Dupont Circle

Quick Answer

Dupont Circle is about 920 row houses around the circle where Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire Avenues cross P and 19th Streets NW. Six in ten are recorded as built in 1900 or earlier. More than half are recorded as two units. The median row house sale is $1.9M, and houses go under contract in a median 15 days. The Red Line stops under the circle.

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 counts fee simple houses and condos inside row houses together, over the trailing 12 months. Most of those sales were fee simple houses. Sellers closed at a median 98.4% of list.

New supply is close to nonexistent: no row house in the record dates from 2000 or later. What comes to market is the existing stock, as a whole house or as a unit inside one.

In Dupont Circle, the same front can be one house or three condos. The deed tells you which.

In the last two years, about 150 row houses sold in Dupont Circle. Two in three were fee simple houses. One in three was a condo unit inside a row house.

The fee simple houses are large. Over ten years, about 490 of them sold. The typical one had about 2,900 square feet of living space, and more than four in ten had over 3,000. Six in ten rose three stories or more. Half were built before 1900.

In the public record, Dupont Circle has about 920 row houses, and more than half of them, about 510, are recorded as converted to two units. Seven in ten of those rise three stories or more.

Here is what I do with that. I never let a condo sale price a house, or a house sale price a condo, even when the front, the block and the year built match. For a condo inside a row house, I read the association's budget, reserves and rules first, because two or three owners share one roof.

Same front, different deed: different comps.

From the Record

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  The circle follows Pierre L'Enfant's plan for Washington. Army engineers built it as Pacific Circle, and Congress renamed it in 1882 for Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, whose fleet captured Port Royal Sound in November 1861.

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  A bronze statue of Du Pont by Launt Thompson was dedicated at the circle in 1884. The Du Pont family paid for its replacement. The marble fountain by Henry Bacon and Daniel Chester French, then at work on the Lincoln Memorial, was dedicated in 1921. The statue now stands in Wilmington, Delaware.

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  Massachusetts Avenue was lined with large private houses in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After 1929, and again in the 1940s and early 1950s, many were sold and became embassies, clubs and offices.

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  The Dupont Circle Historic District was designated in 1977 and enlarged in 1984. Exterior changes to houses inside it go through DC's historic preservation review.