Washington DC Multifamily Market Report, September 2026

This is the DC small-building market read I run for myself before I price one of my own properties. It is built for owners of 4 to 20 unit buildings, not for institutions and not for the citywide average. Every number below names its source.

Prepared by Shafiq Hirani, MBA, CCIM. Real estate advisor, owner, and broker of small multifamily in DC.

The bottom line

Your DC building is worth about 7% less per unit than it was a year ago, and rent is not the reason. My own closed comps put the median small-building value at $191,894 per unit, down from $206,750. Flat rent, rising vacancy, and buyers who now demand a higher yield did the work. The citywide multifamily headline hides all of it, because that headline is carried by institutional towers that have nothing to do with your building.

Why the headline misleads you

You will read that DC multifamily values slipped just 1.3% over the year, to about $308,000 per unit, at a 5.8% cap rate (CoStar September 2026 DC report, ref 6297068). That number is real. It is also not your market.

That figure averages roughly 235,000 units across the city, in buildings that average 42 units each. A new 200-unit tower downtown sits inside the same number as your six-unit walk-up. Filter to 4 to 20 unit buildings and the picture changes hard. Cap rates run at 7.2%, not 5.8% (CoStar September 2026 DC 0-20 unit report, ref 6297068). Actual closed values fell about 7% per unit, not 1.3%, in my own closed comps. The gap between those two readings is the whole point of this report. If you price your building off the citywide number, you will price it wrong.

Key metrics for your segment

The left column is the 4 to 20 unit market, your market. The right column is the all-multifamily number, for context only.

Metric	Your segment (0-20 units)	All-multifamily (context)
Vacancy	9.4%, up from 8.7%	9.4%, down from 10.2%
Average asking rent per unit	$1,821, up 0.4%	$2,308, up 0.6%
Cap rate	7.2% (CoStar) / 7.5% (my comps)	5.8%
Median value per unit	$191,894, down 7% YoY (my closed comps)	$308,000, down 1.3%
Buildings sold, trailing 12 months	168, down from 223	179 transactions
Days on market	about 80	n/a
Units under construction	163, down 23.9%	5,906, up 19%

Sources: CoStar September 2026 DC 0-20 unit report, ref 6297068, for vacancy, asking rent, the 7.2% cap rate, and construction. My own closed comps (1,541 DC sales through 2026-07-27, detailed in Sources below) for median value, the 7.5% comp-read cap rate, buildings sold, and days on market. CoStar models the 0-20 segment value at about $209,000 per unit, close to flat; see the note under this table for why I lead with the closed comps.

One green shoot sits inside this. The quality-adjusted price index for 3 to 20 unit buildings turned positive, up 2.9% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, after a down 2025, in my own data. That looks like a tentative bottom. Not a recovery, but the fall has slowed.

A note on the value number, because two sources read it differently. CoStar models the market value of a 0-20 unit building at about $209,000 per unit, close to flat at down 0.2%. My closed comps, which are actual sales, show the median down about 7%. Both are true. CoStar models a stable market value. Real closings fell harder on mix and on negotiation, and CoStar’s own sale-to-asking spread of 5.1% supports the softer read. I lead with the closed comps, because that is the price a real buyer paid, and that is the number your lender’s appraiser will anchor to.

What it means for you

Value. Run the median math on your own building. A six-unit building at $191,894 per unit is about $1,151,000. A year ago, at $206,750 per unit, it was about $1,240,500. Roughly $89,000 of value gone in a year, on the same bricks. That is illustrative median math, not your exact building, but it is the math you can run on your own unit count today.

Refinance. This is where the value drop bites. If your loan matures in the rolling window of the next 18 months, the appraisal that resets your terms will land in this softer market. Know your real number before the bank orders its own.

Here is the one check to run before you talk to any lender:

• Multiply your unit count by $191,894. That is your rough value at today’s median.
• Compare it to what you owe.
• Look at your refinance date. If your loan matures in the next 18 months, book a broker opinion of value this month.

On a building worth over a million dollars, the gap between your guess and the real figure is what sets your refinance terms. Do not let the appraiser be the first person in the room who knows the number.

Hold versus sell. The buyers who are active are disciplined. Only 168 small buildings sold in the past year, down from 223, deals are closing about 5.1% under asking, and they are taking around 80 days (my own closed comps and CoStar). If you have to sell in this window, price to the real number or you will sit. If you can hold, almost no new small supply is coming to compete with you. Only 163 small units are under construction in DC, down 23.9%. The 5,906 units going up across the wider market are institutional towers, not four to twenty unit buildings. Your competition is not growing.

Your block is not the average

DC is not one market, and the citywide number can hide a swing of nearly sixty points between two neighborhoods. Over three years, per unit:

• Brightwood Park is up 38.6%.
• Anacostia is down 5.1%.
• Trinidad is down 10.9%.
• Capitol Hill is down 20.9%.

(My own closed comps, three-year change by submarket.) An owner on one block held value while an owner two miles away lost a fifth of theirs. Your submarket, not the citywide median, decides your real number.

Your building’s number

This report is the DC-wide picture for small buildings. Your building’s number is different, and your submarket and refinance timing change it again.

If you want the exact read for your property, I will run a report for your specific address and unit count, plus a no-cost NOI review. That is the same work I do on my own buildings before I price them. Request it through the Value Navigator, or download this report as a PDF.

Sources and notes

• CoStar September 2026 DC Multifamily Report, ref 6297068, report date 2026-09-08. Source of the all-multifamily context figures and, through its 0-20 unit filter, the segment vacancy, asking rent, 7.2% cap rate, and construction count.
• remax-intel, build 2026-09-08. Proprietary read of 1,541 closed DC comps, 0-20 units, from 2019 to 2026-07-27. Source of the median closed value per unit, the 7.5% comp-read cap rate, buildings sold, days on market, the submarket three-year figures, and the quality-adjusted index.

Honest caveats, because you are making real decisions on this.

• The remax-intel reported-cap-rate read of 7.5% comes from a small sample of 19 deals. Treat it as a direction, not a precise figure. It cross-checks well against CoStar’s 7.2%.
• The remax-intel data window ends 2026-07-27, about six weeks behind the CoStar September snapshot. The two sources are close in time but not identical.
• Vacancy, asking rent, rent growth, and construction come only from the CoStar 0-20 unit filter, not from the remax-intel engine.
• CoStar’s headline report shows two different trailing sales-volume figures for all multifamily that I could not reconcile, so I left both out. For the segment that matters to you, trailing small-building volume was about $167M across 123 CoStar transactions, and about $206M across 168 remax-intel closed comps. The two use different windows and counting methods, which is why they differ.