Buying & selling in Clarendon

Clarendon at a glance

Clarendon sits in northern Arlington County on the Rosslyn–Ballston corridor, bordered by Lyon Village to the north, Lyon Park and Ashton Heights to the south, Court House to the east and Virginia Square to the west (Source: Wikipedia). It began as a 25-acre subdivision north of the old Georgetown–Ballston road, now Wilson Boulevard, dedicated on March 31, 1900 as the Plan of Clarendon, with lots sold for $90 to $140 and a free trolley pass to Washington thrown in (Source: Arlington Historical Magazine, October 1986). It was never incorporated as a town, and Arlington County has no towns within it: the county government bills real estate tax, issues permits and administers zoning for every Clarendon address, with no municipal layer on top the way the City of Falls Church or the Town of Vienna add one elsewhere in Northern Virginia. The county's adopted real estate tax rate for calendar year 2026 is $1.053 per $100 of assessed value, a two-cent increase over the prior year (Source: Arlington County, Budget and Finance; ARLnow, April 2026). On a sale, the seller pays Virginia's grantor's tax of 50 cents for each $500 of the price or value, whichever is greater (Source: Va. Code § 58.1-802), plus a regional transportation improvement fee of $0.10 for each $100 in every Northern Virginia Transportation Authority locality, Arlington included (Source: Va. Code § 58.1-802.3), and a regional congestion relief fee of another $0.10 for each $100 in Planning District 8, Northern Virginia's planning district (Source: Va. Code § 58.1-802.4).

The housing is two markets side by side. Along the Wilson and Clarendon Boulevard corridor near the Metro, the stock is mid-rise and high-rise condo and apartment buildings, most of them built after the Metro station was completed in 1979 (Source: Wikipedia), under the county's Clarendon Sector Plan, first adopted in 1984, revised in 1990 and 2006 and updated again in April 2022 (Source: Arlington County, Clarendon Sector Plan 2022 update). Step a block or two off the corridor and the blocks are detached houses — Craftsman bungalows from the 1920s, Colonial Revivals from the 1930s and 1940s, a few earlier Queen Anne houses — on the streets Frank Lyon and others platted as Lyon Village, Lyon Park and Ashton Heights (Source: Virginia Department of Historic Resources). Townhomes are rare and mostly sit inside the corridor's planned blocks.

Clarendon, block by block

Clarendon proper is small; what people mean by the name is the Metro-corridor core plus the three platted neighborhoods that border it, each with its own civic association and its own housing era:

• Downtown corridor (Wilson & Clarendon Boulevards) — The commercial spine. Wilson Boulevard and Clarendon Boulevard meet here and split into a parallel one-way pair running east toward Court House and Rosslyn (Source: American Planning Association, 2008). The Metro entrance, Clarendon Central Park with the Clarendon War Memorial, the 1939 Streamline Moderne Underwood Building and The Crossing Clarendon all sit on this stretch. Housing here is the corridor's condo and apartment towers, and everything about it — tax bill, building permit, zoning — is an Arlington County matter, because there is no town of Clarendon to deal with.
• Lyon Village (north) — Platted from 1923 by developer Frank Lyon into nine sections with traffic circles and a community park, and listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register on December 5, 2001 and the National Register of Historic Places on May 10, 2002 (Source: Virginia Department of Historic Resources). Detached houses on curving streets; the state and national listing is a recognition, not a county design-review overlay.
• Lyon Park (south) — A second Frank Lyon development, platted in stages between 1919 and 1951 and added to the National Register in 2003; the stock is 1920s Craftsman bungalows and 1930s–40s Colonial Revivals with a handful of earlier Queen Anne houses (Source: Wikipedia). Lyon Park's community center and park anchor the neighborhood's own street grid south of the boulevards.
• Ashton Heights (south) — Subdivided in 1921 on land once owned by Bushrod Hunter, with detached houses built mostly before 1950 in Bungalow, Craftsman and Colonial Revival styles, and added to the National Register in 2003; the separately listed Clarendon School building stands inside its boundaries (Source: Wikipedia).
• Court House edge (east) — Arlington's seat of county government is one Metro stop east, and the Clarendon–Courthouse Civic Association's boundaries overlap Clarendon along Courthouse Road, North Rhodes Street and Key Boulevard (Source: Wikipedia). This is where the corridor buildings run continuously into the next station's, so an address on the boundary streets can read as either neighborhood.

Five things locals know

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

• Clarendon was sold as a town but never became one — The Plan of Clarendon was dedicated on March 31, 1900 on a 25-acre tract north of the Georgetown–Ballston road; lots went for $90 to $140 and buyers got free trolley passes to Washington. The land had been part of Alexandria County — carved from the District of Columbia's ceded Virginia land in 1801, returned to Virginia in 1847 and later renamed Arlington County (Source: Arlington Historical Magazine, October 1986). A later petition to incorporate Clarendon as its own town was turned down by Virginia's highest court, and Arlington has no towns inside it today (Source: ARLnow, July 2023).
• National Register listing is not county design review — Lyon Village is on the Virginia Landmarks Register (December 5, 2001) and the National Register (May 10, 2002), and Lyon Park and Ashton Heights joined the National Register in 2003 — but none of the three is an Arlington County Local Historic District. The county's own map of Local Historic Districts, updated December 2025, lists two individual sites in the area, Clarendon Citizens Hall and Clarendon School, which are the properties subject to the county's Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board; a house that is merely inside a National Register district is not reviewed by that board on that basis alone (Source: Arlington County GIS, December 2025). Confirm any specific parcel's status with the county before planning exterior work.
• Four stations opened the same morning — Clarendon station opened on December 1, 1979, together with Court House, Virginia Square and Ballston, as the Orange Line was extended west from Rosslyn; the corridor's towers followed that date rather than preceding it (Source: Wikipedia).
• The Crossing Clarendon is Market Common under a new name — The block most people still call Market Common opened in November 2001 on a 10-acre site at 2800 Clarendon Boulevard with 300 apartments, 87 townhomes and ground-floor retail (Source: McCaffery). Its current owner, Regency Centers, rebranded it as The Crossing Clarendon in 2021 (Source: Wikipedia).
• Expanded Housing Option zoning is in effect, with a court review pending — Arlington's Expanded Housing Option ordinance, adopted in March 2023, allows buildings of two to six units on lots previously zoned for one detached house countywide, including blocks bordering Clarendon. A circuit court struck it down in September 2024 on procedural grounds, the Virginia Court of Appeals reversed that on June 24, 2025 and reinstated it, and on May 19, 2026 the Virginia Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge limited to a procedural question about which parties must be included in the suit. As of that date the ordinance remained in effect, the county was still processing permits under it, and 59 EHO permits were in the pipeline about a month earlier, some already built and sold (Source: ARLnow, May 2026).

Getting around

Clarendon station is served by the Orange and Silver Lines (Source: WMATA); its entrance is at 3100 Wilson Boulevard and it opened on December 1, 1979 (Source: Wikipedia). Arlington Transit (ART) buses stop at the station and run the boulevards; check arlingtontransit.com for the current routes, which change with county service updates. There is no MARC or VRE service anywhere near the neighborhood. For bikes, the Custis Trail runs 4.5 paved miles along I-66 through the Rosslyn–Ballston corridor, east to the Mount Vernon Trail at Rosslyn and west to the W&OD Trail at Bon Air Park, with a spur near Ballston to the Bluemont Junction Trail (Source: Wikipedia).

By car, Wilson Boulevard and Clarendon Boulevard are the corridor's one-way pair — Wilson runs west, Clarendon east — and they meet at the downtown core before rejoining toward Court House and Rosslyn (Source: American Planning Association, 2008); I-66 runs along the south edge of the corridor. Parking is the practical divide between the two housing types: corridor condo buildings come with garage spaces that are deeded or assigned and priced into the unit, while the detached-house blocks rely on driveways and street parking, and many of those streets fall under Arlington County's residential permit parking program. The county, not a town, administers permits, so check the specific block's status with Arlington County before assuming a visitor or second-car arrangement. Within the core, groceries, the park, the library one stop west at Virginia Square and the Metro are all reachable on foot from the corridor buildings.

The market & what to expect

Two things move price here more than square footage: whether a home is a corridor condo or a detached house on the platted blocks, and how far it sits from the Metro entrance. The condo market prices by building era, fee level and garage parking; the detached-house market prices by lot, by whether a 1920s bungalow has been expanded or replaced, and increasingly by what the Expanded Housing Option zoning allows on a given lot. Because Arlington has no towns, every property here is assessed and taxed by the county alone, and every permit runs through the county. Across Arlington County as a whole, the median home sale price was $823,000 in July 2026 on 227 sales, with sales volume down roughly 5% from a year earlier (Source: NVAR and Virginia Realtors via ARLnow, August 2026). That is a county figure, not a Clarendon one; no allowed source publishes a Clarendon-only median.

Across Northern Virginia as a whole, the median sold price in July 2026 was $750,000 on 1,582 closed sales, with a median 21 days on market (Source: NVAR, July 2026). That is a regional figure, not a Clarendon one.

For buyers, the first decision is condo versus house, because the two run on different comparables, different fee structures and different parking. Then read the building documents or, for a house, confirm the lot's zoning and whether it sits inside a county Local Historic District rather than only a National Register one. For sellers, the job is pricing to the pool your home actually reaches — corridor condo buyers comparing buildings along the Orange Line, or house buyers comparing Lyon Village, Lyon Park and Ashton Heights against one another — and having permits and any prior work documented before a contract. The buyer's guide and seller's guide lay out how Kelly runs each side, the Arlington guide covers the rest of the county, and for a read on a specific building or street, get in touch.

Why work with Kelly in Clarendon

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, a short Orange or Silver Line ride from Clarendon, and much of her Clarendon work is with people comparing a corridor condo here against Logan Circle, Navy Yard or Rosslyn on price, fee and commute.

For a Clarendon buyer that means pulling comparables at the building level rather than the neighborhood level, reading condo documents for reserves, fee history and parking before an offer, and for a house, checking the lot's zoning and whether any county historic review actually applies. For a seller, it means pricing to the specific pool the home reaches and having the county permit record in order before it becomes a contract issue. She handles every transaction personally.

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