Via District, Measured

D.C. is now at a point where one in four homes is clocking in at seven figures (or more). The Office of Revenue Analysis’ District, Measured blog offers a look at how we got here, by way of a comparison to the rest of the region and country.

The graph is based on figures from a quarterly index compiled by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which reflects how the same properties change value over time based on sales and refinancing data. Over the 25-year period, home values in D.C. grew twice as much as both the Washington metropolitan region as a whole and the country’s average.

Home prices in D.C., the region at large, and the rest of the country more or less converged right around the turn of the 21st century. The bubble continued to swell a few years later, at which point both D.C. and the region had already surpassed the U.S. average.

Economy-wise, the D.C. region wasn’t hit nearly as hard by the recession as the rest of the country, thanks to the (once) stable federal job market. But as it recovered, the increasing divergence in the blue (D.C.) and red (D.C. metro area) lines shows how the population drive back to D.C. (a trend mirrored in cities around the country) coupled with a relatively fixed supply of single-family homes, kicked home prices into high gear.

Between 2002 and 2016, D.C.’s home values grew by 147 percent, whereas the metro area was up 55 percent and the rest of the U.S. increased by 36 percent. D.C. has now far surpassed home values from the peak before the recession, whereas the rest of the area and country still haven’t fully recovered.