Buying & selling in Alexandria

Alexandria at a glance

Alexandria sits directly on the Potomac between Arlington to the north and Fairfax County to the west and south, and it is legally separate from both — Virginia independent cities run their own taxes, courts, roads and services rather than a county's (Source: City of Alexandria). The city was founded in 1749, and its colonial core is protected as the Old and Historic Alexandria District, created in 1946 and described by the city as the third-oldest historic district in the country (Source: City of Alexandria).

The housing is unusually varied for one jurisdiction. Old Town holds brick rowhouses and townhouses from the 1700s and 1800s, most of them subject to exterior design review; Del Ray, Rosemont, North Ridge and Beverley Hills hold bungalows, colonials and garden apartments built largely between the 1930s and the 1960s; Carlyle, Eisenhower East and Potomac Yard are mid-2000s-and-later condo and apartment towers built on former rail and industrial land; and the West End mixes older garden apartments and townhomes with new construction on the former Landmark Mall site.

Alexandria, neighborhood by neighborhood

The city reads as several distinct markets, and the rules and the housing stock change with each one:

• Old Town — the colonial-era core along the waterfront, with 18th- and 19th-century brick rowhouses inside the Old and Historic Alexandria District, where exterior changes go through the Board of Architectural Review.
• Del Ray — a walkable grid north of Old Town along Mount Vernon Avenue, built out mostly in the early-to-mid 20th century, with a commercial strip of independent shops and restaurants.
• Rosemont — tree-lined, early-20th-century detached houses between Old Town and Del Ray, within walking distance of the King St–Old Town Metro corridor.
• Carlyle & Eisenhower East — a purpose-built, transit-oriented district around the Eisenhower Avenue Metro station, dominated by mid-2000s-and-later condo and office towers on former industrial and rail land.
• Potomac Yard — built on the RF&P Railroad switching yard that operated from 1906 to 1989 and was remediated through 1998; now mixed-use blocks anchored by the Potomac Yard Metro station and Virginia Tech's Innovation Campus, whose first building opened in February 2025 (Source: Wikipedia).
• West End — older garden apartments and townhomes alongside the WestEnd redevelopment of the roughly 52-acre former Landmark Mall site, where a relocated Inova Alexandria Hospital topped out in April 2026 for a targeted 2028 opening (Source: ALXnow).

Five things locals know

A few things that shape a purchase here and rarely make the listing sheet:

• The demolition rule catches small work — Inside the Old and Historic Alexandria District, the Parker-Gray District and on designated 100-year-old buildings, exterior alterations visible from a public way need a Certificate of Appropriateness, and removing more than 25 square feet of material needs a Permit to Demolish — that one applies whether or not the work can be seen from the street (Source: City of Alexandria).
• The city sets its own tax rate — Because Alexandria is independent of any county, City Council sets the real estate tax rate directly — currently $1.135 per $100 of assessed value, with property assessed at 100% of fair market value and billed in two halves each year (Source: City of Alexandria, page updated May 2026).
• The Torpedo Factory made torpedoes — The building at 105 N. Union Street was a U.S. Naval Torpedo Station that produced torpedoes from 1919 to 1923 and again from 1937 to 1945; the city bought it in 1969 and opened it as a public artist-studio art center in 1974 (Source: Torpedo Factory Art Center).
• Alexandria used to be in the District — The city was part of the original District of Columbia until Congress passed the retrocession act in July 1846; Virginia's jurisdiction was formally reasserted in 1847 (Source: Congress.gov).
• The Saturday market predates the country — The city describes its Old Town Farmers' Market at Market Square, held Saturdays from 7 a.m. to noon year-round, as the oldest farmers' market in the country operating continuously on the same site, since 1753 (Source: City of Alexandria).

Getting around

Five Metrorail stations sit inside the city — King St–Old Town, Braddock Road, Eisenhower Avenue, Van Dorn Street and Potomac Yard — and all of them are on the Blue and Yellow Lines. Potomac Yard is the newest, opened May 19, 2023 as WMATA's 98th station (Source: WMATA). VRE commuter rail and Amtrak both stop at Alexandria Union Station on Callahan Drive in Old Town, a block from the King St–Old Town platform. The city-run DASH bus network has been fare-free since September 2021 (Source: DASH), and a free King Street Trolley runs between the Metro station and Market Square, stopping every two to three blocks (Source: Visit Alexandria).

By car, the George Washington Memorial Parkway follows the river north toward Reagan National and the 14th Street bridges, with I-395 and the Beltway reaching the West End. On foot and by bike, the paved Mount Vernon Trail runs along Union Street through Old Town, north toward Roosevelt Island and south toward Mount Vernon. Parking is the thing buyers underestimate: Old Town uses Residential Permit Parking districts by zone, and on-street meters are priced by the hour rather than free, so a house without off-street parking is a different proposition than one with it (Source: City of Alexandria). Del Ray and Rosemont are walkable to shops and Metro; Carlyle, Eisenhower East and Potomac Yard are built around their stations; the West End is the most car-dependent part of the city.

The market & what to expect

Price differences across Alexandria track home type and era more than anything else. An Old Town rowhouse inside the historic district carries design-review obligations and, on the lower waterfront blocks, flood history; a Del Ray or Rosemont house from the 1930s or 1940s trades on lot, condition and walk to Mount Vernon Avenue; a Carlyle or Potomac Yard condo trades on building, floor, view and monthly fee. Condition and permitted-versus-unpermitted work matter more here than in newer markets, because so much of the stock is over a century old.

In July 2026, 170 Alexandria properties closed at an average sales price of $826,512 across all home types, with 24 median days on market and sales at 98.9% of list price (Source: ALXnow). That is an average, not a median, and it covers the whole city across condos, townhouses and detached houses — not any one neighborhood, and not the Old Town waterfront in particular.

For buyers, the first fork is jurisdiction and home type: confirm the property is inside the city rather than in Fairfax County, then decide between historic-district stock and newer construction, because the inspection, insurance and renovation paths differ. For sellers, the work is establishing which buyer pool a home actually reaches and pricing to it, with any past exterior or structural work documented before listing. The buyer's guide and seller's guide lay out how Kelly runs each side, and the Arlington guide covers the county just north if you are weighing both. For a read on a specific street or building, get in touch.

Why work with Kelly in Alexandria

Kelly Balmer is Vice President & Partner, Mollaan Babbington Group at Compass, licensed in DC, Maryland and Virginia, with $130M+ sold over 13+ years and a 5.0 Best-of-Zillow record across 130+ reviews. Her office is at 1313 14th Street NW in DC, twenty minutes up the parkway from Old Town — which matters in Alexandria, where a large share of buyers are comparing the city against DC and Arlington on taxes, commute and home type before they commit to a jurisdiction at all.

In practice that means telling you early whether a house sits inside the historic district and what the Board of Architectural Review will and will not sign off on, checking flood and permit history on waterfront and older blocks, and pulling comparables at the level of the street or the building rather than the city. On the sell side she prices to the specific buyer pool a home reaches, documents prior exterior work before it becomes a contract problem, and handles every transaction personally.

Kelly Balmer
Vice President & Partner, Mollaan Babbington Group at Compass · Licensed in DC · MD · VA