701 Pennsylvania Ave, #PH157 (Penn Quarter)
Two bedrooms; Two bathrooms; 1,035 square feet

List Date: Nov. 7, 2008
Original Listing Price: $799,000
Close Date: April 30, 2009
Final Price: $730,000

Analysis: This building—Market Square East on Pennsylvania Ave.—has been featured prominently on Housing Complex in the past, and I'm not in the mood to reverse the trend today. The property is remarkable for a few reasons: Numerous DC notables have rested their heads here: Esteemed New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Former VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro, columnist Bob Novak. It's one of few condominium buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, which provided prime inauguration parade views. With these thoughts in mind, I wanted to see how this particular property had appreciated since its last sale. The previous owner bought #PH157 in May 2004 for $610,000. He hoped to get roughly $200,000 more for it some four-plus years later. In the end, he profited $120,000 on the place. Not bad. Not bad at all.

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2009/05/07/off-the-market-the-residences-at-market-square-east-ph157/feed/ 1 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2009/04/09/off-the-market-1309-spring-rd-nw/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2009/04/09/off-the-market-1309-spring-rd-nw/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:08:33 +0000 Ruth Samuelson http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/?p=5198 What sold in the District this past week...

1309 Spring Rd NW (Columbia Heights)
Three bedrooms; One and a half bathrooms; 1,804 square feet

List Date: Feb. 3, 2009
Original Listing Price: $350,000
Close Date: April 6, 2009
Final Price:$350,000

Analysis: Look at this house...$350,000 and gone in less than two months. In neighborhoods like Columbia Heights, Petworth, 16th Street Heights, Park View, Eckington and Brookland (those frozen in the mid-gentrification zone), you can't go wrong pricing simple, habitable rowhouses at roughly $350,000. Give or take some tens of thousands— depending on location, renovation need, etc.—that's what they go for.  The formula worked for this house. This Brightwood house didn't land too far from that mark either. The "formula" is a hunch of course, but one I'm pretty solidly behind. I ran a search for the sales of three bedrooms in Columbia Heights from the beginning of the year until now. Turns out this hypothesis was pretty dead-on: The median sold price is $360,000.

Original Listing Price: $3.95 million
Original Listing Date: Dec. 12, 2008
Final Price: $3 million
Close Date: March 31, 2009

Analysis: Georgetown real estate agents love to talk about how their neighborhood is the best place to invest, that the home values reliably increase at a faster rate than anywhere else in the city. This humungous Georgetown home would not help build that case: It last sold in 2001. It sat on the market for exactly one day. It went for $3 million. Today's price tag is, as stated above, the exact same.

116 5th St. NE (Capitol Hill)
Four bedrooms; Four and a half bathrooms

Original Listing Price: $1,195,000
Original Listing Date: Sept. 15, 2008
Final Price:$1,100,000
Close Date: March 27, 2009

Analysis: In February, this house dropped from its original listing price, $1,195,000, down to $1,149,000. But the owners still sold it for significantly more than their purchase price: The last listed sale was for $825,000 in 2003 (and before that, for $430,000 in 1995). A Southeast Capitol Hill rowhouse with the same number of bedrooms went for $1,115,000 in September 2008. Other recent four-bedrooms rowhouses on the hill have ranged from the upper $500,000s to properties like the above. But few probably had what 116 5th St. could offer: A two-car garage, a patio area and an open deck, plus a cleaned, polished look throughout.

737 Hobart Pl. NW (Park View)*
Three bedrooms;Two full bathrooms

Original Listing Price: $349,955
Original Listing Date: Feb. 7, 2009
Final Price: $350,000
Close Date: March 16, 2009

But this is a fascinating one folks...

*This is the second above-the-sales-price deal I've recently spotted in the general Columbia Heights region, the top of the "gentrification plume" as my boss Erik Wemple would term it. In both cases, the houses were clearly priced correctly, and were whooosh gone within less than two months. This one was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flip job. The last sale was for $157,000 in late December 2008. The sale was registered in the real property assessment database in January 2009. Again, it just sold...for $193,000 more. Here's an old street view shot:

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2227 12th Pl. NW (U Street area)
Two bedrooms; One bathroom

Original Listing Price: $499,000
Original Listing Date: Oct. 23, 2008
Final Price: $458,000
Close Date:March 11, 2009

331 6th Street S.E. Washington DC (Capitol Hill)

List Date: Dec. 4 2008
Original Listing Price:$999,999
Close Date: Feb. 20, 2009
Final Price: $780,000