Fairfax county real estate (Reston, Chantilly: real estate market, foreclosures, rent to own)

[athensvaasi]

I have been looking at Fairfax county real estate charts on zillow. That is, choose a property and look at its 10 year zillow chart.

My personal area of preference is about 10 miles from the beltway. Kind of midway between Fairfax and Chantilly on a google map, around the intersection of I-66 and US-50. Intending to move by end of the year to this or similar area.

Based on the charts, I get the feeling that the housing in the area mentioned (and most of NoVa) peaked in early 2006. And has stabilized at 2004 levels, and may be rising at this time.

Is this a reasonable assessment about areas say 10 miles from the beltway?

Thanks for your input.

[Novadhd5150]

The housing bubble popped for the most part in 2006-2007 and then starting doing downhill. This area wasnt nearly as affected as other parts of the country. We bought in 2008 and it was buyers market and at a fair value. I would say it has stabalized now.

[khuntrevor]

It's more like 2002 in Manassas--a little farther out.

[hilsmom]

It is a decent assessment. We are a couple miles West of the 50/66 interchange, and I would say we are still seeing a little depreciation, BUT that is likely because the best places sell quickly and what remains on the market are places needing some TLC and priced too high. We bought a house for about $15K less than what the fair market value should be, but it is because it needed renovations. To be honest, we probably should have paid about $10K less than we did anyway, but we didn't want to lose the house because of its prime location walking distance to all 3 schools and a shopping center. So, we are doing renovations ourselves.

Had we sold our North Reston TH a year earlier, we could have gotten $5-10K more for it. But we got more than recent sellers did because we had updated it.

Oh, well. We figured we should get out of our TH while we still would make a decent enough profit to put money down on a step up. It was the right decision for us. We used our VA Loan and got a 4% interest rate, and now we're in a house we can stay in a while with 4 BR's and a nice yard. No more squeezing into a 2 BR TH for us!

We also figure if things go south and WE start having trouble paying our bills, it means everyone is in the exact same boat because the economy has completely gone down the toilet.

[boyd888]

No one knows what the housing market is going to do. If they did, no one would have bought a house in 2006. If you are looking to buy, obviously you will be looking for signs that the market has stabilized or is going up, because no one wants to buy a house only to watch it depreciate.

"Now" has always been a good time to buy a house, especially according to the realtors.

I would say that values are clearly not dropping as fast as did when the bubble popped, but beyond that I don't think you can say anything. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Spring (a very busy time for home sales) now that the credit is gone.

[athensvaasi]

Originally Posted by boyd888

No one knows what the housing market is going to do. If they did, no one would have bought a house in 2006. If you are looking to buy, obviously you will be looking for signs that the market has stabilized or is going up, because no one wants to buy a house only to watch it depreciate.

"Now" has always been a good time to buy a house, especially according to the realtors.

I would say that values are clearly not dropping as fast as did when the bubble popped, but beyond that I don't think you can say anything. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Spring (a very busy time for home sales) now that the credit is gone.

Boyd888, You think it is still a buyers market, right?

I will definitely rent (or rent to own) before buying. Just checking if I am already missing the boat.

[MountainMen]

I wouldn't buy or not buy based on charts. Buy if you like the price now and want to own your own home. You can't predict the future, especially in real estate.

[CAVA1990]

In my area of Mount Vernon, prices are about 10%-15% below the 2005/6 peak. They're still about 80% above 2000 levels. It's pretty convenient to DC or the Pentagon so houses around her move pretty well, regardless of the economy.

[michgc]

Here in Vienna, which may be a bit closer in than where you are looking - we are about 3 miles outside the beltway - our housing values are just above early 2005 levels, according to real estate tax assessments. If you look at real estate assements at this site for Fairfax County, you can get a good idea where housing values have gone in the area you are looking. Make sure you look at several houses in the same area, though, because sometimes there's a wonky value on a particular house. Here is the site and you can key in an address. If you put it in without the house number, you can see the whole street: Fairfax County

[oneasterisk]

According to this article, there are more foreclosure homes in FFX: Virginia foreclosures top numbers in Maryland - WTOP.com

I've also found those online price estimating sites to not be too accurate so I wouldn't put 100% faith into them. They don't take into account any upgrades/updates you may have done. I also wouldn't put much into county assessments for the same reasons. Another stat to use is from the MRIS site: Real Estate Market Statistics for the Mid-Atlantic Region | RBI. In my ZIP homes are selling for 4% less than this month last year using that site.

If you're looking to buy, then I wouldn't expect prices to increase for a while.