Community Corner

Falls Church Home Prices Rising

The prices of homes for sale is increasing in Falls Church and across the DC metro area.

Home prices across the country and here in Falls Church are on the upswing as the real estate market continues to stabilize and the spring real estate selling season gets underway, according to Case-Schiller Housing Index data released Tuesday.

There are more than 120 residential properties on the market with Falls Church addresses right now, including more than two dozen homes priced over $1 million.

Kim Maller, a real estate agent in Northern Virginia, said the prices are driven by families that are looking for a good place to raise their family.

Find out what's happening in Falls Churchwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"It's not even the schools or the Metro," Maller said. "It's that people want to live on a nice street to raise their children and their kids can ride their bikes with no problem."

In February, Falls Church was rated the DC metro area’s top real estate market, Washington Business Journal reported. The greater Falls Church area’s median sales price in January was $612,062, according to the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.'s RealEstate Business Intelligence division.

Find out what's happening in Falls Churchwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

At the end of February, Fairfax County mailed out real estate assessments to home and commercial property owners. In the Falls Church area, the mean assessment rose from $369,629 in 2012 to 383,559 in 2013, an increase of 3.77 percent. The county’s real estate assessments do not include the City of Falls Church.

"People are getting off the fence," Maller said. "Interest rates are around 3.75 percent and in 2002, they were at 6.5 percent. That wasn't that long ago."

In the D.C. metro area, the C-SHI seasonally adjusted price index (which measures the average sale price for single-family homes) for December 2012 is 189.6—that's up from 179.1 in November 2011 and 183.7 in November 2010. December 2012 data is the most recently available data set.

The numbers are calculated based on the repeat sale of existing single-family homes, where the baseline of 100 is the average price as of January 2000.

Home prices have risen significantly in the D.C. metro area since 2000. The high point in the D.C. metro area was in May 2006, when the index hit 251.19. The bottoming out of the index in our area after the real estate boom was in April 2009, when the index declined to 169.73.

Looking for a home? Check out Falls Church Patch’s real estate section here for homes for sale in Falls Church, mortgage information and more.

Are you happy with the current value of your home? Comment below!


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