DC Condo Sales Continue Decline

WASHINGTON, DC-Delta Associates has issued its Q3 report on the condo market with findings that surprise exactly no one: sales prices are dropping. Furthermore, Delta Associates vice president William Rich tells GlobeSt.com that the pipeline for such projects continues to dwindle as well. “New projects or acquisitions for condos are on their ninth or tenth quarter of decline,” he says.

The one, surprising, bright spot in this market is that condos are still performing better than single-family homes. “In prior cycles, the condo market performs worse.” The difference with this cycle, he says, is that more condos were built close to Metro stops or otherwise in-fill or close-in areas.

“There has been a change in perception about condos as well. In prior cycles they were seen as a starter home, but now are viewed as a more acceptable home to live in.”

Still, though, those attributes have not stopped the slide in sales volume. According to the report, new net sales volume (defined as net binding contracts written with security deposits up) in the Washington Metro area in Q3 was 262 units–half the amount of units sold in the prior quarter. Sales prices have dropped as well, with effective new condo prices down 3.6% in the Washington metro area from a year ago. Concessions in the Washington metro area averaged 4.2% of the purchase price in Q3, up 70 basis points from Q2 but down slightly from one year ago.

One company bucking the trend is PERS Development LLC, which almost a year ago purchased 1620 29th St. SE, to develop into condos. The first of these approximate $200,000 units have gone on sale this week and the developer has closed on two already, Ari Firoozabadi, of Firoozabadi Group of Marcus & Millichap, tells GlobeSt.com. Firoozabadi represented PERS in its acquisition. “In this market, that is extraordinary.”