Here are two recent big-dollar, big-name deals. Each week, Open House will highlight one or two luxury-home sales from the magazine—this week, journalists take the spotlight.

Jason DeParle and wife Nancy-Ann bought a newly built six-bedroom, six-bath Colonial in Chevy Chase for its list price of $2.95 million. A reporter for the New York Times, DeParle covers welfare and wrote The American Dream, published in 2004. Nancy-Ann DeParle was director of the federal Health Care Financing Administration from 1997 to 2000. She is now director of Boston Scientific Corporation, which makes medical devices, and an adviser to the financial-services company JP Morgan.

Guy Gugliotta and Carla Ann Robbins sold a six-bedroom, five-bathroom brick Colonial with an in-law suite on Cathedral Avenue in Woodley Park for $1.75 million. The house has a view of the National Cathedral. Gugliotta, a former science writer for The Washington Post, is a freelance writer; Robbins, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, is deputy editor for the New York Times.