EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2020 TAKEAWAYS

• Washington, DC was still in demand • Mortgage rates hovered at historic lows • COVID-19 accelerated real estate decisions

• Condominium sales remained steady • Existing inventory was most desirable

Like much of the real estate community, Urban Pace started 2020 with an optimistic outlook on the overall market in the Washington, DC region. Once the reality of COVID-19 hit the United States in mid-March, Urban Pace quickly shifted gears to a remote work environment for our staff and sales professionals in an abundance of caution for health and safety. In addition to implementing creative sales and marketing strategies on various virtual platforms, Urban Pace initially began tracking data on a weekly basis for all residential sales in the DMV including condos, townhomes and single-family homes to analyze how all these product types were being affected by the pandemic. We chose to focus on MLS statistics to provide a larger and more consistent sample size on contracts written rather than closed data for this section of the report. This helps provide a more accurate snapshot of activity in an ever-changing market. We track this data on a year-over-year basis in the following charts and graphs. The work from home scenario became the norm for many, so there was a major focus on living environments and many people started to reevaluate their homes. There was a newfound need to juggle personal space, storage space, home offices, kids attending school remotely, etc. In the midst of this, interest rates hit historic lows in 2020 and dipped below 3% in July. They stayed in the high 2% range for the remainder of the year and closed out December at 2.66%.

After the initial dip in sales activity in late March and April, the market slowly started to recover with a total of 5.8% more contracts written year-over-year. The typically strong spring market shifted into the summer months showing an increase in activity on all product types including year-over-year increases in July of 14.8% for condos, 18.4% for townhomes, and 16.7% for single-family homes.