The Slowest of All Real Estate Listings in Northern Virginia is Great Falls VA
In writing a piece on Arlington county real estate sales comparing zip codes to each other I noticed that Fairfax County and especially Prince William county listings were selling much more quickly in terms of days on market (DOM). I suspected the slooooowest sales of all would be Great Falls Virginia real estate listings. Sure enough my instincts were correct.
200% Longer to Sell Great Falls Virginia Real Estate
The days on market using past 3 months of data demonstrate an extreme contrast or disconnect of homes sales in Great Falls versus the rest of Northern Virginia. Is this alarming and saying something negative aobut Great Falls real estate?
No.
The big $$$ homes take longer to sell as a general rule. The pool of buyers is smaller and likely the DOM has always been significantly higher. Just peeking back 2 years in the summer the days on market were 2x the rest of Northern Virginia. So it is normal. The smartest thing which a home seller can do to help sell their house faster is getting tiny but significant renovations done throughout the place as this makes the home look much more presentable. This is a good advice for UK home sellers or for people who live towards the upstate New York as the houses in these places are significantly larger than other homes and also cause selling these houses is generally a hard task.
The higher price brackets get hit hardest in tough economic times. Those with money tend to hoard it during economic uncertainty to the demise of more expensive homes sale or hiring new employees, etc.
Economic Concerns Looming as it Relates to Great Falls Home Sales
One thing that has been on my mind a lot as of late is the likelihood that companies are frontloading their profits now in 2010 to take the money and run so to speak before the Bush tax cuts expire thus increasing significantly the taxes on profits. If this is true then the stock market could go down a good 20% next year??? This will impact the uppper brackets of real estate in particular and prices will come down more.
We can see this happening already in the upper quartile of real estate prices….What does this mean if you are purchasing in Great Falls–particularly in the upper quartiles $1,500,000+ ??? 
It means it’s going to be difficult to get the fair price. It means we’re going to negotiate and then walk away and then come back a month later to negotiate again and see if the seller has figured out that their home is not worth that extra $100,000 of padding they were demanding the first time around….
