It seemed like the perfect investment.
Judy and Dan O’Shaughnessy were shopping for their first home together when they bought their downtown Silver Spring condominium for $499,000 in 2006. They planned to live in the two-bedroom condominium for a few years, then trade up to a house.
What you need to earn to buy now
But when they put it up for sale last year for $465,000, “we didn’t get any interest at all,” said Judy O’Shaughnessy, 36, an executive assistant. “Not even a nibble. We thought that by the time our renters moved out, the market would have bounced back a little. As it turned out, it only got worse.”
They recently put the condo on the market again, for $439,000.
The O’Shaughnessys’ experience underscores a sea change in the Washington area condo market, once seen as a safe investment for first-time home-buyers looking to get into the real estate market for $500,000 or less before trading up to a single-family house using equity from the condo sale.
In a report released earlier this month, Delta Associates, an Alexandria-based research and consulting firm, reported that condo sales activity in the Washington area has fallen to its lowest level since 2008.
Sale prices of existing condos decreased 3.9 percent during the 12-month period ending in September, according to Delta. For new condos, sales were down 3.3 percent. Only 1,475 new condos sold in the 12-month period ending in September, compared with 2,499 new condo sales during the previous 12-month period.
“I see a lot fewer people looking for condos these days,” said Anslie Stokes Milligan, an agent with McEnearney Associates in Washington. “Buyers realize that they’re not going to buy a condo, live in it for three years and make $40,000 when they sell it. First-time buyers are skipping the one-bedroom condo purchase and are just renting until they’re ready for a single-family home instead.”
Agents and those who study the area’s condo market say there are many reasons for the sluggish pace.
For one, agents say, many first-time home-buyers are having trouble securing low-interest loans, thanks to new Federal Housing Administration regulations that require buildings to meet certain standards before buyers can get a low-interest loan to buy there.
Among the regulations, the FHA requires that half a building’s units be owner-occupied, creating a sort of chicken-and-egg scenario — condo owners can’t sell to buyers who can’t get loans. So condo owners end up renting out their condos, which then makes the building’s rental-to-owner ratio more unlikely to meet FHA’s requirement.
If a building isn’t FHA-approved, private lenders may require buyers to put 20 percent of the sale price down — a difficult financial hurdle for many first-time buyers.
“Most young people don’t have 20 percent down sitting around, so they essentially can’t get a loan unless the building is FHA-approved,” said Dennis Kunselman, an agent with Boyd/Hudson.
James and Miyoshi Thomas said they encountered several condos in non-FHA-approved buildings during their months-long search for a condo in Montgomery County. The couple ended up renting an apartment in Silver Spring. James Thomas, 36, a manager, said condos in FHA-approved buildings were often out of their price range, even without considering loan availability.
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