Realtor.com and Zillow both dropped their February reports naming the “best week to sell,” both landing on the week of April 12th as the national sweet spot. The national reports excluded 2020 and looked at the 10-year trend to find the month where prices peak and historically, it’s June.
Good advice. So, I did exactly the same. What I found for Fairfax County and Loudoun County, the heart of the Route 7 Corridor, tells a story that the national headlines don’t capture and it’s a story that matters right now, whether you’re planning to sell this spring or watching from the sidelines.
The Setup: What “Rising Inventory” Actually Means Here
Yes, inventory rose in Northern Virginia through 2025. If you were watching the market from May through September, you noticed more homes coming up, more days on market, some price reductions. Buyers felt it. Agents felt it. It looked, briefly, like the market was finally loosening. However, both counties peaked at 1.5 to 2 months of inventory, still a Sellers’ Market.
Here’s what actually happened: active listings in Fairfax County detached homes peaked at 906 in September 2025 — the highest count since 2019. That felt like a lot. And compared to the frenzy of 2021–2022, it was. But compared to a healthy, balanced market? Pre-COVID Fairfax had 1,500 to 2,200 active detached homes on the market in any given summer month. The 2025 “peak” was still barely half of normal.
Then winter came and the market compressed, FAST.
This is the pattern the National Reports illustrate, inventory rises through spring, peaks in summer and then compresses through fall and winter as sellers take homes off the market. What’s different in Northern Virginia is the floor. When the seasonal compression happens here, it doesn’t settle at a balanced level. It drops into extreme seller territory. Under one month of supply. That’s where we are right now.
Where the Market Stands Today: February 2026 Snapshot
Here is what the BrightMLS and SmartCharts data shows for the Route 7 Corridor as of the most recent complete month available.
All four market segments are under one month of supply, with both Fairfax and Loudoun detached homes effectively on the line. The contract ratio tells you exactly what’s happening on the demand side: more buyers are entering into contracts than there are active listings to absorb them. In Fairfax townhomes, Loudoun detached, and Loudoun townhomes, that ratio has flipped above 1.0. Supply is not keeping up with demand.
The Corridor Contrast: Fairfax vs. Loudoun
These two counties don’t always move in sync, and the 2025–2026 cycle showed a meaningful divergence worth understanding.
Ten Years of Context: This Is Not Normal
Here’s the part that gets lost when we talk about “rising inventory” or “market softening.” People forget what a balanced market actually looks like. So let’s calibrate.
The summer 2025 inventory buildup, the thing that had buyers hopeful and sellers anxious, briefly touched the bottom range of what we used to call a balanced market in 2016–2018 and then it was absorbed. We’re back under one month. We never got close to balanced.
Ten-Year Price Growth
Loudoun detached homes have doubled in value over 10 years. Fairfax detached homes are up 58%. These aren’t appreciation rates driven by speculation or irrational exuberance. They’re driven by a structural imbalance between supply and demand that has persisted for a decade — and shows no sign of resolving this spring.
What This Means If You’re Selling
The national “best week to sell” analysis points to April 12–18. That’s a reasonable framework, and the underlying logic, list before the summer inventory peak when competition among sellers is lowest and demand from buyers is high holds here too. However, the Northern Virginia version of that analysis has a wrinkle worth knowing.
The data shows price peaks in late spring, April through June, which confirms the urgency of the April listing window. It also shows that properly priced, well-prepared homes in this market are not sitting. What fails in this market isn’t the market, it’s the pricing strategy or the preparation or both. That’s a solvable problem.
What This Means If You’re Buying
The contract ratio crossing 1.0 in three of four market segments is the signal buyers need to understand: there are more buyers writing contracts than there are homes available to receive them. Some of those buyers are going home empty-handed. The market isn’t going to hand you a deal this spring.
That said, and this is important, the summer 2025 window showed us something useful. Loudoun, in particular, had nearly 2.5 months of supply at its peak. That wasn’t a fire sale, but it was the most buyer-friendly environment NVA has seen since pre-COVID. It happened once. It can happen again. The question is whether you’re positioned to act when it does, or whether you’ll spend the summer watching from the sidelines while rates shift and the window closes, again.
The Trend Line Forward
The national reports are right to exclude 2020 from trend analysis. It was a once-in-a-generation distortion. But when I look at the 10-year dataset for Northern Virginia, excluding 2020 and 2021, what I see is a market that was already tightening before COVID, tightened further during COVID, and has not meaningfully loosened since. The 2025 inventory uptick was real, but it was modest relative to the magnitude of the structural deficit.
The forward trend looks like this: new listings are entering spring 2026 at roughly the same pace as last year. Demand is not subsiding. Active listings are down year-over-year in both counties. Prices are holding near peak levels. The contract ratio is at or above 1.0 in three of four segments.
The market is not going to fall apart. It’s not going to suddenly hand buyers three years of equity back. What it might do, and this is the thing worth watching, is drift sideways on price while volume slowly recovers, the way it did in 2023 and 2024. That’s not collapse. That’s recalibration. And in a market where the median detached home in Loudoun is $1.1 million and Fairfax is approaching $1 million, recalibration still means you own an asset that outperformed almost everything else over the last decade.
The data tells the story. I translate it. You make the move.
If you want a clear read on your home, your neighborhood, or your next move, let’s talk.
Michele Hudnall | Real Estate of NVA
[email protected] | 703.867.3436
RealEstateofNVA.com | @realestateofnva
I help Northern Virginia buyers and sellers make smarter decisions with local market analysis, strategic guidance, and real-world context, not hype headlines.
Privacy Statement | Disclosure Notice
Data: BrightMLS and SmartCharts via ShowingTime, as of March 5, 2026. Fairfax County and Loudoun County, VA. Detached and Attached Townhomes. See full disclosure at RealEstateofNVA.com/disclosure.
