$108,000: The median profit for people who sold their D.C. homes this year

(Courtesy of District, Measured)

If you had some cash lying around, buying a house in D.C. was a good investment in recent years.

District, Measured, a blog from the city’s Office of the Chief Financial Office, analyzed the sales of single-family homes in the District in fiscal 2015 (which ended Sept. 30) to see how long sellers owned their properties and how much money they made once they sold.

What did they find? If you bought your house less than five years ago and sold this year, your purchase yielded strong returns. Sellers had a median gain of $132,000 if the home was purchased less than three years ago. If you held onto your home for more than 12 years, you made even more money (a median of $324,000 if you held onto it for more than 14 years).

Those who purchased their homes eight or nine years ago, at the height of the housing boom, made the least money, with a median gain of $46,000.

The median gain for all homes sold in the fiscal year was $108,000.

In all, according to District, Measured, there were 185 properties that saw gains exceeding $500,000, while 31 saw gains exceeding $1 million.

District, Measured also examined how long people held onto their property before selling it. More than a quarter of people who sold their homes in fiscal 2015 had owned it for less than three years.

The median hold time was six years.