Ask Eli: Impact of New Homes on Housing Prices

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

Question: How much of Arlington’s high housing prices are attributed to new homes?

Answer: So far this year, the average sold price of a single-family detached (SFD) home in Arlington is $1,146,000, but if you remove the sales of new homes, which are averaging $1,810,000 in 2020, the average price for a SFD home in Arlington drops 7.4% to $1,060,000. Since 2015, the average price of a new SFD home in Arlington has increased by 21.6%, while the average price of resale homes has increase 25.3%.

Important note: I removed one sale from the 2015-2020 sales data; a January 2020 sale of 409/411 Chain Bridge Road for $45M, because it is such an extreme anomaly in Arlington real estate data that it skews everything else too high. This is important to understand because most likely in other assessments of Arlington real estate data you see, this data point will be included and it will make it seem like the average sale price in Arlington, especially 22207, has increased much more than it actually has.

New Home Prices vs Resale Prices

The charts below compare the annual change in the average price of a new SFD home and a resale SFD home. The first chart shows all Arlington SFD sales and the second chart is just for the 22207 zip code which accounts for 54% of all new SFD home sales since 2015.

I was a little surprised by how uncorrelated average prices were between new and resale homes some years, I would have expected a strong linkage.

One data point that stands out is the huge jump in new home prices from 2017 to 2018, which seems to be tied to a significant drop in the number of transactions (lower supply) in 2018. It highlights just how sensitive the new home market is to supply swings and I wonder if that forecasts less growth in the future as more homes built in the last 5-8 years come up for resale, competing with similar new homes.

I also wonder if a pause in buying by builders in the first half of this year may lead to a material shortage of new homes in 2021 and drive prices up for new homes selling next year.

If you’d like to discuss buying or selling strategies, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected].

If you’d like a question answered in my weekly column or to set-up an in-person meeting to discuss local real estate, 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 D.C., and Maryland with RLAH Real Estate, 4040 N. Fairfax Dr. #10C Arlington, VA 22203, (703) 390-9460.