Brightwood

Quick Answer

Brightwood is the Ward 4 neighborhood north of Missouri Avenue, between Rock Creek Park and upper Georgia Avenue NW. DC lists close to 1,500 row houses here, nine in ten built between 1901 and 1939, most in the 1920s and 1930s. The median sale is $650K.

How We Calculate $/sqft

$/sqft is calculated on above-grade finished square footage, the standard used by DC appraisers, MLS systems, and most market participants. Properties with finished below-grade space (English basements, rental units) carry that square footage as additive value, but appraisers typically apply a discount of 50 to 75 cents on the dollar relative to above-grade space. Blending the two into a single $/sqft figure would make a home with a finished basement look cheaper than it is and obscure the real comparison. When a property has significant finished below-grade square footage, both metrics are presented in context so you understand the full picture before the appraiser does.

The median Brightwood sale is $650K, against $708K in Brightwood Park and $1.1M in Sixteenth Street Heights.

Houses that close sell at a median 97.5 of list price after 30 days on market.

Brightwood row houses are close to identical, so the small differences decide the price.

DC lists about 1,460 row houses in Brightwood. All but two are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them. Nine in ten went up between 1901 and 1939: more than half in the 1920s, about a third in the 1930s. None rise past two stories. Every one has a basement, and more than four in five have finished it. The typical house has about 2,000 square feet in total on a lot of about 1,950. Nearly all are brick. A little over one in four has four bedrooms or more.

When the houses match, comps alone cannot settle a price. What moves a house off the neighborhood median of $650K is its condition, its lower level and its bedroom count.

Here is what I do with that. I start with Brightwood sales from the last two years that match on finished square feet and bedrooms. I check the lower level in person: the ceiling height, the egress window, and whether a bedroom down there meets DC's code. I ask the seller in writing what work was done on the roof and the systems, and when. Then I adjust each comp for condition.

When every house is the same size, condition sets the price.

From the Record

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  Congress renamed Brightwood Avenue as Georgia Avenue in 1909, the same year Walter Reed General Hospital opened at the north end of the neighborhood.

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  Before 1889 most of the land here was farmland. The row houses came later: DC records date more than half of them to the 1920s and about a third to the 1930s.

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  In 1899 the Brightwood Railway Company extended a streetcar line up Brightwood Avenue, now Georgia Avenue. The Brightwood Citizens' Association, founded in 1891, had organized to press for better transportation.

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  Walter Reed Army Medical Center operated from 1909 until 2011, when it merged into the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.