Why VA Buyers Close the Highest Prices in This Zip Code (Part 24 of 30: The Fort Washington Files)
This is Part 24 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.
There is a claim that circulates in every market in the country, and it circulates here too. It says a VA-financed offer is a weak offer, and that a seller looking at two comparable contracts should take the other one. Fort Washington produced 361 closed sales in 2026 with the financing type recorded on each one, which means the claim can be checked against what actually happened rather than argued about.
It does not hold up here. In this zip code, VA financing carried the highest median sale price of any financing type.
The four financing types, side by side
From Donnell's Bright MLS export covering 689 Fort Washington listings tracked through September 17, 2026, the 361 closed sales break out this way:
- Conventional: 181 closings, $470,000 median sale price, 17 days on market, 40 percent sold below original list
- FHA: 78 closings, $460,000 median, 26 days, 46 percent below original
- VA: 59 closings, $550,000 median, 19 days, 46 percent below original
- Cash: 30 closings, $330,000 median, 9 days, 63 percent below original
VA is the smallest of the three financed groups at 59 closings, roughly one in six sales in the zip code. It is also the group that closed at the highest price.
The size of the gap
The VA median of $550,000 sat $80,000 above the conventional median of $470,000 and $90,000 above the FHA median of $460,000. It sat $220,000 above the cash median of $330,000.
It also sat $80,000 above the zip code's own median sale price, which was $470,000 across all 361 closings.
That is not a rounding difference or a quirk of one unusual sale. It is a median, meaning half the 59 VA closings came in at or above $550,000, in a market where half of everything came in at or below $470,000.
What the claim actually says, and what the data says back
The argument that VA offers are weak usually rests on an assumption about the buyer rather than anything in the contract. The data in this export cannot confirm or refute assumptions about buyers. What it can do is show what those contracts produced.
In Fort Washington in 2026, contracts financed with VA closed at a higher median price than contracts financed conventionally, contracts financed with FHA and contracts paid in cash. Fifty-nine of them closed. They are in the record.
A seller who treats a VA offer as automatically second-tier in this zip code is discounting the financing type that reached the highest prices here this year. That is the plain reading, and it is the reason this post exists.
Now the part that gets left out
Honest use of data means showing the column that does not flatter the argument. VA closings took a median of 19 days on market. Conventional took 17.
That is a real two-day gap and it should not be hidden. Across all 361 Fort Washington closings, the median was 18 days, so VA came in one day above the zip code median and conventional came in one day below it.
Two days is small against the spread in this market. FHA closings took a median of 26 days, seven days longer than VA. Cash closings took 9. And the standing Fort Washington inventory as of September 17, 2026 sits at a median of 43 days on market with a median 60 cumulative days, which is the real timeline pressure in this market.
So the fair statement is that VA closings in Fort Washington took slightly longer than conventional closings and closed at a meaningfully higher price. Both halves of that sentence are true, and a seller weighing offers deserves both.
The 46 percent figure, read carefully
VA closings sold below their original list price 46 percent of the time. So did FHA closings. Conventional came in lower at 40 percent, and cash came in highest at 63 percent.
That column measures the relationship between the final sale price and the seller's original asking price. It is not a measure of how much each buyer paid in absolute terms, and the two are easy to confuse.
The zip code as a whole tells the same story: across all 361 closings, 34.6 percent sold above original list, 20.8 percent sold at it and 44.6 percent sold below, with a median sold-to-original ratio of exactly 1.0000. A 46 percent below-original share is close to the zip code norm, not an outlier.
What this data does not prove
This is the part that separates an observation from a claim. The export records what closed. It does not record why.
It does not say that VA financing causes higher sale prices. A more careful reading is that the VA-financed transactions in this zip code in 2026 happened at higher price points than the other financing types did, which could reflect the price ranges those buyers were shopping, the kinds of homes involved, the timing of those contracts, or several of those at once. The data cannot separate them.
Nothing in this post should be read as a statement about VA loan program rules. Donnell's export carries sale prices, days on market, list price ratios and the financing type recorded at closing. It carries nothing about appraisals, fees, eligibility or program requirements, and this post makes no claims about any of them. Donnell is a broker rather than a lender, and questions about how a VA loan works belong to a licensed loan officer who handles them.
Where a $550,000 median actually lands in Fort Washington
It helps to see what price range that median sits in locally. Fort Washington closed 2026 with a zip code median of $470,000 across 361 sales, at a median 1,716 above-grade square feet and $265 per square foot.
The subdivisions whose 2026 medians landed at or above $550,000 include Tantallon on the Potomac at $605,000 across 25 closings, Aragona Village at $600,000 across 13, Tantallon Hills at $560,000 across 7 and Tantallon North at $730,000 across 5. Gallahan Estates closed 7 sales at $835,235, though those were new construction, which was rare here. Only 9 of the 361 closed sales in the export were new construction, 7 of them in Gallahan Estates, 1 in Spring Ridge and 1 in Tantallon on the Potomac.
A $550,000 median puts the VA group squarely in the upper half of this market's price distribution, in the range of the zip code's larger homes rather than its entry-level inventory.
The cash column is the useful contrast
The financing type that moved fastest in Fort Washington also paid the least. Cash closings took a median of 9 days, half the zip code median of 18, and closed at a median of $330,000, which is $140,000 below the zip code median and $220,000 below the VA median.
Cash closings also sold below original list 63 percent of the time, the highest share of the four types by a wide margin.
That pairing is worth holding next to the VA figures, because it dismantles the shortcut a lot of people use. Speed and price are not the same thing, and the fastest offer in this zip code was routinely the lowest one. A seller optimizing purely for a quick close in Fort Washington in 2026 was, on these medians, optimizing toward a smaller number.
The export cannot say what those cash purchases involved or what condition those properties were in, and this post does not guess. Part 26 of this series takes that column apart on its own. The point here is narrower: a financing type's median days on market tells a seller about pace, and a financing type's median sale price tells them about price, and those two columns pointed in opposite directions across all 361 Fort Washington closings in 2026.
What a buyer using VA financing should take from this
The first thing is confidence in the room. A buyer writing with VA financing in Fort Washington is not writing with a handicap that the closed data can find, and a listing agent who suggests otherwise should be shown the 59 closings.
The second thing is preparation, which matters for every buyer regardless of financing. Across all 361 closings, sales that closed in 0 to 7 days sold below original list only 13.0 percent of the time, while sales past 90 days did so 94.3 percent of the time. Of the 361, 257 sellers never cut their price, took a median of 11 days and closed at exactly 100 percent of original list, while the 104 who cut took a median of 60 days and closed at 94.83 percent.
Timing, clean terms and an offer built on actual subdivision comparables are what make a contract strong. Those are things a buyer controls.
What a Fort Washington seller should take from it
Sellers in this zip code are not operating in a market with unlimited buyers. As of September 17, 2026, Fort Washington had 115 active listings at a median list price of $499,900 against a median original list price of $520,000, with 50 percent of them having already cut and 42 percent standing past 60 days.
On top of that, 144 of the 505 listings that left the market in this period did so without selling, a 28.5 percent failure rate. Half of those cut their price, at a median of $25,000, and still did not sell.
In that context, discarding an entire financing category on reputation is an expensive habit. Offers should be compared on their actual terms, and on what comparable contracts in this zip code have actually produced.
Get the offer evaluated on what is in it
A financing type is one line on a contract. Price, terms, timeline and the strength of the file are the rest of it, and all of that can be looked at directly. Donnell Williams Jr. is the broker-owner of DMV Prime Properties at 12815 Old Fort Road in Fort Washington, and he tracks every closed sale in this zip code by financing type, price and days on market because it is his home market. Buyers preparing an offer in Fort Washington, whatever they are financing with, can reach him at 301.818.0313 or donnell@dmvprimerealty.com to see the comparables their contract will be measured against.
Part 25 of The Fort Washington Files looks at FHA in this zip code, where 78 closings at a $460,000 median took the longest median time on market of any financing type.
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