July 18 - 24, 2024
Fa lls Chur c h, V i r g i ni a • ww w. fc np. c om • Fr ee
Fou n d e d 1991 • Vol. X X XIV No. 23
The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia
Fresh Market WHOLE FOODS SIGNAGE Heading Into West Falls Mega Site Will Bring Total to 7 Big Groceries in Little City by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
Notwithstanding all the new high-quality restaurants now or soon to be opening in the City of Falls Church, for folks who prefer to prepare their own meals, there soon will be no shortage (putting it mildly) of grocery options among the 14,500 (and growing fast) residents here either. The latest announcement came just this week that a large new Fresh Market will fill the space in the massive new West Falls development at the corner of W. Broad and Haycock. It has long been known that the space was being held in reserve for a grocery, but no one was willing to say which one. That mystery is now solved. The announcement came just as the signage was going up at the City-center Broad and Washington intersection for the
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Home & Real Estate
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IT WAS 2015, ALMOST a decade ago that word first broke that Whole Foods may be coming to F.C.’s Broad and Washington intersection, and evidence has just surfaced that it is finally becoming a reality with the new signage added at the site just this weekend. (photo: News-Press)
NVAR Chief Offers Chamber Info on Price Boom by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
As this month’s numbers show, the prices that residential real estate properties are commanding in the City of Falls Church are continuing to skyrocket, and no one seems to think they will level off anytime soon. The City’s average single family home is now going for $1,297,818, and some are getting closer to $3 million. Certainly Ryan McLaughlin, CEO of the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors (NVAR) doesn’t seem to think things
are slowing down just yet, and that came across in his remarks to the monthly luncheon of the Falls Church Chamber Commerce held at the Italian Cafe this week. In the context of supply and demand, the market is reeling from extraordinary demands of the latter to the point that the average single family home in Falls Church is now going for $1,297,818, clearly the highest number in the immediate region where averages are $959,420 for Arlington, $885,650 for Fairfax County, $839,029 for
Alexandria and $756,169 for Fairfax City. There was a strong contingent of real estate folks in the audience for McLaughlin’s talk, and one of the major subjects bandied about had to do with the recent legal settlement whose changes impacting the buying and selling of real estate will go into effect in just a month, on August 17. McLaughlin and a number of realtors present for the talk claimed the issue is primarily one of “transparency” in negotiations between buyers, sellers
and their respective agents, saying that Virginia has had laws already in effect addressing this since 2012. Their comments seemed at odds with reports in the Wall Street Journal, where it was noted in a July 15 article that “analysts at Keefe, Bruyette and Woods have predicted that the changes (resulting from the lawsuit settlement-ed.) could lead to a 30 percent reduction in the $100 billion that Americans pay in real estate commissions every
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