Listing During Street Construction? Purple Line / Wayne Ave Case Study

The question of listing during street construction is a big one especially as there are areas where roadwork and metro construction can go on for years. This would create a lengthy delay for folks waiting for it to end before they can sell and move on. One of my clients recently posed this exact query. They’re on a stretch in Silver Spring hemmed in by what feels like endless Purple Line construction. Since the construction started in 2020, we had several years of comparative sales to analyze to determine if and how homes directly in the construction zone were affected. Here are my findings and an explanation of the method of analysis within the original transcript shared with my clients:

“To answer your question about listing during Wayne Ave construction, I've made a comparison of listings and sales in your immediate neighborhood of on-Wayne Ave vs off-Wayne Ave so we can see the differences that could be attributed to construction. Attached are a pair of results statictics charting neighborhood sales from mid-2020 to mid-2023 (the last date in which a house directly on Wayne Ave was sold). There's not much that separates them. Days on market were at a median of 7 and an average of 15 for home within 2 blocks of Wayne (but not on Wayne) while homes directly on Wayne saw the same median days on market of 7 and 16 days on market as an average. Closed prices (medians) were at $780K and $440/ft off Wayne and $765K and $526/ft on Wayne. The off Wayne homes are + 20% larger hence the higher sale price combined with lower $/ft price. This data suggests that the construction (at least as far as we have sales on Wayne) had little effect on outcomes. 

One more results stats sheet pulls in the remaining detached home sales from mid 2023 to present and in the same mapped area withing a few blocks of your home so we can see if earlier trends continue. They do. 6 and 16 days on market, $729K median closed price at $472/ft. This doesn't mean values have dropped, that's just where the median lies. Comparing averages in closed price, we see that the later period homes sold at $796K while earlier homes averaged $749K. One noticeable change is that the closed to list price ration has gone up a few % points in the 2023 to present sales. 100% to 102% (2% over asking). That's also positive news.

My conclusion is that the construction is not killing sales. My first suggestion is that we work with the schedule that makes the most sense for you and your family. My second thought is that mortgage rate movement will have a bigger impact on the market than the construction will. The two 2023 sales on Wayne at 618 and 806 both sold well over list but 806 Wayne sold in 7 days with a contract on 4/3 and 618 Wayne in 44 days with contract on 4/7. My guess is that buyers got very motivated by rate fluctuations (see attached rate chart from 2023) and that the losers in the bidding war for 806 Wayne turned immediately to 618 Wayne as their second choice and bid up that price. If rates trend down a bit this spring (they had a decent drop last week) we'll see a lot of previously sidelined buyers coming out. So while the street construction is not ideal, we can work with it, mitigate and reframe it in our marketing.”