Braemar Condo Quarterly: October-December 2021 (4th Quarter)

Braemar Condo Quarterly: October-December 2021 (4th Quarter)

It’s the last day of 2021 and the possibilities of 2022 are around the corner. Today it is time for me to begin tying up the remains of 2021. It starts in this edition of the Braemar Condo Quarterly where I will present the sales activity we saw from October to the end of December and how Braemar Condo values fared in 2021.

If you are new to this report, it may come as a surprise that Braemar has condos at all. Often times, hearing the word “condo” brings to mind apartment style units. Condo is less about the style of the home and more about the type of ownership. The condos present in Braemar are townhouse style dwellings that are registered with the State Corporation Commission as condo group ownership. While it is typically the case that condo ownership means caring only for the inside of your dwelling, Braemar Condo owners have the entire dwelling to maintain. The type of ownership mainly affects what time of loans a buyer can use to purchase and how the common area owned by the condo is maintained. And unlike traditional fee simple ownership, the condo association in Braemar can dictate whether improvements to the interior of the townhouse can be made by owners. One element of condo ownership is the common insurance to the structure by the condo association. As such, condo associations have a say in what happens inside a condo dwelling.

Now that you know more about what makes up a condo, let’s see the sales activity for Braemar Condos in the fourth quarter of 2021.

While there are both Braemar Condos with and without garages, the three sales that happened in the fourth quarter all had garages. Final sold prices ranged from $350,000 to $367,000. All but one of them sold for no more than their list price. The sale highlighted in pink is one in which I had a hand, guiding a colleague through their first transaction. While it did have the highest days on market, it also was the only one that sold above list price. The first offer the seller got was list price, and as a former For Sale By Owner, he did not want to settle for just list price. While he did not reject the offer out right, he agreed to take another look at it in a week if it was the only offer on the table. By then, it was bested by a higher offer. As my colleague learned, the first offer is not always the best.

When the most recent sales are combined with all of the Braemar Condo sales for 2021, the six and twelve month data points collected in this report are updated as seen below.

Starting with the sold price column, we see the six month average is slightly above the twelve month average. Meanwhile, the six and twelve month median sold price are identical. The growth rate for Braemar Condo values is definitely easing up, compared to what we saw last report.

The seller subsidy column shows a continued trend with both median values being at zero. This means that in both the six month and twelve month time frames, more than half of Braemar Condo sellers gave no closing cost help. Perhaps equally good news is that the six and twelve month average seller susidy figures have come down compared to what we saw last report.

Finally, the days on market column reveals a slight uptick in the amount of time it takes Braemar Condos to go under contract. Both the six month values are higher than their respective twelve month values. Not a big deal when taken in the context that the highest number of days on market in recent sales of eleven days was still under two weeks and ultimately netted an above list price offer.

If you placed your Braemar Condo on the market, priced to current conditions, you could expect it to be under contract in less than two weeks. You could also expect to give nothing in closing cost help. Finally, you will need to be aware of what loans will not work with the current state of lapsed HUD approval for Barr Hill at Inverness Village Condos. Those are details that professionals like myself can help you through in the sales process.

A successful home sale in any market condition starts with buyer enthusiasm, brought to a peak with professional marketing. There is only money to be left on the table when professional marketing and listing preparation are left out of the mix. Take it from the former For Sale By Owner at 12516 Heykens. He was listed all by himself for the same list price for several weeks. It wasn’t until he hired a professional that his home got the listing prepartion advice he so badly needed and benefited from the professional marketing that made up for the cost of hiring an agent to begin with.

The next Braemar Condo Quarterly will be out in April. Until then, when the need or desire to sell your condo arises, get in touch for a no obligation market analysis. The market of 2021 is not what we are likely to see continue through 2022 with record low interest rates predicted to increase incrementally throughout the year. However, you still have a chance for record high prices if you act before we see the cooling off of buyer demand. Since 2005, No One Knows Braemar Better!

Chris Ann Cleland 
Associate Broker, Licensed in VA
Long & Foster Real Estate
703-402-0037, ChrisAnn@LNF.com
www.SellingBraemar.com
www.UncompromisingValues.com
www.ChrisAnnCleland.com