For the 'Perfect' House, Boom Conditions Still Apply

"What the heck? This is not supposed to happen!" Stephanie Oppenheimer had thought the slow real estate market would make it easier to buy a home. Instead, she and her husband, Peter, recently found themselves battling three competitors to buy a four-bedroom Cape Cod in Falls Church. The Oppenheimers prevailed, buying the house for its full asking price.

Their purchase had all the trappings of the boom years: escalation clauses, full-price offers with few contingencies, less than a week on market. Stephanie even wrote the sellers a letter explaining how happy they would be to live in that house, which is within walking distance of schools and public transport.

Such deals are rare these days, but they still crop up occasionally. And they raise two questions: What makes these homes sell so quickly while others languish? And is the quick sale a sign that the home was priced too low?

Gregg Wright, the seller, said he had expected the house to remain on the market about a month. "I didn't think it would linger on the market if it was priced right," he said.

But he and his wife, Mary, weren't immune to worrying about a soft market, either. "We were concerned about it because every day in the newspaper there was something saying houses 'plummeted,' " he said. They had already bought a home in the Belmont Country Club development in Ashburn.

The Wrights and their real estate agent, Merelyn Kaye of McEnearney Associates in McLean, attributed the quick sale to the combination of an attractive house in tip-top condition and an equally attractive price.

"It was perfect," Kaye said. "It had a killer kitchen." The property was heavily landscaped, including towering oak and poplar trees, and had a hard-surface basketball court tucked out of sight in the back yard.

At $895,000, the house sold for less than it probably would have a couple of years ago. At the height of the market, it might have fetched $950,000 or more, Kaye said. But, she said, "the price could not start with a nine in this market. If you can keep stuff under $900,000, it appears to be a good value."

"We had people tell us we underpriced it," Gregg said. Mary added, "We may have sold it for nine-something, but I thought it would have taken longer."

Kaye defended the price, noting that two of the offers were under the asking price. The winning offer from the Oppenheimers was one of them, but they had included an escalation clause that would match competing offers up to $895,000.

The Oppenheimers made another move straight out of the boom years' playbook: They committed to buy the house (without even a finance contingency) before placing their old one on the market. "We decided to buy before we sold," said Peter Oppenheimer. "It was a little bit foolish."

They placed their two-bedroom house in the Beverley Hills neighborhood of Alexandria on the market at $639,000 around Valentine's Day. It's in an azalea-filled community close to Interstate 395 that has long been popular with buyers. "With rare exceptions, homes in Beverley Hills don't stay on the market very long," Peter said.