Foxhall Village

Quick Answer

Foxhall Village is a neighborhood of Tudor Revival row houses in Northwest DC, bounded by Reservoir Road, Foxhall Road, P Street and Glover-Archbold Park. Three builders put it up between 1925 and 1935, and DC made it a historic district in 2007. DC lists about 420 row houses here, on curving streets and small lots.

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.

About 30 row houses sold here in the last two years, and about 160 in the last ten. The median sale over the last 12 months is $1.3M, and the median time on market is 6 days. A sample this small moves with a single sale.

Foxhall Village houses price against each other first. They are row houses on lots of about 2,250 square feet, so larger-lot neighborhoods are the wrong yardstick. The closest outside comparisons are the 1920s rows in Burleith and Glover Park, at $1.6M and $1.3M.

In Foxhall Village, the fronts match. The houses behind them do not.

DC lists about 420 row houses in Foxhall Village. About 410 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 13 are recorded as converted to two units. Nearly four in five went up between 1901 and 1939. Every one has a basement, and more than eight in ten have finished it. The typical house has about 2,300 square feet in total, and none has under 1,500. About one in seven rises three stories or more. The median lot is about 2,250 square feet.

About 30 sold in the last two years. With a sample that thin, one loose comp moves the number a long way, and a two-story house can share a row with a three-story one.

Here is what I do with that. I reach back further than two years before I reach outside the village, and I adjust for time. I match on stories, finished space and bedrooms. I ask the seller in writing what was done to the lower level, and when.

In a small market, the comp you leave out matters as much as the one you keep.

From the Record

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  Foxhall Village was built between 1925 and 1935. Boss and Phelps, Inc. developed most of it with architect James E. Cooper. Waverly Taylor, Inc. and Cooper Lightbown and Son built the rest.

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  The houses are Tudor Revival rows, all masonry, with half-timbering and stucco on upper floors and bays, under slate roofs. Varied rooflines and entries give each house its own face.

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  Harry K. Boss, president of Boss and Phelps, planned the village as a row house neighborhood after a trip to England in the mid-1920s.

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  The street plan follows the slope of the land. Curving lanes, circles and crescents took the place of a grid, and some rows sit in a semicircular arc modeled on the Royal Crescent in Bath.

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  DC designated the Foxhall Village Historic District in 2007, and it was listed on the National Register that November. The district covers 29 acres of Henry Foxall's former Spring Hill Farm.