Southwest Waterfront

Quick Answer

Southwest Waterfront runs from I-395 to the Anacostia River, between the Washington Channel and South Capitol Street. Waterfront station on the Green Line is at 4th and M Streets SW. Navy Yard-Ballpark station is across South Capitol Street. Wharf lines the water. DC lists about 410 row houses here, most built in the 1960s or since 2000. Seven in ten row house sales in the last two years carried an association fee. Waterfront station on the Green Line is at 4th and M Streets SW.

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.

Median days on market is 23, against 44 a year ago. The median sale closes at 99.5% of list. Prices are down 16.6% year-over-year. The sample is thin, 26 row house sales in a year, so a few closings swing the median.

Seven in ten Southwest row houses that sold in the last two years came with an association fee.

DC lists about 410 row houses in Southwest Waterfront, most on G Street, Carrollsburg Place and Capitol Square Place SW. About 396 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 15 are recorded as converted to two units. About four in ten were built in the 1960s, during urban renewal. About one in four went up after 2000. The typical house has about 2,300 square feet in total on a lot of about 1,200. Seven in ten have a basement, and nearly all of those are finished. Fewer than one in ten rises three stories or more.

Two houses of the same size can sit a block apart, one with a monthly fee and one without. A 1960s house and a 2000s house can share a street and little else. A Southwest price only compares when the fee and the decade match.

Here is what I do with that. I compare a house first with sales in its own complex, then with houses of the same decade. I ask the seller in writing for the association budget, the reserve study and any planned special assessment. I ask what the fee covers.

The fee is part of the price.

From the Record

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  Urban renewal cleared most of Southwest in the 1950s and 1960s. The Redevelopment Land Agency began buying property in 1953, and most of the area was rebuilt by 1970. About 23,000 residents and 1,500 businesses were displaced.

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  Arena Stage, founded in 1950, opened its Southwest theater in 1961. It reopened in 2010 after a rebuild.

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  The Maine Avenue Fish Market has operated since 1805. It is the oldest continuously operating fish market in the United States, and one of the few places urban renewal left standing.

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  Architects Louis Justement and Chloethiel Woodard Smith drew the redevelopment plan. It paired modernist apartment buildings with town houses. River Park (1962) and Tiber Island (1965) are two of the complexes built in that era.

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  The Wharf broke ground in 2014. Its first phase opened in October 2017, and its second and final phase was completed in October 2022.

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  Waterfront station opened on the Green Line on December 28, 1991, at 4th and M Streets SW.