By David Kosub (Contributor)

Like many other families starting off with their first home, one of the reasons my family set our sights to purchase here in Riggs Park was its affordability in comparison to other neighborhoods across the city. Now, after being here for a couple years, I have wondered how home sales have changed over time for our little community tucked away in upper northeast Washington D.C. That meant I needed some data, and we all know I love me some numbers. (See here on Fort Totten metro ridership, here on crime, and here on the 2018 elections results).

I reached out to Harrison Beacher to help me address this burning data desire. He is a managing partner with the Coalition Properties Group and Keller Williams Capital Properties. Not only is he a former homeowner and current property owner in Riggs Park, he previously served on the board of the Lamond-Riggs Citizens Association (LRCA) and is familiar with the neighborhood. His company also donated funds to defray costs to print the monthly LRCA newsletter too. Mr. Beacher and his lead buyer specialist Isaiah Hazward, ran a couple reports from the multiple listing service on home sales for me and I’d like to share some of the findings here with the community.

As shown in Figure 1, home sales in Riggs Park have steadily climbed from 88 properties in 2014 to 108 in 2018. The vast majority of homes sold in 2018 ranged in age from 60 to 72 years, with five less than 45 years old and two that were 75 years old (data not shown).

As of mid-June 2019, 47 homes were sold this year in Riggs Park. This is a slower pace than in 2018, with 7.8 homes sold per month on average in 2019 compared to 9 homes per month in 2018. A follow-up post will be shared after the final 2019 numbers are available.

Moving on, Figure 2 displays average (blue line) and median (orange line) closed sale prices for homes in our neighborhood between 2014 and 2019. Averages represent total closed sale prices for all properties divided by the total number of properties. Median closed sale prices are also shown to get a sense of home sales without potential outlier property sales skewing the overall distribution.

We can see that average home sold prices have risen from $342,000 in 2014 to $505,000 in 2019. Median sold prices also rose from $339,000 to $508,000 over the same time period. Mr. Beacher noted to me that “the overall pricing trends really do tell the story of how attractive our . . . single-family homes are in the DC housing landscape.” He went on to add that “we are still below the city median price of around $575,000.”

Finally, the table below shows the lowest and highest sold price for properties in Riggs Park between 2014 and 2018 as well as by mid-June 2019.

Year	Low	High
2014	$200,000	$519,900
2015	$223,500	$650,000
2016	$275,000	$750,000
2017	$249,000	$759,000
2018	$287,000	$930,000
2019	$300,000	$840,000

Mr. Beacher informed me that the homogenous nature of our housing stock further highlights the “value opportunity” of our neighborhood. This stock represents primarily single family, 3 bedroom semi-detached homes. He added that “median sold price for attached, 3 bedroom townhomes in DC was approximately $662,000 in 2018 and [is] $697,000 in 2019 to date. Simply put, we have a lot of the type of homes that buyers in DC want, at a great value opportunity compared to the same kind of house in the majority of the rest of the city.”