Buying & selling in Del Ray

Del Ray at a glance

Del Ray is the area northwest of Old Town, much of which was once the separate Town of Potomac. It is a neighborhood of the City of Alexandria, an independent city: the Constitution of Virginia defines a city as an independent incorporated community, where a town is an incorporated community within one or more counties, so the buyer here deals with the city alone — city real estate tax, city permits, city services (Source: Constitution of Virginia, art. VII §1; Wikipedia). The city's real estate tax is $1.135 per $100 of assessed value, the rate City Council set on April 29, 2026 (Source: City of Alexandria, real estate tax). The name covers a cluster of subdivisions laid out on their own street grid: Del Ray and St. Elmo were platted in 1894 by developer Charles Wood at 254 and 39 acres respectively, joined with Mount Ida and Hume Springs to incorporate as the Town of Potomac in 1908, and were annexed by Alexandria in 1930 (Source: City of Alexandria; Wikipedia). Descriptively it runs from the Braddock Road and Rosemont side on the south to Four Mile Run and the Arlington County line on the north, with Mount Vernon Avenue as its commercial spine (Source: Wikipedia).

The housing stock is the point. Most of it went up between the 1890s and 1941 — story-and-a-half Craftsman bungalows, American Foursquares, Cape Cods, Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival cottages, and duplexes, on modest lots with front porches and alleys on many blocks (Source: Virginia Department of Historic Resources). Newer infill and rear additions sit among the originals, and the Potomac Yard side to the east is mid-2000s-and-later apartment and condo construction rather than bungalows. Detached houses are the majority of what trades; condos are a small share and cluster toward the Metro stations.

Del Ray, block by block

The neighborhood reads as one grid, but it was assembled from several plats, and the edges differ from the core:

• Del Ray proper — the original 1894 Charles Wood subdivision of 254 acres, centered on Mount Vernon Avenue; the bungalow blocks either side of the Avenue and the commercial strip itself, where the Saturday farmers' market sets up at East Oxford Avenue (Source: Wikipedia).
• St. Elmo — the companion 1894 Wood subdivision of 39 acres, platted on the same grid and adjacent to Del Ray; today it is indistinguishable on the ground and the name survives mostly in the coffee shop at 2300 Mount Vernon Avenue (Source: Wikipedia; St. Elmo's Coffee Pub).
• Hume Springs and Mount Ida — the other subdivisions that joined Del Ray and St. Elmo to incorporate as the Town of Potomac in 1908; the Del Ray name now covers all of them (Source: Del Ray Citizens Association).
• The Braddock Road edge — the south end, closest to the Braddock Road Metro station and to Rosemont, which is a separate National Register historic district of its own and not part of the Town of Potomac listing (Source: City of Alexandria).
• The Potomac Yard edge — the east side toward the Potomac Yard Metro station, where the city approved Phase 1 of the North Potomac Yard redevelopment in October 2020 and, as of a page update in January 2026, had not declared it complete — expect construction context on that side for years (Source: City of Alexandria, Jan 2026).
• Four Mile Run — the north edge at the Arlington County line, where Four Mile Run Park at 3700 Commonwealth Avenue carries a walking and running path that connects west into Arlington's Four Mile Run Trail and north toward the Mount Vernon and Potomac Yard trail network (Source: City of Alexandria, July 2026).

Five things locals know

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

• Del Ray governed itself for 22 years — Del Ray, St. Elmo, Mount Ida and Hume Springs incorporated together as the Town of Potomac in 1908, with their own mayor, council, police and fire department, and stayed a separate municipality until the City of Alexandria annexed the town in 1930 (Source: City of Alexandria).
• The historic-district listing is honorific — Most of Del Ray sits inside the Town of Potomac Historic District, entered on the Virginia Landmarks Register on December 11, 1991 and the National Register of Historic Places on September 10, 1992 (Source: Virginia Department of Historic Resources). That is a state and federal listing, not a city one. Alexandria's Board of Architectural Review regulates only the Old and Historic Alexandria District and the Parker-Gray District, so exterior changes in Del Ray do not go before the BAR on the basis of the listing (Source: City of Alexandria).
• Rosemont is not Del Ray — The blocks between Del Ray and King Street are Rosemont, a trolley suburb developed from 1908 to 1930 and listed on the National Register as its own 84-acre district on September 24, 1992 — a separate listing from the Town of Potomac, however often the two are grouped in marketing (Source: Wikipedia; City of Alexandria).
• Closing carries tax lines on both sides of the deed — On the deed, the state recordation tax is $0.25 per $100 of value and the City of Alexandria adds a local recordation tax of $0.083 per $100 (Source: City of Alexandria, page dated Sept 2024). The seller's side carries three state charges: the grantor's tax of 50 cents per $500 of the purchase price or value, whichever is greater (Source: Va. Code § 58.1-802), a regional transportation improvement fee of $0.10 per $100 because the City of Alexandria is a member of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (Source: Va. Code § 58.1-802.3), and a regional congestion relief fee of another $0.10 per $100 because the city lies in Planning District 8, Northern Virginia's planning district (Source: Va. Code § 58.1-802.4); the city's own recordation tax page shows the grantor's tax and one of the two regional fees (Source: City of Alexandria, page dated Sept 2024).
• The market is on the Avenue every Saturday — The Del Ray Farmers' Market sets up at the corner of East Oxford and Mount Vernon Avenues on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon, year-round, per the city's current listing (Source: City of Alexandria, Sept 2026).

Getting around

Two Metrorail stations bracket the neighborhood, both on the Blue and Yellow Lines: Braddock Road at the south edge, and Potomac Yard at the east edge, which opened in 2023 as an infill station on the existing track between Braddock Road and Reagan National (Source: WMATA, Braddock Road; WMATA, Potomac Yard; Wikipedia, Potomac Yard station). Most of the grid is within a walk of one or the other. DASH, the city's own bus system, and Metrobus routes on Mount Vernon Avenue both run the length of the commercial strip toward the King Street Metro and Potomac Yard; check the current route map for numbers, which have changed on both systems.

By car, Mount Vernon Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue run north–south through the neighborhood, with the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Route 1 corridor to the east for the bridges into DC and the airport. On foot and by bike, the path through Four Mile Run Park at the north edge connects into Arlington's Four Mile Run Trail and toward the Mount Vernon Trail near the river (Source: City of Alexandria, July 2026). Parking is on-street on most blocks, and driveways are the exception on the older plats; confirm whether a block sits in one of the city's residential permit parking districts before assuming all-day street parking, because the Avenue's shop blocks fill on weekends.

The market & what to expect

Price differences in Del Ray come down to lot, condition, walk to the Avenue, and what has been done to a house built before 1941 (Source: Virginia Department of Historic Resources). An original bungalow with a rear pop-up and a finished basement trades very differently from one still on its 1920s footprint, and permitted-versus-unpermitted work is the question that decides more deals here than anything about style. No Del Ray-only figure is published by an allowed source. City-wide, Alexandria averaged $853,247 across 1,063 residential sales in January through June 2026, up 3.6% in price and 6.2% in sales from the first half of 2025, at $513 per square foot (Source: MarketStats via ALXnow, July 2026). That is a city-wide average across condos, townhouses and detached houses, not a Del Ray one.

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 Del Ray one.

For buyers, the first checks are the ones a listing does not show: whether the house is inside the City of Alexandria (every Del Ray address is), what the assessment and the city tax bill look like, and which additions and systems were permitted. For sellers, the work is documenting that history before it becomes a contract problem and pricing to the block, not the city average. The buyer's guide and seller's guide lay out how Kelly runs each side, and the Alexandria guide covers the rest of the city if you are weighing Del Ray against Old Town or Potomac Yard. For a read on a specific street, get in touch.

Why work with Kelly in Del Ray

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 drive down the parkway — which matters in Del Ray, where a large share of buyers are comparing a bungalow here against a DC rowhouse or an Arlington house on tax, commute and yard before they settle on a jurisdiction.

In practice that means telling you early that no design-review board sits over a Del Ray exterior, and that the city's permit history on additions does; reading a house built before 1941 for the things an inspection finds late; and pulling comparables by block and by house type rather than from the citywide average. On the sell side she prices to the buyer pool a specific house reaches, documents prior work before listing, and handles every transaction personally.

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