September 27’s Washington Post’s “Where We Live” section provided some real estate trends for condos.  The data compared the first three months of 2007 to the first three months of 2008.

As one would expect, metro-wide sales were down from 4,556 condos to 2,864 condos during the January to March period. Pricing held up well, however, with the median purchase price of $277,222 in 2007 compared to $274,175 in 2008, or a 1 percent decline in value.

But the District itself saw a much brighter picture.  Sales increased from 208 to 312 when comparing the two periods, and pricing went from $330,000 in 2007 to $379,500 in 2008 – a 15 percent increase!

Now, keep in mind that this is only a small snippet of the market, and one cannot draw meaningful conclusions from the data.  That being said, it is just another data point that supports the notion that living in the District has its advantages!

One weekend this spring I was surprised to see that The Cavendish (a condo building at 1200 Arlington Ridge Road, Arlington, VA) has outlawed the use of open house signs.

Open houses are an important part of the home-sale process and with no signage it becomes impossible to direct potential buyers to the unit. This speaks to an interesting movement by condo associations to restrict—or outright prohibit—the use of for sale and open-house signs on the property grounds.

The argument is that open houses are a security risk to the building and that signs clutter the grounds. And supposedly these factors depress the values of the condos.

While I agree that large for sale signs constantly in and out of the front yard of condo buildings can be tacky, banning the use of open house signs does not help the owners of units in the building. These restrictions hinder the agents’ ability of the agent to do his or her job, which in turn can lead to lower sale prices—for all owners