Updated September 2026
You want one number.
What is my house worth? It's a fair question, and it deserves better than a guess dressed up as an answer. A comparative market analysis, a CMA, is how we get there. It isn't a formula and it isn't a printout. It's a short list of real Alexandria sales, read closely, then adjusted for everything your house has that those homes don't.
What a CMA actually is
A CMA is an estimate of what one specific home would sell for right now. It's built from recent closed sales of similar homes nearby, adjusted for the differences between those homes and yours, then checked against what's currently for sale and what's under contract.
Closed sales tell you what buyers actually paid. Active listings tell you what your house has to beat. Homes under contract tell you what buyers are agreeing to right now, before the closings catch up.
A CMA is also not an appraisal. An appraisal is a licensed opinion ordered by a lender, on a lender's form, under its own rules. A CMA is a pricing opinion prepared for you, the seller, and it can weigh things a lender's form never asks about, like how a specific block shows on a Sunday in April.
The comp pool is smaller than you would think
In July 2026, 171 homes sold in the city of Alexandria, according to Bright MLS. In August 2026 there were 399 homes for sale in the city, also per Bright MLS. Your comps come out of the first number, not the second, and only the slice of it that resembles your house.
Chart 1. Alexandria City, Virginia: 171 homes sold in July 2026 against 399 homes for sale in August 2026. Two different metrics from two different months, shown side by side. Source: Bright MLS. Zero baseline.
That slice gets thin fast. Split those closed sales by property type, then by neighborhood, then by size, and a two-bedroom condo off King Street and a detached house in North Ridge stop sharing a data set. Some weeks we end up with four or five true comps.
Sometimes three.
One boundary note, because it matters here more than in most places. These are City of Alexandria figures as Bright MLS labels them. Alexandria is an independent city, and a mailing address that reads Alexandria is not always inside the city line. Plenty of Fairfax County homes carry Alexandria mail. Those sales sit in a different data set, under a different tax rate and a different school division, and pulling them in as comps is one of the most common ways a price goes sideways before anyone has adjusted anything.
Why the citywide median is not your price
The median sale price in the city of Alexandria was $707,000 in July 2026, per Bright MLS. That is a useful number for understanding the market. It is not a valuation of any particular house, including yours.
Look at what happens one jurisdiction over. For the same month, Bright MLS reported a median sale price of $827,450 for Arlington and $731,000 for Fairfax. Three neighboring Northern Virginia markets, three different midpoints, and not one of them describes a specific address. We are using those geography labels exactly as Bright MLS publishes them, and we do not merge them or net one against another.
Chart 2. Median sale price, July 2026: Alexandria City, Virginia $707,000; Arlington, Virginia $827,450; Fairfax, Virginia $731,000. Geography labels as published. Source: Bright MLS. Zero baseline.
A median is just the middle of a stack of closed sales. Change the mix of what happened to sell that month, more condos or more detached houses, and the median moves without a single home changing value.
The adjustments that actually move the number
Once we have the comps, the real work is adjustments. Every meaningful difference between a comp and your house gets a value, positive or negative, and the comp's sale price gets moved toward what your house would have brought.
Adjustment | What we look at | Why it moves the number here |
|---|---|---|
Living area | How the square footage was measured, what counts as finished, whether below-grade space is included | Old Town floor plans and public records disagree constantly. The MLS figure and the tax record are often not the same number. |
Condition and systems | Roof, HVAC, panel, windows, kitchen and bath vintage | In older housing stock, a buyer prices the next several years of work into the offer. |
Parking | Deeded space, off-street pad, permit-only block | In Old Town, off-street parking is a line item, not a bullet point. |
Outdoor space | Usable yard, patio, roof deck, shared courtyard | Two homes with identical interior footage can sit far apart on this one. |
Condo or HOA fee | The monthly amount and what it actually covers | Buyers shop the monthly payment. A higher fee reduces the price a buyer can reach at the same payment. |
Position on the block | Corner lot, alley access, arterial frontage, walking distance to Metro | Two doors apart is not the same address. |
Terms of the comp sale | Seller subsidy, as-is sale, rent-back, unusual timing | A closed price that included a seller subsidy does not net the same as one that didn't. |
That last row is the one sellers rarely see coming. The recorded price is the headline. The terms underneath it are the story, and they are why we read the full history on a comp instead of the summary line.
The Alexandria facts that change the comp set before we adjust anything
Historic district review
If your house sits in the Old and Historic Alexandria District or the Parker-Gray District, exterior work goes through the Board of Architectural Review. That shapes what a past owner was able to do, what a buyer can plan, and which sales are genuinely comparable. A renovated kitchen reads the same in any neighborhood. A replaced window does not. We check what was approved and what wasn't, and we say so early, because it surfaces in the disclosure package regardless.
Flood hazard areas
Parts of the Old Town waterfront and the ground along Four Mile Run fall inside special flood hazard areas. Where that applies, flood insurance becomes part of the buyer's monthly cost, and the comp set narrows to homes carrying the same requirement. This is a disclosure and prep item, not a verdict on a block. We pull the flood map for the specific parcel rather than assuming the neighborhood.
Soils, aircraft, and commute geography
Marine clay in parts of the West End changes what a home inspection turns into. Homes under the National approach carry aircraft noise. Proximity to Fort Belvoir, the Mark Center, and the Pentagon shapes who is shopping in a given month, and military moves cluster in the summer.
None of that is a judgment about a block. All of it is knowable before we price, and all of it belongs in the analysis instead of surfacing during inspections.
What a CMA is not
It is not your assessment. The City of Alexandria assesses property for tax purposes on its own schedule and its own method. That figure answers a different question. If you want the assessed-value-vs-market-value breakdown first, see What's My Alexandria Home Worth.
It is not an automated estimate. Those tools average public records at scale. They do not know your kitchen, your parking, or your flood zone.
And it is not a promise. We can show you what similar homes sold for and where we believe yours sits against them. We cannot tell you what a buyer will do next month, and we won't pretend otherwise.
What you get at the end
A pricing range rather than a single number, with the comps that produced it. The adjustments, itemized, with what each one was worth. The active listings your house will be shown against. And a plan for the first two weeks, because price and strategy are one conversation: where you start, what we do if showings come but offers don't, and what a price improvement looks like if you need one.
We would rather over-explain the math than hand you a number and ask you to trust it.
Where these figures come from
Every market figure above comes from Bright MLS: closed sales and median sale price for July 2026, homes for sale for August 2026, reported under the geography labels Bright MLS publishes. MLS counts revise as late sales report, so read these as the picture at the reporting date rather than a permanent record. For a broader read on where the Alexandria market stands right now, see our market pulse update.
If you're thinking about selling
The useful move is getting the analysis early, while there's still time to decide whether a repair is worth doing and whether you want to be on the market before or after the summer moving season.
We would rather give you a straight read now than a listing appointment later. We work the whole market, small condos through the high end, and the pricing conversation looks the same at both ends: real comps, honest adjustments, no theater.
Elizabeth Lucchesi and The LizLuke Team are on these blocks every week. If you want to talk through what your house would look like as a comp, reach us through lizluke.com or give us a call.
It starts with a conversation.
The LizLuke Team at LONG & FOSTER REAL ESTATE INC. 110 N Royal St, 3rd Floor, Alexandria, VA 22314. Office 703.683.0400. The LizLuke Team (703) 868-5676. Virginia License #0225069250.
Equal Housing Opportunity.
All information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
This is general information and is not legal or tax advice.
