LeDroit Park

Quick Answer

LeDroit Park began in 1873 as a planned suburb of detached and semi-detached houses beside Howard University. Row houses followed from the early 1890s. Today DC lists about 420 row houses here, most built between 1901 and 1939, and the whole neighborhood is a historic district.

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.

Most sales here are row houses, because most houses here are row houses: DC lists about 420. About 50 of the original 64 McGill houses remain.

The median sale here is $910K, against $949K in Bloomingdale and $1.1M in Shaw.

The stock is mixed. The detached and semi-detached houses of the 1870s and the row houses that followed price differently, even on the same street.

LeDroit Park is known for its 1870s villas. Its row houses came later, and there are far more of them.

DC lists about 420 row houses in LeDroit Park. About 350 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 70 are recorded as converted to two units. Seven in ten went up between 1901 and 1939. One in five is recorded as 1900 or earlier. The typical house has about 1,900 square feet in total on a lot of about 1,350. About one in six rises three stories or more, against more than one in four of the converted houses. Six in ten have a basement, and one in three has finished it.

Only 25 sold in the last two years. That is too few to price a house from its own block.

Here is what I do with that. I use ten years of LeDroit Park row house sales, about 150, adjusted to today, before I borrow from Bloomingdale or Shaw. I match on the basement and the finished space, not the facade. And I ask the seller in writing what exterior work was done, when, and whether the Historic Preservation Office reviewed it.

A thin record calls for a longer look, not a wider one.

From the Record

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  LeDroit Park was founded in 1873 by Amzi Barber, a Howard University trustee. Architect James McGill designed its first 64 houses, no two alike, most built between 1873 and 1877. About 50 remain.

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  Row houses were added from the early 1890s. The neighborhood became a historic district in 1974, the year it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, with a period of significance from 1873 to 1910.