Going Mondo Condo

Nowicki and others are finding their way to a bevy of projects opening up new infill areas in the District to denser residential settlement. According to Delta Associates, more than 9,300 units are being planned for the District, including many in areas that were once crime-ridden and decaying.

"There's been a rebirth of D.C.," said real estate agent Jeff Lockard of Tutt, Taylor & Rankin Real Estate in the District. "Since [former mayor] Marion Barry left office, we saw the city change overnight. Mayor [Anthony] Williams has had a good effect. Everything has changed for the better in the last eight to 10 years. It's made D.C the place to be."

The visible changes are drawing affluent residents to neighborhoods they would not have considered in the past. Stephanie Caputo, 51, a community development analyst with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has lived in the Dupont Circle area since 1988. Next month, she will move to a new $408,000 condominium she has purchased at 2020 12th St. NW.

"I didn't want to be a pioneer in places that were too patchy, too seedy," Caputo said. "I was watching the market, and it wasn't gelling in a way that felt comfortable. I didn't see it coming together -- until it did."

Adaptations of older, sometimes historic, buildings are also attracting interest. One project underway near Union Station, Senate Square, incorporates the old Children's Museum, which is being turned into loft-style condominiums. It will also feature two 12-story towers, with units ranging in price from the high $200,000s to more than $1 million.

Meanwhile, the former Italian Embassy at 2700 16th St. NW is being converted into a complex known as Il Palazzo, where units will cost from $500,000 to more than $2 million. The Silverton used to be the old Canada Dry bottling plant in Silver Spring. The Yale Steam Laundry condos on New York Avenue NW and Parker Flats at Gage School, near Howard University, will both incorporate historic elements into modern buildings.

"There is uniqueness in taking old structures, thinking how to preserve them and how to integrate the new product as well," said Christopher Ballard, president of McWilliams/Ballard, an Alexandria-based residential marketing firm that represents a number of those projects.

Kurtis Brown, 44, a financial analyst for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, found the D.C. market "stale and cookie-cutter" when he moved here from Houston in 1993. Soon he will be moving into Lofts 14, a converted auto dealership at 14th and Church streets NW, with his partner, Charles Griffin, 54, an economist and director at the World Bank. The former industrial space features 15-foot ceilings and wide open spaces that Brown calls "very contemporary and modern." He particularly loves the floor-to-ceiling windows, which he said make the 2,000-square-foot condominium "sun-drenched."

He is thrilled with the lifestyle change ahead. "I'd had a typical nice apartment, but it's nothing like 15-foot ceilings and an open floor plan," Brown said.

On the lower end of the price scale, however, at least 24 apartment complexes in the region have been purchased in the last year for conversion to condominiums.

Penderbrook Square, a golf course community in Fairfax where the units have wood-burning fireplaces and balconies, is being converted into for-sale units with price tags starting at $209,900.

The Four Winds at Oakton is a conversion of the former Summit Square apartment complex, which also features fireplaces and balconies. One-bedroom units there will start in the upper $200,000s.

At projects such as these, developers hope to capitalize on high housing prices that have pushed many buyers out of the market and to make money by offering people homes they can afford.

"These projects fill what we see as an affordability void in the greater Washington, D.C., area," said Christopher Clemente, chairman and chief executive of Reston-based Comstock Homebuilding Cos., when he announced last month that his firm had purchased two apartment properties for sale as condos -- Carter Lake Condominiums in Reston, where prices will start at the mid $200,000s, and Bellmeade Condominiums in Leesburg, where the lowest-priced units will start in the low $100,000s.