Burleith-Hillandale

Quick Answer

Burleith-Hillandale is a residential neighborhood in Northwest DC, north of Georgetown University and south of Glover Park. DC lists about 760 row houses here. Shannon and Luchs built about 450 of them between 1923 and 1928. The gated Hillandale development followed on the former Archbold estate in the late 1970s and 1980s. There are no shops inside the neighborhood, and the record shows no condos.

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 sale here is $1.6M, against $1.3M in Glover Park and $1.9M in Georgetown. Those medians mix house sizes and ages. Compare matched houses, not neighborhood medians.

Every lot is built on, and the record shows few houses added since the Hillandale build-out of the 1980s and 1990s. Turnover is the supply that changes: 42 closings in the last twelve months.

One name on the map covers two kinds of house, built sixty years apart.

DC lists about 760 row houses in Burleith-Hillandale. About 735 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 26 are recorded as converted to two units. Nearly two in three went up between 1901 and 1939. About one in four dates from the 1980s, when Hillandale was built. Almost every house has a basement, and nearly nine in ten have finished it. The typical house has about 2,400 square feet in total. About one in six rises three stories. The median lot is about 2,250 square feet.

About one in seven sales carries a homeowners association fee. A 1920s row on T Street and a 1980s townhouse on Mansion Drive share a name and a ZIP code, and little else.

Here is what I do with that. I comp a Burleith row against Burleith rows, and a Hillandale house against Hillandale houses. I match on stories, finished lower level and bedrooms. For Hillandale I ask for the association budget and any planned assessment in writing. For a 1920s row I ask the seller in writing what work was done, and when.

The name on the listing is not the comp. The house is.

From the Record

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  Shannon and Luchs broke ground on Burleith in March 1923, on land bought from the Huidekoper family in 1922. Frederic Huidekoper had held the tract since 1886 and opened the streets before the sale. The houses are American Colonial in style, adapted from Georgian, in brick of different colors with stone, wood and plaster trim.

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  Shannon and Luchs built about 450 houses in Burleith between 1923 and 1928, with Arthur Heaton as architect. Most had six rooms, and the firm varied rooflines and facades from house to house. The firm sold the houses under 20-year restrictive deed covenants, and the Supreme Court made such covenants unenforceable in 1948 in Shelley v. Kraemer.

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  The Hillandale portion of the neighborhood's name derives from the country estate of Anne Archbold, whose 42-acre property along Reservoir Road remained largely undeveloped through most of the 20th century. In 1978, the estate was redeveloped into Hillandale, a gated development of 238 townhouses and 28 single-family homes with a historic gatehouse at 3905 Reservoir Road NW. It is one of the few gated residential developments in DC, and the broader area became associated with Burleith under the combined Burleith-Hillandale name.

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  Hillandale takes its name from the estate of Anne Archbold, whose main residence and gatehouse went up from 1922 to 1925 on a 42-acre site off Reservoir Road. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the estate was subdivided, and 238 townhouses and 28 single-family houses were built behind a gate. The main residence and the gatehouse at 3905 Reservoir Road have been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1995.