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Health & Fitness

Reston Real Estate – Looking Back on 2012

Home values in Reston have been on rise while inventory has been on the decline.

The real estate market in Reston made strong gains in 2012 with average home prices at a five-year high of $455,000. Low interest rates and improved consumer confidence (also at a five-year high), spurred a burst of buying that was somewhat inhibited by low inventory in Reston.

The really good news is that the average home price of $455,000 represents a 12-percent increase over last year. This means that if you bought your home at the peak in 2007 you’ve recovered just over half of the value that you lost in 2008 when Reston property values dropped about 20 percent. That may not sound like great news but compare that to some of our neighbors to the South and West where home values declined this year and the average days on market is hovering around 150 versus Reston’s average of 28; it’s certainly a move in the right direction.

Investors continue to be active in the Reston real estate market with 15 percent of all transactions being cash. Investor interest can also be measured by developer interest which is also very high, JBG, Lerner and others seem to be very keen on Reston.

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What to expect for 2013? Well, assuming that we are able to either avoid or quickly deal with the Fiscal Cliff, everything is poised for continued growth in Reston’s real estate market. I would not expect to see another year of 12 percent price increases but it does look like home values will continue to rise, probably more along the lines of four to six percent. Hopefully, we will have some inventory to sell. When I did the new Reston listings for this blog earlier this week we were down to a mere 65 properties!

The table below shows the volume of real estate transactions sold over the past 10 years along with the average price and percent of change over that time period. Definitely moving in the right direction.

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

Year

Volume

Units

Ave Price

Dif +/-

2002

502M

1795

280K

 

2003

588M

1877

314K

+11%

2004

725M

1955

371K

+18%

2005

863M

1853

466K

+25%

2006

589M

1307

451K

-3.2%

2007

556M

1212

458K

+1.5%

2008

368M

965

381K

-20%

2009

439M

1148

383K

-

2010

440M

1104

399K

+4%

2011

378M

937

403K

+1%

2012

483M

1061

455K

+12%

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