their house with the six colors they’re apparently considering to use to repaint their house. They’re asking neighbors to vote on which color to use by leaving a chalk mark on their pick.

So far they’ve got a bunch of votes, but the slightly darker blue-gray is pulling ahead of the slightly darker taupe, which is far back in 2nd place. Continue reading →

In 2010, the Georgetown real estate market appears to have started to pull itself off the bottom. While the numbers are still down, the market is definitely finally moving upwards.

There were 215 homes sold in Georgetown in 2010. The mean price was $1,263,921.21. The median (which isn’t thrown off as much by a few large sales) was $995,000. Here’s how that compares to 2009:

So, activity was up in 2010, but the prices weren’t. (It’s just a crazy coincidence that the number of homes sold was up exactly even with the percent drop in mean price).

The more pressing question is how did sales prices fare compared with list prices. On that account 2010 was slightly better than 2009. The mean drop in price from list to sale for 2010 was $123,068.86, the median drop was $65,000. That compares with 2009’s numbers of $134,760.13 and $65,000 respectively. So the mean drop is down slightly and the median drop is exactly the same.

Here’s how the years compare graphically. Below are the two years with dots showing the price and date of every house sold. Continue reading →

Yesterday GM saw something in Georgetown he hasn’t seen in long time: a home selling above list. Granted, it was only $10,000 above the list price of $880,000 (a whopping 1% surplus), but given the way the Georgetown market has performed, it could be the beginning of a silver lining for homeowners. Or is it?

After crunching the numbers, GM found out that there has actually been a couple of such sales in Georgetown recently. Overall, the drop in sales prices from initial list prices appears to declining for Georgetown recently:

This chart shows the percentage decline in price from initial list price to sale price for Georgetown homes since the beginning of 2009 (in retrospect, GM realizes it would be easier to read if he inverted it, but hopefully you get it: the higher the dot, the bigger the drop from listing price the seller took). Continue reading →

Yesterday, GM reported on the continued gradual decline crime for Georgetown, today he talks about the rebound, as it were, in the the Georgetown real estate market last quarter.

Sixty-eight homes were sold in Georgetown last quarter. That’s a jump from the prior quarter’s measly 40. That’s hardly a high standard to beat. Perhaps a better comparison is to the second quarter of 2009. Even against those numbers, though, last quarter was an improvement.

Here’s how it breaks down:

• Total homes sold:
  • Q2 2009 – 55
  • Q2 2010 – 68 Continue reading →