Ron Rush knows the housing market could cool someday, but the Fairfax County real estate agent hasn't seen it happening yet.
An example: A four-bedroom Colonial near Fair Oaks mall that Rush sold in 1997 for $203,000 brought $330,000 in 2002; last month, it went under contract after being listed at $449,900.
"January to May was the intensest, if that is a word, market I've ever seen in my 35 years in the business," said Rush, who works in the Fair Oaks office of Long & Foster Real Estate Inc.
More recently, he said, the market has been a bit less frenetic. "It's still a good market, just not as intense as the spring."
In Alexandria, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage agent Nancy Tompkins said demand and prices remain strong. She got a contract yesterday on an Old Town house listed for $1.6 million that drew multiple bids. Five years ago, the four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath house sold for $720,000.
Any signs the market is turning? "We don't see it," Tompkins said. And what about a pricing bubble about to burst? "Oh, heavens no, not in this area."
National statistics released this week show the market is still cooking despite some predictions that rising interest rates and unsustainable prices could bring the years-long climb to an end.
Yesterday the Commerce Department said new-home sales in June were down from the record set in May. June's seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.33 million sales was 0.8 percent below the revised May estimate of 1.34 million but 11 percent above a year earlier.
Locally, the market for new-home sales also remains brisk, builders say. Eakin/Youngentob Associates Inc. of Arlington sold out 374 townhouses in the Fallsgrove development in Rockville this spring, a year and a half ahead of schedule. A three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot townhouse model that sold for $275,000 three years ago just went for $525,000.
On Monday, the National Association of Realtors said June sales of previously owned homes broke May's record with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.95 million units. June's pace was 2.1 percent higher than that in May and 17.4 percent higher than in June 2003.
