The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that real-estate developer Herb Miller and his wife, Patricia, are planning to sell their Georgetown mansion in what will probably be a record-breaking deal in Washington. 

Although the article did not disclose the purchase price or the potential buyers, it said the property was listed last spring for $28 million—the current record for a single-family home is $15 million.

According to The Journal's Ben Casselman, "The Millers' Federal-style estate, built in 1810, sits on 1.6 acres in the city's Georgetown neighborhood. The 28,000 square-foot-compound has 12 bedrooms, including a six-bedroom main house with an additional one-bedroom apartment, an attached wing with four bedrooms and a one-bedroom staff or guest cottage. There's also a gym, spa, and media room."

Near the corner of 31st and Q streets in Georgetown, the mansion made headlines in July when a young man was murdered in its driveway. He was walking his date, a former babysitter for the Millers who lived in their basement apartment, home.

George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis, one of the area's most respected resources for economic and housing data, just released its annual Housing Market Forecast for the Washington area. 

Here are a few of the report's predictions for 2007:

• The market adjustment that we saw in 2006 is nearing an end—inventory is stabilizing and prices will begin stabilizing

• Housing demand will increase this spring 

• Sales volume will drop back to 1998-1999 levels

In addition to the forecast for 2007, the report is full of cool historical stats and graphs.  I've posted a few of my favorites below—check out the full report to see the rest.

In real estate, days on market (DOM) means the number of days between when a house goes on the market and when a seller accepts a buyer's contract.
 
For those looking to buy or sell real estate, DOM is an important statistic: In a buyer’s market, the average DOM is higher because inventory takes longer to sell; in a seller’s market, the average DOM is lower because homes are snatched up quickly. 

This chart compares the average DOM in eight Washington-area counties from December 2006 to December 2005. It doesn’t take a genius to see the trend—in all eight counties, the number has virtually doubled.

If you are in the market to buy a home, this means you can probably afford to take your time—the days when buyers put down an offer on the spot are long gone. If you are trying to sell, you may have to be patient.

Of course, there are always exceptions. In a market like Washington's, close-in locations never go out of style. 

In this week’s round-up of the ten most expensive sales, six were in Maryland, four in Virginia, and none in Washington.

We had gotten word of the top sale a few weeks back—Luxury Homes: a $4-million Tear-Down in Bethesda. The house was the former home of the late Washington Post correspondent Chalmers M. Roberts. It sits on almost two acres and has 180-degree views of the Potomac River.

And now for this week’s ten top home sales:

We all love Craigslist, but digging through the site's real-estate listings can be time-consuming and frustrating—the description says “close to Metro,” but when you click through you realize it’s actually “a short three-mile bike ride to the Metro.” Not exactly what you had in mind.

Housingmaps.com may have the answer. A Craigslist-Google Maps combo site, it takes all the housing listings in Craigslist and superimposes them onto Google Maps. You can zoom as close in on a neighborhood or street as you want and customize a search by price range and type, such as rentals, sublets, or real estate for sale. Clicking on a listing brings up a description complete with photos.    

Happy hunting!

My weekly open house hunt yielded lots of condos, especially in DC. If you are house-hunting this weekend, remember that you have the power in this market—it's not only about what sellers are offering.  Here are a few numbers about December 2006 DC condo sales from the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors. Keep them in mind if you hit the streets this weekend:

$406,501: average condo price, down 4.7% from $426,578 in December 2005.
$354,100: median condo price, down 5.6% from $375,000 in December 2005
1,203: number of condo listings, up 42.5% from 844 in December 2005

And now for my weekend open house picks: 

When battling rush-hour traffic and fighting crowds on the metro, it can be easy to forget that Washington was not always the bustling metropolis it is today. A new gallery of historic photographs on the District Department of Transportation’s Web site captures the city in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Just imagine how cheap real estate was back then...