Ask Eli: How Much Does Land Cost In Arlington?

This regularly-scheduled sponsored Q&A column is written by Eli Tucker, Arlington-based Realtor and Rosslyn resident. Please submit your questions to him via email for response in future columns. Enjoy!

Question: Can you provide insight into how much a tear-down home costs in Arlington and how lot size effects sale price of a single-family home?

Answer: Breaking News… land is very hard to come by in Arlington. Only 11 homes sold in the last ten years had one or more acres, and it’s going to cost you over $1M to buy one. The average lot size of a single-family home in Arlington is about 8,400 sq. ft. or .19 acres with about 70% of homes on 6,000-10,000 sq. ft. lots.

Here’s a look at the impact of lot size on sold prices of single family homes over the last three years broken out by zip code:

Cost Of Arlington Homes By Lot Size

The data above takes homes of all sizes and condition into account so it doesn’t do a great job of isolating the actual market price of the land or how much people pay for tear-down lots in Arlington.

To summarize that data, I pulled out the cheapest 15% of sales in each zip code over the last three years. I felt that the cheapest 15% of sales in each zip code were probably good bets for homes being bought for the land/location with the intention of tear-down or major renovations. Note: 22209 didn’t have enough sales to include in this table.

Cost Of Land In Arlington

If you’re thinking of buying a tear-down and building new, a good way to estimate how much your home will cost is to add the following:

• Land acquisition (see above table for estimated land cost by zip code)
• $75,000-$100,000 for demolition, preparing the lot for construction, and permits
• $400,000-$800,000 on construction
• Carrying costs of the loan and taxes during construction of the new home

Earlier this year I wrote about the variance in County tax assessments and market data. How do the market prices for land compare to the County’s tax assessments, which are broken out by land assessments and improvement assessments (assessed value of the home)? Let’s take a look at how the County has assessed land values on homes sold over the last three years and compare that to the market assessment of land values above.

The County Values Land Less Than The Market

Based on this data, the County values land at about 72% of the market value for land on the open market.

Once you’ve had some time to digest the cost of land in Arlington, let me know if you’d like to meet to discuss the process of buying a tear-down lot and building your own home! Email me at [email protected] to schedule an appointment.

If you’d like a question answered in my weekly column, please send an email to [email protected]. To read any of my older posts, visit the blog section of my website at www.EliResidential.com. Call me directly at (703) 539-2529.

Eli Tucker is a licensed Realtor in Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland with Real Living At Home, 2420 Wilson Blvd #101 Arlington, VA 22201, (202) 518-8781.