Real-estate sales data for May paint a mixed picture but show no signs of impending doom for the Arlington and Falls Church markets.

The average sales price per square foot for both jurisdictions was up year-over-year, according to new figures, although May’s rate was running below the year-to-date average in each case.

Arlington had a per-square-foot sales price of $511 in May, up 1.2% from a year before, while the rate of $499 in Falls Church was up 3.7%, according to figures reported June 10 by Bright MLS , based on data from MarketStats by ShowingTime.

For the first five months of the year, the average per-square-foot sales cost was $514 in Arlington and $523 in Falls Church. Those rates were up 2% and 9.4%, respectively, from the January-to-May period in 2024.

The one warning sign in the figures is that while, typically, prices rise as spring hits its stride, the average per-square-foot sales prices were lower in May than earlier in 2025.

Per-square-foot prices sometimes provide a better sense of market conditions in medium-sized localities like Arlington and smaller jurisdictions like Falls Church.

In smaller communities, monthly swings in sales and average sales prices can be more pronounced than in larger jurisdictions. In Arlington, the monthly composition of housing types going to closing also impacts average monthly sales prices that are reported to the public.

In Arlington, the average sales price of all 226 residential real estate transactions in May was $951,072, up 3.1% from $922,587 a year before. Part of that increase could be attributed to a slightly larger percentage of detached single-family homes in the overall sales mix in May 2025 compared to May 2024.

Among single-family homes, the average sales price declined 0.2% to $1,482,896. For attached homes — townhouses, row houses and condominiums — it rose 6.3% to $605,580, while for condominiums only, it was down 1.6% to $522,220.

Total sales of 226 represented a slight decline from 231 a year before, although pending sales are up more than 20% from 2024 figures and likely will translate to completed transactions in coming months.

Total sales volume for the Arlington homes market in May was $213.7 million, up 1.5%.

Elsewhere in Northern Virginia, the average per-square-foot sales price in May was $498 in Alexandria (+1.4%), $370 in Fairfax County (unchanged), $300 in Loudoun County (+1.4%) and $255 in Prince William County (-0.8%).

In DC, which often leads the region in costs, the per-square-foot sales price of $537 in May was down 3.2% from a year before.

Across Bright MLS’s Mid-Atlantic coverage area, the average per-square-foot price of $260 in May was up from $257 a year before. That catchment area includes the District of Columbia and about 70 counties and cities spread over portions of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Economy’s impact still open question

Across the region, buyers, sellers and local leaders continue to try to determine how much the real-estate market could be impacted by an economic downturn owing to federal-government cutbacks.

“The [region’s] housing market has been slower-than-typical this spring, but it has fared much better than some expected in the face of cuts to the federal workforce and general economic uncertainty,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Bright MLS, the region’s multiple-listing service.

Sturtevant said that, across the region, higher median prices needed to come with an explanation attached.

“The higher median price this month largely reflects a shift to relatively more single-family and higher-priced home sales, which has been a stronger segment of the market than the lower-priced and entry-level market,” she said.

Across the Washington region as a whole, the 4,790 sales recorded in May represented a decline of 6.5% from a year before. That dropoff was more than triple the year-to-date, year-over-year decline of 2%.

Some of that shortfall could be made up in the June data, as pending sales are trending higher.

The median sales price across the region stood at a record high of $659,950 in May.

“There is still a lot of pent-up demand in the market,” Sturtevant said. “If mortgage rates come down, the summer could be much busier. However, economic uncertainty will continue to be a headwind in the market.”

Uncertainty also percolates across state

Statewide, there also is a sense of uncertain times ahead.

Some of that sentiment change is likely due to typical seasonality of the market, but concerns about economic conditions overall and the impact of federal-government cuts may also play a role.

The sentiment survey was conducted between May 28 and June 4. A total of 974 members of Virginia Realtors participated, including 738 who had been part of a home-sale transaction within the preceding month.