This regularly-scheduled sponsored Q&A column is written by Eli Tucker, Arlington-based Realtor and Rosslyn resident. Please submit your questions to him via email for response in future columns. Enjoy!
Question: What is the price per bedroom ($/BR) in Arlington?
This is a GREAT question, and I’ve been looking forward to answering it since early December. Before I jump into the data, I want to point out that giving a dollar-value is impossible on such a large scale because $/BR is relative to the cost/type of home. Instead of a dollar value, I’ll discuss the percent increase to add a bedroom in order to normalize the data.
Cost of a Condo Bedroom
I compared one and two-bedroom condo sales within high rises with at least thirty sales since 2008 and a healthy balance of one and two-bedroom sales. Thirty-nine buildings made the cut, with 1,748 one-bedroom and 1,616 two-bedroom sales representing the data.
Instead of lumping all one and two-bedrooms together and taking the average, I calculated the percent difference within each building first and averaged them together — thank god for pivot tables!
RESULTS
- The average two-bedroom condo costs 52.6 percent more than a comparable one-bedroom (standard deviation of 16.6 percent)
- 88 percent of the time a second bedroom also comes with a second bathroom
- The average two-bedroom condo is 421 square feet larger than a one-bedroom
- The cheapest buildings to add a bedroom are Ballston 880 in Virginia Square/Ballston (16.1 percent increase) and Tower Villas in Virginia Square (20.4 percent increase)
- The most expensive buildings to add a bedroom are Waterview in Rosslyn (81.8 percent) and Horizon House in Pentagon City (83.8 percent)
- The relative cost to add a bedroom was almost identical in north and south Arlington, although the dollar value increases significantly in north Arlington
Cost of a Detached/Single Family Home Bedroom
I chose to compare Craftsman style homes because they’re the most popular home design in Arlington right now and are mostly newer builds or renovations with similar quality, which are good for data.
In all, there have been 495 Craftsman-style homes sold in Arlington in the last 10 years. Ninety-four percent of those sales were for three, four, or five-bedroom homes — 22 percent, 56 percent, and 16 percent, respectively — so this is where we’ll focus.
RESULTS
- Adding a fourth bedroom costs an average of 28.5 percent more than a comparable three-bedroom
- Adding a fifth bedroom costs and average of 10.5 percent more than a comparable four-bedroom
- The cost difference closely tracks the increase in square footage, with a 22.6 percent and 7.3 percent increase in square footage between three and four-bedroom and four and five-bedroom homes, respectively
- The 22201, 22205, and 22207 zip codes were responsible for 82 percent of the total Craftsman sales volume over the last 10 years with average sale prices of $1.16 million, $1.43 million, and $1.56 million for three, four, and five-bedroom homes, respectively
I also found that the relative cost to add a bedroom remained consistent over the last 10 years, despite the dollar value increasing as home prices go up.
Attention readers! In March, I’m starting a monthly neighborhood spotlight and looking for Arlingtonians who would like their opinions incorporated into this column — favorite running trail, best neighborhood bar, neighborhood personality, etc. Send me an email if you’re interested!
If you’d like a question answered in my weekly column, please send an email to [email protected]. To read any of my older posts, visit the blog section of my website at http://www.RealtyDCMetro.com.
Eli Tucker is a licensed Realtor in Virginia, Washington DC, and Maryland with Real Living At Home, 2420 Wilson Blvd #101 Arlington, VA 22201, 202-518-8781.