Photo by Josh Bassett

At this point, the high cost of rent in D.C. is old news. What’s interesting to explore, though, is which neighborhoods have seen the greatest increase in home values since the early 21st century, leading into the housing boom-and-bust beginning in 2006.

While thinkfluencers claim that D.C. sidestepped the housing crisis altogether, data reveal something more complicated, according to the District of Columbia’s Office of Revenue Analysis’s blog District, Measured.

We found that the neighborhoods in the city’s central corridor between Rock Creek Park and the Anacostia River have seen the biggest percent increase in home prices since 2001 (the earliest year for which we have reliable data). In Trinidad, LeDroit Park, and Columbia Heights, the median sales price for a single family home has more than tripled since 2001, and the median sales price in these neighborhoods is above what it was during the peak of the housing boom. The story’s different in the city’s outlying areas. In all neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River, and in some neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park, home prices have risen from 2001 levels but have not yet recovered from the housing bust in the mid- to late-2000s.

Since the housing market came crashing down around 2008, some neighborhoods have fared better than others. Homeowners in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River continue to struggle in terms of housing prices as well as those in “neighborhoods along the city’s northern border, and in some neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park,” according to District, Measured. The median sales price of a single family home in these neighborhoods have decreased since 2006.

For instance, the article looks at Deanwood where “the median sales price for a single family home grew 74 percent between 2001 and 2015.” Today, you can now get a home in the Ward 7 neighborhood for 24 percent lower than it was priced in 2006.

Trinidad, Eckington, Brookland, LeDroit Park, and Petworth are on the other side of the spectrum. These neighborhoods saw the biggest price increases since 2009, a time when home prices began to tick upward. And here’s another interactive graph (we love these things) showing inflation-adjusted prices in neighborhoods that have grown the fastest since 2009.

The article also notes that although home prices in the city’s central corridor have increased the most over the past 15 years, “median prices for single family homes west of Rock Creek Park still tend to be higher than in other parts of the city.”