Neighborhood Pulse: Inventory Surges 20% in a Week, U Street Flips Back to +1.5%, Foggy Bottom Swings 19 Points

This Week's Pulse

Thirty row home settlements closed this week, but the real action was on the supply side. Attributed active listings jumped from 523 to 630, a 20% surge in seven days that reverses last week's 20% drain almost listing for listing. Columbia Heights nearly doubled its shelf, from 26 active listings to 50, the single biggest add in the city. Trinidad added 12, Logan Circle 9, Shaw and the NoMa corridor 7 each. The fall market did not wait for Labor Day this year. It showed up three weeks early.

Prices did not blink at the new supply. Columbia Heights held its median at $871K while its ratio firmed from 97.4% to 98.0% and its clock held at 13 days on 100 trailing sales. Trinidad absorbed its new listings while improving every terms column: DOM fell from 43 to 38, the ratio firmed from 94.9% to 95.8%, and the annual decline narrowed from -10.9% to -7.6%. Supply arriving into firming terms is absorption, not glut. So far.

The zero line kept collecting neighborhoods. U Street flipped back to +1.5% after last week's -1.2%, its third sign change since the boundary correction, and the same advice applies in both directions: a margin that thin is composition, and the durable facts are a $1.01M median and a 22-day clock. Sixteenth Street Heights narrowed from -6.8% to -0.4% and sits one closing away from its own flip, the quiet recovery nobody is marketing. Shaw pushed its annual gain to +9.3% on 55 sales, the strongest large-sample print in the city now that Eckington has eased back to +11.2% on a softer median.

The deep negatives split in two. Logan Circle deepened to -15.5% while its inventory doubled from 10 to 19 listings, a combination sellers there should sit with. Kalorama Heights deepened to -26.4%, the lowest reading in the tracked set. And Foggy Bottom swung from -8.8% to +10.7% with its median up 21.3%, which would be the story of the week if it were not four trailing sales. A 19.5-point annual swing on four closings is arithmetic. The 18 days that came off its DOM is the only number there worth keeping.

Top Movers

Columbia Heights $871K, -9.5% YoY, flat MoM. DOM 13, L2S 98.0%. 100 trailing sales. Twenty-four new active listings in one week, close to double the shelf, on the deepest sub-$900K bench in Northwest. This is the neighborhood to watch for the next month. If the new supply clears at the current 13-day pace, Columbia Heights becomes the value anchor of the fall market and the -9.5% starts narrowing. If it sits, the annual line deepens and buyers get the leverage they have not had here in two years. Either way, the answer arrives in the DOM column, not the median.

Trinidad $577K, -7.6% YoY, +0.4% MoM. DOM 38, L2S 95.8%. 64 trailing sales. Added a dozen listings and improved every terms column anyway, five days off the clock and nearly a point onto the ratio, with the annual decline narrowing three weeks running. The renovation corridor is finding its clearing price. Buyers who watched Trinidad from the sidelines during the -13% weeks are discovering that the discount window and the improving-terms window are the same window, and it does not stay open long once both sides can see it.

Logan Circle $1.44M, -15.5% YoY, flat MoM. DOM 20, L2S 97.8%. 43 trailing sales. The annual decline deepened 3.4 points in a week while active inventory doubled from 10 to 19. Velocity held at 20 days, so demand has not left; it has repriced. This is the sharpest version of the premium repricing this column has tracked all summer: a brand-name neighborhood where the trailing comps keep resetting lower and sellers now have twice the competition they had two weeks ago. Pricing to the last 90 days is not conservative here. It is the only strategy left.

U Street $1.01M, +1.5% YoY, flat MoM. DOM 22, L2S 98.0%. 36 trailing sales. Positive again, three sign changes in five weeks, and the whipsaw is now its own argument: any neighborhood oscillating this tightly around zero has found its level. The level is just above $1M, 22 days, 98 cents on the dollar, and a standing discount to Logan Circle that got more interesting this week as Logan deepened. Buyers comparing the two corridors should note which one is adding inventory and which one is holding its floor.

Foggy Bottom $1.12M, +10.7% YoY, +21.3% MoM. DOM 36, L2S 96.3%. 4 trailing sales. The biggest swing on the board and the least meaningful. Four sales is not a market; it is four stories, and one strong closing just rewrote all the headline numbers at once. This column prints Foggy Bottom for completeness and flags it for discipline: nobody should buy, sell, or price anything off a four-sale median. The one durable signal is velocity, 18 days off the DOM, which at least says the tiny amount of stock that exists is moving faster than it did in the spring.

Market Snapshot: August 17, 2026

Neighborhood	Median Price	MoM	DOM	$/sqft	L2S	YoY	Sales
Kalorama Heights	$2.48M	-2.6%	50	$722	95.9%	-26.4%	26
Dupont Circle	$1.88M	-0.6%	18	$820	97.8%	+4.9%	57
Georgetown	$1.85M	—	13	$1009	98.3%	-4.5%	112
Woodley Park	$1.73M	-0.9%	8	$836	100.0%	-11.2%	17
Burleith-Hillandale	$1.64M	-0.8%	8	$930	97.4%	-9.5%	36
Kalorama Triangle	$1.63M	-1.4%	65	$689	94.0%	-10.1%	8
N Cleveland Park	$1.55M	—	12	$773	98.8%	+10.7%	13
Mount Pleasant	$1.45M	-1.7%	6	$692	100.0%	-6.5%	55
Logan Circle	$1.44M	—	20	$786	97.8%	-15.5%	43
Cathedral Heights	$1.38M	-1.2%	32	$706	95.9%	-7.8%	16
Cleveland Park	$1.35M	—	18	$747	96.1%	-9.2%	13
Foxhall Village	$1.33M	—	7	$807	100.0%	-1.7%	18
Glover Park	$1.32M	+2.5%	10	$862	100.0%	-0.4%	33
Chevy Chase	$1.30M	—	8	$699	97.5%	+9.9%	17
Friendship Heights	$1.25M	—	7	$666	98.9%	+19.5%	12
Adams Morgan	$1.22M	—	20	$678	96.8%	-4.3%	11
Shaw	$1.17M	+1.7%	21	$657	99.2%	+9.3%	55
Navy Yard	$1.16M	—	19	$592	98.1%	+2.0%	12
Capitol Hill	$1.07M	-0.9%	9	$715	98.8%	-5.5%	326
16th St Heights	$1.02M	+1.0%	21	$531	96.7%	-0.4%	34
U Street	$1.01M	—	22	$708	98.0%	+1.5%	36
Bloomingdale	$935K	—	29	$539	98.0%	-18.7%	43
LeDroit Park	$896K	-1.5%	37	$552	97.2%	-5.6%	24
Hill East	$895K	-2.2%	13	$682	99.0%	+1.7%	52
Columbia Heights	$871K	+0.1%	13	$536	98.0%	-9.5%	100
Southwest Waterfront	$855K	—	20	$489	99.5%	-11.9%	24
Near NE / NoMa / H St	$853K	—	18	$600	97.4%	-6.6%	84
Petworth	$800K	-1.5%	25	$528	96.4%	-5.9%	133
Brightwood Park	$725K	+0.9%	33	$514	97.8%	+6.6%	69
Truxton Circle	$710K	—	45	$476	94.3%	-7.5%	28
Park View	$700K	—	27	$502	96.9%	-10.0%	52
Eckington	$683K	-3.4%	30	$501	97.0%	+11.2%	60
Wakefield	$639K	—	9	$423	100.0%	+5.2%	13
Brightwood	$632K	+1.2%	25	$450	94.7%	-3.4%	74
Brookland	$622K	+2.6%	23	$490	99.2%	+3.8%	102
Kingman Park	$595K	+0.6%	24	$554	98.9%	-4.8%	57
Trinidad	$577K	+0.4%	38	$405	95.8%	-7.6%	64
Lanier Heights *	$1.49M	—	15	$686	98.6%	-8.5%	4
Forest Hills *	$1.30M	—	9	$900	100.0%	+0.6%	1
Crestwood *	$1.28M	—	5	$524	100.0%	-8.4%	2
Foggy Bottom *	$1.12M	+21.3%	36	$878	96.3%	+10.7%	4
West End *	$1.10M	—	11	$795	95.7%	-43.6%	3
American Univ Park **	$1.06M	—	7	$797	100.0%	-7.4%	5
Mt Vernon Sq *	$802K	-6.1%	31	$545	97.1%	-38.3%	4

Source: BrightMLS via Compass, closed row home sales trailing 12 months as of 8/17/2026. MoM = change from 8/10/2026. Figures computed under the corrected neighborhood boundaries (245 boundary rulings applied 7/26/2026). Structure type filter: Interior Row/Townhouse, End of Row/Townhouse, Twin/Semi-Detached only. * Small sample (n<5): figures directional only. ** n=5: small sample.

Notable Sales

3533 Winfield Ln NW (Georgetown): $3,150,000. 11 days on market. 5BR, 3,159 sqft. Full ask, eleven days. Georgetown's annual line reads -4.5%, and sales like this one explain why that number misleads more than it informs: the top tier keeps clearing at 100% in under two weeks. The decline describes which houses have been selling, not what buyers pay for the right one. When a five-bedroom on a quiet lane is priced at its comps, the Georgetown buyer pool still shows up with the full number and no contingencies worth arguing about.

21 4th St NE (Capitol Hill): $1,400,000. 8 days on market. 3BR, 1,704 sqft. Sold at 108.7% of a $1,288,000 list, $112,000 over ask, the week's biggest premium. A Capitol Hill three-bedroom that opened under its comps and let the market correct the number upward in eight days. The mechanics are the same ones this column documents every week: the opening price that respects the block generates the auction, and the auction finds the ceiling faster than any seller can. Note the contrast with the trailing neighborhood ratio of 98.8%; discounted openings do not stay discounted.

512 Quincy St NW (Petworth): $660,000. 110 days on market. 4BR, 1,807 sqft. Sold at 77.6% of an $850,000 original list, a $190,000 concession collected over three and a half months. Two weeks ago this column paired two Petworth sales that opened $620K apart and closed $200K apart. Quincy Street is the same lesson on a different block: Petworth's median is $800K and its ratio is 96.4%, and a four-bedroom priced $50K over the neighborhood median from day one spent 110 days walking backward to where the comps stood in May. The market does not negotiate. It waits.

Bottom Line

The market drained 20% of its inventory one week and refilled it the next, and the prices barely moved either time. That is the tell. When supply swings that hard and the medians, the clocks, and the ratios hold steady, the market has a settled opinion about what things are worth and is simply processing volume through it. Columbia Heights doubling its shelf at a 13-day clock, Trinidad firming while adding stock, Logan Circle deepening while doubling its own: the fall market arrived early, and it arrived sorted. Supply is a schedule. Price is a verdict. The verdict is not changing week to week; only the docket is.