Going Mondo Condo

The increase in supply is likely to bring some moderation in pricing, said Dick Bryan, president of the Vienna-based Bryan Group, a real estate marketing firm. "We can't afford to appreciate at 22 to 28 percent a year or we price ourselves right out of the market," said Bryan, who believes the infusion of new units will help restore a better supply-and-demand balance in the condo market.

Some of the new action is coming to the suburbs, as high-rise urban living is introduced into regional hubs known mostly as job centers and shopping meccas.

The first high-rise condominium in Tysons Corner in more than two decades hit the market last month. Called Park Crest, the complex is almost across the street from Tysons II shopping mall and will feature a 19-story residential tower, along with a grocery store and retail shops. Units there are priced from $500,000 to more $2 million. In the first two weeks alone, 110 of the units have been purchased, mostly by Northern Virginians, said David Mayhood, president of the Mayhood Co., which is marketing the project. Buyers are a mix of young professionals and empty-nesters, he said.

High-rise urban-style homes are coming to Reston Town Center, too. Vienna-based KSI Services Inc. is building twin 21-story towers overlooking the area's retail core, which KSI Chairman Robert C. Kettler describes as creating a new "vertical community" there. Next week, at a ceremony that will be attended by Reston's founder, 91-year-old Robert E. Simon, KSI will deed the land to a nearby 1.25-acre park to a nonprofit Reston group, providing the area with a bit of open green space and tiered seating for open-air concerts.

On the other side of the region, the city of Rockville, which made a disastrous foray into urban renewal in the 1960s when it plopped a mall in the center of its historic old downtown, is finally remaking itself. A new project, called Rockville Town Square, is under construction. It will feature condos in five buildings, each five or six stories high, in walking distance to existing restaurants and a movie theater. The new complex will also include stores, a public library and a cultural arts center.

"It's the project all the prior mayors of Rockville were unsuccessful at building," said lawyer Steven VanGrack, vice chairman of the Maryland Real Estate Commission and a former Rockville mayor. VanGrack credits Rockville's current mayor, Larry Giammo, for its progress.

The Rockville project is representative of dogged efforts by some local governments to promote denser development on major transit lines and highways and near job centers, in places such as Clarendon, Rosslyn and Silver Spring, rather than encouraging endless sprawl outward.

"The political movement is away from developing greenfields where there is no infrastructure and more toward steering development back to the urban cores," said Fasulo of Real Capital Analytics. "It's not just happening in D.C. It's happening everywhere."

Some of these new residential complexes close to jobs may prove enticing to upscale buyers who are tiring of long commutes, said journalist Joel Garreau, author of "Edge City: Life on the New Frontier," a 1991 book that predicted office clusters such as Reston and Tysons Corner would eventually develop more urban amenities.

"The most valuable commodity is always time," said Garreau, a writer and editor for The Post. "It's what we have the most limited amount of -- time. With their long commutes, people have been trading time for a couple of bedrooms."

Even a half-hour commute, along with yard care and pool maintenance, got to be too much for Steven Nowicki, 41, a financial management contractor for the Navy, who traded his ranch-style home in 16th Street Heights in the District for a $420,000 condominium at Langston Lofts, a new project at 14th and V streets NW.

"I didn't really enjoy it anymore," Nowicki said of his single-family house. "It was another thing to take care of, another hassle. . . . I wanted to simplify things."