F2 Real estate trends
The Washington Post regularly tracks housing sales and prices throughout the Washington area each Saturday in the Real Estate section, comparing information collected for each residential Zip code from each time period last year with that for the corresponding time period in 2008. The chart and map this week compare single-family house and townhouse sales figures in Prince William County from January through Decembers 2008 with those for the corresponding period in 2009, showing the total number of sales, the median prices and the changes in the medians. The median is the point at which half of the sales prices were higher and half lower. Condominiums were excluded. The sales and price information, collected by The Washington Post, is based on sales recorded in local government offices. That information is in the chart on the right. It excludes some types of transactions, particularly those that are not at market price. As with any statistical compilation, the greater the number of transactions, the more reliable the statistical trend. Moreover, at any given time there may be more sales activity in certain market niches or price ranges, for instance starter homes or high-priced houses, than at other times, and this may influence a median price from year to year. The map provides a snapshot of price trends throughout the geographical area covered by each week’s information.
ON THE WEB
For up-to-date home sales and tax assessments, real estate news and community profiles, visit
www.washingtonpost.com/realestate.
HOUSEWATCH Builders weigh going green against losing greenbacks by Katherine Salant
Although home builders have the opportunity to make a huge impact on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming, very few mention it in their sales pitches. To make a difference, home builders do not have to reinvent the house; they simply have to build ones that use less energy. Their challenges are minor compared with those faced by automakers shifting to plug-in hybrids, electric, and hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered cars. Builders can achieve significantly higher rates of energy efficiency with only a few minor changes: plugging air leaks in the building envelope so that the owner will not be heating or cooling the great outdoors; sealing the ducts that deliver heating and air conditioning with mastic glue instead of tape,which can disintegrate; installing better windows with a low-emissivity coating; and adding more
ASK THE BUILDER A few tricks can help make deck installation last By Tim Carter
DEAR TIM: I’m restoring an older home that has a patio porch deck. It’s covered, so perhaps it’s just a deck porch. The wood was painted but is in bad shape due to neglect. What material would you install if you wanted to maintain the character of the house? I’ve seen composite porch decking, but I’m worried that I could have problems with it and that it just wouldn’t look real. Are there any trade secrets you can share about decks and porches? — Sara G., Mt. Orab, Ohio
DEAR SARA: I’m really familiar with porch decks, especially ones made from wood. Every house I’ve owned has had one, and some of the wood is more than 100 years old and still in good condition. There are several reasons why the wood has lasted that long, not the least of which is diligent care on the part of the homeowner. Wood porch decking is a classic look. You’ll find it on many a covered porch in older homes out in the country as well as houses in the city. I know for a fact that there are thousands of houses in Cincinnati, which is near you, that have original wood porch decks that are still in use.
TIM CARTER / TIM CARTER
Douglas fir porch decking has tongue-and-groove joints.
They may be painted, but they’re still wood.
If you study your porch — assuming it was installed correctly when your home was built — you’ll discover that it probably is not level front to back and that the wood strips were installed opposite of the way you might think they should be. Carpenters well over 100 years
ago discovered that even though porches like yours were covered, wind-driven rain would saturate the wood in fierce storms. The quicker that water got off the wood, the better. Installing the wood so that it has a fall of an eighth of an inch per foot allowed for excellent drainage. To ensure that no water got
trapped between the pieces of wood decking, the carpenters ran each individual strip of wood
perpendicular to the front wall of the house. That way the seams between the pieces of wood acted as natural conduits for the water to drain to the end of the porch at the overhang. Installing the wood parallel with the front wall of the house creates a dam between pieces of wood that traps the water. The wood that I prefer to use for these porch decks is vertical grain Douglas fir. It can still be found at many traditional lumberyards. The wood that was installed on many of the old porches, and on the ones I built, had a tongue-and-groove profile. This profile is the same used when milling oak for interior hardwood floors. It allows for blind nailing of the strips of wood and adds significantly to the strength of the wood as each strip interlocks with the one on either side of it. This minimizes or eliminates sag or bounce when you walk on the wood in between the floor joists that support the porch decking. It’s time-tested technology that works. I tested a composite porch decking that was made to mimic the wood material. It failed miserably. The instructions said to make sure the decking was protected from the sun. That’s pretty much impossible to do, as the sun can often hit the edges of the decking early and late in the
day and as the seasons change with the sun lower in the sky. In my case, even though the decking was installed per the manufacturer’s specifications, it developed huge humps from the heat expansion of the plastic in the composite product. If you want your new wood
material to last for generations, you have to treat it with borate chemicals before it’s installed. Cut the pieces to the exact length you want and then soak each piece of wood in hot water that contains borate powder. Let each piece soak under water in a trough for about two minutes. Stack the wood in a shaded area, making sure to put wood spacers between layers so the wood can dry.
Once it’s dried for two weeks, then paint the wood on all edges and surfaces before it’s installed. You can use semi-transparent wood preservatives instead of paint if you want the natural look. The key is to coat all the surfaces of the decking so that water will have a very difficult time entering the wood. If you don’t pre-treat the wood before it’s installed, you’ll never be able to coat all the surfaces.
Tim Carter is a columnist for Tribune Media Services. He can be contacted through his Web site, www.
askthebuilder.com.
insulation to basements, crawl spaces, walls and attics. Other changes will help, such as increasing roof overhangs to shade windows in summer; building houses to minimize western exposures to the hot summer sun; and planting fast-growing shade trees after houses are built. How much would such modest
changes add to the cost of a house? During the recent boom years, theymight have added as much as 4 percent. In today’s market, the added cost probably would be closer to 1 percent because a builder can get good work from subcontractors at very competitive prices, said Ron Jones, president of GreenBuilder Media and a builder for more than 30 years. This added cost might
discourage some builders. But the main reason that most are not pushing energy efficiency is their desire to avoid debate about a subject that they sense the buying public rejects — and one that could affect their sales, said Jones, who is also a director of
the National Association of Home Builders and is in frequent contact with builders all over the country. He was instrumental in establishing NAHB’s green building certification program. “Home builders tend to be stubborn and absorb change slowly, but above all,” Jones emphasized, “home builders are business people who want to sell houses, and they approach most things pragmatically. “They are not going to focus on global warming because they have observed the public’s skepticism, and they don’t want to scare off potential customers,” he said. “Instead, builders are promoting energy savings as a way to save money. They’ll wait for the client to talk about improved energy savings and climate change.” Kevin Morrow, NAHB’s green building senior program manager, said most builders think the best way to sell energy efficiency to “today’s value-conscious consumers” is to show the money saved on utility bills. But, he said, “the end point
is still the same.” Energy-efficient houses reduce the emissions that are causing climate change. Sam Rashkin, program
manager for the federal government’s Energy Star for Homes program, said he also takes a neutral, “bipartisan approach” in offering reasons to save energy. “If I bring up climate change, I will offend 50 percent of my audience — I will see a body language change,” Rashkin said. His solution has been to tailor the message to the audience. For builders, Rashkin promotes energy savings as a way to compete against foreclosed houses. For homeowners, he emphasizes energy savings as a way to lower utility bills. With both groups, Rashkin shows that home energy efficiency benefits everyone, homeowner or not, because it reduces the overall dependence on foreign sources for oil and natural gas used at home. Is the public really as skeptical about global warming as the industry assumes? In a June
survey by the Political Psychology Research Group at Stanford University, 74 percent of respondents said yes when asked if the Earth has been warming over the last 100 years, and 75 percent said that human behavior was “substantially responsible.” An even greater number of respondents — 80 percent — supported government requirements to make new homes and office buildings more energy efficient. Many builders will pooh-pooh this and insist that prospective buyers will lose their enthusiasm for increasing energy efficiency when they realize it will raise the cost of a new house. Some builders, however, have found buyers to be very receptive to the connection between global warming and home energy use when it is straightforwardly presented and when the savings on their utility bills are emphasized. If you step into the sales office of a furnished model in Norman, Okla., built by Ideal Homes, you would find both messages
LOUD. CO.
201 2013 20137 20169 Haymarket Haymarket 2015
Percent change in median house price
–3% to –8% 3% or more
No significant change –9% to –14%
–15% to –20% Data not available
–21% or more 20155 20136 20181 20181 20119 20119 20181 20181 22134 2134
Marine Corps Base
Quantico
SOURCE: Full-value transactions as reported by Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park.
BY DAN KEATING AND NATHANIEL VAUGHN KELSO — THE WASHINGTON POST 22 22172 20136 201 20109 2011 20110 Manassas Manassas 20111 20111 20112 20112 22 22193 Woodbr dge 2202522025 Dumfries Dumfries 2202622026
oodbridgei 22
22191 22 22192 20143 143
FAUQ. CO.
P.W. CO.
MONT. CO.
VA.
FAIRFAX CO.
STAFF. CO.
MD. D.C.
P.G. CO.
CHAS. CO.
KLMNO
SATURDAY, JULY 24, 2010
Prince William County January through December 2008
sold 20109
20110 1,007 175,000 20111 20112 20136 20137 20143 20155 20169 20181 22025 22026 22125 22134 22172 22191 22192 22193 TOTAL
177 $219,950 549 180,000
232 440,282 351 385,000 2 272,500 8 968,000 388 391,065 335 473,695 45 440,000 194 333,500 82 267,500 12 500,000
2009
Zip homes purchase homes purchase in median code sold
Total Median Total Median Change price
price price
284 $160,000 -$59,950 42 220,000
45,000
1 120,000 — 87 402,095 604 320,650 393 309,000 494 296,782
552 155,950 -24,050 269 408,000 -32,282 450 370,000 -15,000 1 204,700 -67,800 6 625,000 -343,000 449 379,265 -11,800 358 407,452 -66,243 52 399,750 -40,251 202 285,000 -48,500 149 240,000 -27,500 9 360,000 -140,000 —
—
133 360,000 -42,095 910 248,096 -72,555 565 237,500 -71,500 850 199,900 -96,882
4,961 $300,000 5,281 $270,050 -$29,950
conveyed with two strong visuals. The first quantifies what you would save every year you own one of their new houses. It’s a photograph of 800 $1 bills stacked on a coffee table. (Depending on house size, you could save between $600 and $960 a year, said Steve Shoemaker, Ideal’s marketing chief.) The second photo shows two polar bears with the caption: “Global warming is a hot topic right now. People have a lot of opinions on the subject. At Ideal Homes, we think the choices we make on where we live have an impact on our environment. Our homes not only save you money on your monthly heating and cooling costs, but produce less emissions than a home built to code. That’s not a bad combination, is it?” Turning the message into a
sale takes a lot of time and patience, both to train the sales staff and to explain the benefits of the energy improvements that have added about 3 percent to the price, said Shoemaker. Ideal’s perseverance has paid
off, though. They are the largest home builder in Oklahoma and ranked 90 in Builder Magazine’s 2009 list of the top 100 builders in the country.
salanthousewatch@gmail.com
Town Creek: Country, for now live continued from F1
the past year. “When things are priced well,
they may get multiple offers,” she said, noting that houses sold twice as fast in the Lexington Park part of Town Creek as in oth- er parts of Lexington Park. Prices for houses sold over the past year have ranged from $170,000 to $327,000.
Almost all of the neighbor-
hood’s homes were built in the mid-20th century, but founda- tions from a 17th-century house known as St. Joseph’s Manor re- main. The house, originally built between 1642 and 1650 on an es- tate hundreds of acres large, is long gone. But a house was built directly behind the foundations in the mid-1970s, part of which is modeled on the layout and di- mensions of the original house. The house and 30 acres sur- rounding it were named a histor- ic district in 1986, according to Grace Mary Brady, historic pres- ervation planner for St. Mary’s County. Fadeley likes the history be- hind her community. “As one of the older communi- ties in St. Mary’s County, it’s cer- tainly one of the nicest and qui- etest. There are a lot of trees, which I like, and nice-size lots,” she said.
At the same time, Fadeley la- ments the changes since her childhood. She has seen an in- crease in speeding down Town
REAL ESTATE NOTES Mortgage rates dip 4th time since June
Mortgage rates fell this week to a record low for the fourth time in five weeks. The average for 30-year fixed-
rate loans was 4.56 percent, down from 4.57 last week, mort- gage company Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s the lowest since Freddie Mac began tracking rates in 1971. The last time home loan rates were lower was during the 1950s, when most mortgages lasted 20 or 25 years. The rate on the 15-year fixed loan dropped this week to 4.03 percent, down from 4.06 percent last week and the lowest on records dating from 1991. The average for five-year ad- justable-rate mortgages was 3.79
percent, down from 3.85 percent a week earlier. One-year ARMs fell to an average of 3.7 percent, from 3.74 percent. The rates do not include add- on fees known as points. One point is equal to 1 percent of the total loan amount. The nation- wide fee in Freddie Mac’s survey averaged 0.7 a point for 30-, 15- and one-year loans. The average fee for five-year loans was 0.6 of a point. It’s unlikely that low mortgage
rates will bolster housing. Rates have hovered near historic lows for more than a year, so many people have already taken advan- tage of them to buy or refinance a home.
And many of those who haven’t wouldn’t qualify for a loan. They
either owe more than their homes are worth, have shaky credit or have lost their jobs. “It’s a small decrease in inter-
est rates, so it might attract a few more homebuyers, but more im- portantly it opens the window of refinancing opportunities for people with fixed-rate mortgag- es,” said Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH Associates, a publisher of consumer loan infor- mation, in Pompton Plains, N.J. The Mortgage Bankers Associ-
ation’s gauge of refinancing in- creased 8.6 percent in the week ended July 16 to the highest level since May 2009, the association said Wednesday. The purchase in- dex climbed 3.4 percent from a 13-year low.
— From news services
Tis chart is designed to show trends of some of the more common indexes used to set the rates on adjustable mortgages. Borrowers facing adjustments can use the numbers below to figure their new rate, assuming no caps or other special limitations. Data on 30-year, fixed-rate loans are included for reference.
Adjustable-rate-mortgage indexes MONTHLY AVERAGES
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
SOURCES: Freddie Mac, Federal Reserve, Federal Housing Finance Agency % FHFA mortgage rate
30-year, fixed- rate mortgages
Creek Drive, one of the communi- ty’s main roads, along with minor vandalism. “Much of what I knew growing up in the county is gone. There were many small farms. When I was a child, I could walk along the beach and scoop up crabs,” she said. Fadeley and other residents
have most recently worked to rein in development slated at the corner of Three Notch Road (Route 235) and the bucolically named Shady Mile Drive. She notes that the road is no longer so shady, because numerous trees have been felled to make way for as many as five restaurants, 84,000 square feet of office space, a hotel and a church. While zon- ing now prohibits big-box stores — there is already a Wal-Mart, a Target, a Best Buy, a BJ’s Whole- sale Club and a Kmart less than a mile away on Route 235 — she is worried the new construction will cause more water runoff into the nearby Patuxent River. Weigel also said she was sorry the barn and field with deer that used to occupy the corner have, so far, been replaced with Olive Garden and Red Robin restau- rants.
“I don’t think a sea of asphalt bordering our neighborhoods is what we need,” Fadeley said. “I’m a rural, country person, and it’s hard to see more and more of the landscape that I grew up with eaten away.”
realestate@washpost.com
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