Price Per Square Foot by Decade Built in Fort Washington (Part 10 of 30: The Fort Washington Files)
This is Part 10 of The Fort Washington Files from Donnell Williams Jr. and DMV Prime Properties, a thirty-part series built entirely on what 689 Fort Washington listings actually did in 2026.
Ask almost any homeowner which houses command the most per square foot and the answer comes back the same. The newer ones. In Fort Washington, the data says the reverse, and it says it consistently across six decades of housing stock.
Donnell sorted all 361 closed sales in his Bright MLS export by the decade the home was built. The highest price per square foot belonged to the oldest end of the range, and the lowest belonged to the newest. Here is the whole table and what it actually means for pricing a house here.
The table
Each row shows the number of closed Fort Washington sales in that decade, the median sale price, the median days on market, and the median price per square foot on sale price:
- 1950s: 30 sales, $420,000, 17 days, $286 per square foot
- 1960s: 78 sales, $459,450, 12 days, $310 per square foot
- 1970s: 98 sales, $457,500, 20 days, $263 per square foot
- 1980s: 51 sales, $467,620, 25 days, $275 per square foot
- 1990s: 60 sales, $507,500, 16 days, $236 per square foot
- 2000s: 17 sales, $675,000, 24 days, $215 per square foot
Two columns are moving in opposite directions. Median sale price generally climbs as the homes get newer, from $420,000 in the 1950s to $675,000 in the 2000s. Median price per square foot generally falls, from $310 in the 1960s to $215 in the 2000s.
Why those two columns can both be true
The explanation is size, not quality. Newer homes in Fort Washington are bigger, so their total price is higher while the price of each individual foot is lower.
A house carries a set of costs that do not scale with its square footage. The kitchen, the bathrooms, the roof, the mechanical systems, the driveway and the lot are in the price whether the home is 1,200 square feet or 3,000. When you spread those fixed elements across fewer feet, the per-foot number rises. Spread them across more, and it falls.
That is arithmetic. It is not a statement that older homes are better built or that newer homes are overpriced, and nobody should read it that way.
There is a second mechanism underneath the first one, and it runs through the whole of this series. Fort Washington's median sale this year was $470,000 across 361 closings. The further a home's total price sits above that figure, the smaller the pool of buyers who can reach it. Sellers of larger homes are therefore competing for a narrower audience, and the price per foot is where that shows up in the data. It is not a discount anyone chose. It is what a thinner buyer pool looks like once you divide by square footage.
The 1960s row is the highest per foot
Seventy-eight Fort Washington homes built in the 1960s closed this year at a median of $459,450 and $310 per square foot, the highest per-foot figure of any decade in the zip code.
They also moved fastest. A median of 12 days on market is the quickest of the six decades, against an overall median of 18 days across all 361 closed sales.
Put those two together and the picture is a home with a modest footprint, a total price sitting comfortably below the $470,000 median for the zip code, and a buyer pool deep enough to absorb it quickly. That combination produces a high number per foot, and it produces it because the absolute price works.
The 2000s row is the lowest per foot
Only 17 Fort Washington sales this year were built in the 2000s, and they closed at a median of $675,000, the highest median price of any decade, at $215 per square foot, the lowest per-foot figure of any decade.
That is the same relationship running the other way. Larger houses, higher total prices, cheaper feet.
It also intersects with the central finding of this series. Sorted by original list price, listings that opened above $800,000 in Fort Washington produced 19 failures against 13 closed sales, a 59.4 percent failure rate. Between $600,000 and $800,000 the failure rate was 33.3 percent. The newer, larger end of this market has the hardest time finding a buyer, and it is not because of the price per foot, which is the lowest in the zip code. It is the absolute number.
Fort Washington's failed listings were bigger than its successful ones, with a median 1,952 square feet above grade against 1,716 for the closed group, and they were priced at $267 per square foot on original list against $273 for the closed group. They were not overpriced per square foot. They were priced at an absolute number the local buyer pool could not reach.
The 1970s row is the market
The median year built across all 361 Fort Washington closings is 1976. That is not a trivia point. It means the 1970s row is not one row among six. It is the center of this market.
Ninety-eight of the 361 closed sales were built in the 1970s, the largest group of any decade. They closed at a median of $457,500 with a median of 20 days on market at $263 per square foot.
So the typical Fort Washington home is a 1970s house selling just under the zip code median of $470,000, at a per-foot number just under the zip code median of $265, in about three weeks. If you own here, that row is probably your row, and the honest read is that it sits in the middle of the table on every measure rather than at either end.
What days on market adds to the picture
The per-foot column is only half the table. The days on market column tells you how each decade behaved, and it does not track price per foot at all.
The 1960s were fastest at 12 days. The 1990s came next at 16, then the 1950s at 17, the 1970s at 20, the 2000s at 24, and the 1980s slowest at 25.
The 1990s row is the interesting one. Sixty sales at a median of $507,500, the second highest median price in the table, at $236 per square foot, the second lowest per-foot figure, and yet moving in 16 days. Bigger homes, cheaper feet, still selling quickly. That is a reminder that no single column in this table decides an outcome by itself.
What this means for a 1962 rambler and a 2004 colonial
Two Fort Washington sellers, same zip code, same month, completely different pricing problems.
The 1962 owner is competing on absolute price. Their home is likely at or below the $470,000 median, which puts them in the healthiest part of this market. Listings that opened between $300,000 and $400,000 failed only 17.5 percent of the time, the lowest rate in Fort Washington, and the 25 active listings currently under $400,000 carry the shortest days on market on the shelf at a median of 29 days with 44 percent having cut. A high number per foot is the market telling them the house is priced where buyers can reach.
The 2004 owner is competing on payment. Their home is likely above the median, possibly well above it, and the per-foot number will look like a bargain in the listing remarks while the monthly figure does the deciding. With the 30-year fixed at 6.95 percent per Freddie Mac's survey for the week ending September 17, 2026, up from 6.65 percent on August 20, 2026, the constraint is not value per foot. It is what a buyer's payment allows.
Where per-foot pricing goes wrong
Every seller who has been told their house is worth $265 per square foot should know how wide that number actually runs in this zip code.
By decade, it spans $215 to $310. By subdivision the spread is wider still, from $190 per square foot in Pinewood Hill to $355 in Murray Hill, with Rose Valley Estates at $333, Stonegate at $331, Tantallon North at $226 and Devon Hills Condo at $216. Those are all Fort Washington, all closed in the same year.
Price per foot is a useful way to compare two genuinely similar homes. It is a poor way to set a price on its own, because applying the wrong decade's or the wrong subdivision's number to your house can be off by a third in either direction.
What buyers should take from the table
If you are shopping Fort Washington and you want the most square footage for the money, the table points at the newer end. The 1990s at $236 and the 2000s at $215 deliver more house per dollar than the 1950s at $286 or the 1960s at $310.
The tradeoff is the total price and therefore the payment, since the 2000s row has the highest median at $675,000. There is also age to weigh in the other direction. Older homes in this market are older systems, and the closed data shows 300 of 361 sales with a basement, 252 with a fireplace and 260 with central air, all of which are worth an inspector's attention regardless of decade.
Only 9 of Fort Washington's 361 closed sales were new construction, at a median of $835,235, with seven of those in Gallahan Estates and one each in Spring Ridge and Tantallon on the Potomac. This is a resale market, so the decade table is the market, not a footnote to it.
Find out where your house sits in the table
Knowing your decade is the start. Knowing what your specific home should be asked at, given its size, its condition, its subdivision and what the comparable listings around it are actually doing, is the work. Donnell Williams Jr. is the broker-owner of DMV Prime Properties at 12815 Old Fort Road in Fort Washington, and he runs this analysis on his own zip code because he lives and works in it. He will tell you which row your house belongs to, what the right comparables are, and where the per-foot math helps you and where it misleads you. Call 301.818.0313 or email donnell@dmvprimerealty.com for an opinion of value with the numbers attached.
Part 11 of The Fort Washington Files looks at whether the month you list actually matters, using every closing from January through September.
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