When Karen Castens and her husband looked to move from a townhouse to a single-family home in the Hollin Hall neighborhood of Alexandria, Virginia, they spent time scrolling through for-sale listings online and traipsed through a few open houses before deciding on just the right house — or so they thought.
“I know you shouldn’t use the word ‘perfect’ in house hunting, but when we saw one that we thought was great, we did put an offer on it. But we kind of hemmed and hawed because it was the first one we were putting an offer in on,” she said.
But by that time, four days after the house went on the market, multiple bids had escalated the price from $850,000 to $900,000, and they lost out. “I think it really got us a little bit more in gear to be like, okay, when we see exactly what we want, we’re going to jump,” Castens said.
In March, they offered slightly above asking price for an updated brick split level on the first day it was on the market, and the offer was accepted.
But had Castens, a program manager for a financial services company, been looking for a condo in the District, her experience would have been very different. The median days on the market for all types of homes in D.C. was 70 days in February, compared with just seven days in Fairfax County, Virginia, according to listings service Bright MLS.
“Overall, there has been an increase in the days a house is on the market, but the level of competition really just depends on the price, condition and location of the home. Do people have more time to look around and make an offer? A blanket statement for the broader market is difficult to make,” said Compass agent Paniz Asgari, who helped Castens buy her home.
Across the Washington region as a whole, houses spent a median of 22 days on the market this February, twice as long as they did in February 2025, according to Bright MLS.
“Now you do have time to go in and maybe spend 45 minutes in the house, and come back and take a second look. You’re not standing in the driveway writing the offer after a quick glance,” said Marilyn Emery, an agent with RLAH @properties and treasurer of the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors. “I think it’s a much healthier market now than it was. Back in the crazy days of the pandemic, making a million-dollar decision in less than 12 hours was just ludicrous.”
But that doesn’t mean there’s not a feeding frenzy around certain homes. Part of that has to do with a tight supply of houses that are on the wish lists of many buyers: updated single-family homes, particularly in Virginia’s Fairfax and Loudoun counties, where they generally stay on the market only around a week before they are snapped up. Houses in the city of Alexandria and in Arlington County remained on the market a bit longer, selling in 12 and 11 days, respectively, up from a median time of a week.
While Montgomery County, Maryland, homes spent a median of 26 days on the market compared with just 10 in February 2025, buyers still had to move quickly in certain neighborhoods in Bethesda and Chevy Chase, where many houses had multiple offers in several days, according to Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturtevant. In Prince George’s County, Maryland, buyers have more time to look around as houses linger on the market for a median of 40 days, up 22 days from the previous year.
Buyers in Washington have the most time to exercise patience in buying a home. Homes there spend more than two months on the market before finding a buyer, up over a month from 2025. Condo buyers, especially, have plenty of time to make a decision, Sturtevant said.
“Buyers in the District proper have a lot of leverage right now,” she said. “The District changed dramatically this past year with federal government layoffs — one out of every four residents who work and live in the District works for the federal government. Then in August, we had the National Guard troops deployed. People just didn’t want to be in the District. And I think we’re seeing a continuation of that.”
What guidance do agents have for understanding the complexities of the D.C.-area market? Unsurprisingly, they say to find a good real estate agent and follow their advice.
“Our job is educating the buyer about the market and the relative compromises of location, size and quality, so that when a buyer walks into the home that is the right home they’re confident enough to recognize that,” said Hans Wydler, an agent with Compass. “The more confident they are, typically the more quickly they can move, and that’s a competitive advantage in any market.”
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