Washington DC Multifamily Market Report, November 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

Small DC apartment building values have stabilised. They have not recovered. The weak spot is volume.

My own closed comps count 186 buildings of 1 to 20 units sold in the 12 months to 5 November. The year before, 258 sold. Dollar volume fell about 30%, from $304.6M to $212.8M.

Key metrics for your segment

CoStar figures are for DC buildings of 0 to 20 units, 10 November against 8 September. The right column is the CoStar 4 or more unit market, for context only.

Metric	Your segment (0-20 units)	4 or more units (context)
Vacancy	9.4%, unchanged since September	9.1%
Average asking rent per unit	$1,807, down 0.8% from $1,821	$2,304
Market cap rate	7.3%, up from 7.2%	5.8%
CoStar market sale price per unit	$201K, down from $209K	$313K
Twelve-month absorption	minus 34 units, from minus 105	3,855 units
Units under construction	172, from 163	6,318

Sources: CoStar November 2026 DC multifamily Search Analytics, 0 to 20 units and 4 or more units, report date 2026-11-10, ref 6297068.

Small buildings trade at about 64% of the 4-plus price per unit, at a cap rate 1.5 points higher.

The value read

The median sale price is $206,250 per unit, against $200,000 in the prior 12 months. On paper, that is a 3.1% rise.

Do not read that as a recovery. The raw median moves with the mix of buildings that happen to sell in a given year. My quality-adjusted index for 3 to 20 unit buildings strips out that mix, and it reads flat.

1. The mix-adjusted median was $179,946 per unit in Q3 2026, against $180,826 in Q3 2025, down 0.5%.
2. The smoothed index rose 0.2% year over year in Q3, on 36 sales. Both measures sit within half a percent of zero.
3. It fell 2.2% in Q2.
4. The partial Q4 reads down 1.9%, on only 12 sales.

The raw median rose. The quality-adjusted index is flat. The right word is stable.

October’s median of $266,471 per unit came from just 16 sales. That sample is too thin to call a trend.

The sales that did close moved faster and closer to ask. Median days on market fell to 79 from 95.5. The median sale closed at 98.3% of asking price, up from 94.7%. The median deal was a 4-unit building.

My own comps show a reported cap rate median of 6.95% on 24 reported sales, against 6.96% the year before. That sample is thin, so treat it as a direction only.

Supply and listings

New small-building supply is thin. CoStar counts 172 units under construction in DC buildings of 0 to 20 units, against 163 in September and an inventory of 26,850 units across 3,300 buildings.

The 4-plus unit market has 6,318 units under construction and absorbed 3,855 units over the past 12 months. At most 172 of those units sit in buildings of 20 units or fewer. The rest is larger product.

On the selling side, CoStar tracks 195 DC multifamily listings for sale as of 10 November. Of those, 159 are active, 34 are under contract and 2 are in escrow. CoStar’s own sale comps for 0 to 20 unit buildings show 85 sales so far in 2026, covering 625 units and $120M, with a median cap rate of 6.8% on 14 reported sales.

Your block is not the average

DC is not one market. Here is the three-year change in median price per unit, for well-sampled submarkets only:

Submarket	3-year change
Trinidad	-19.5%
Congress Heights	-18.8%
Anacostia	-18.0%
Shaw	-16.3%
Marshall Heights	-10.5%
Capitol Hill	-10.2%
Glover Park	-3.2%
Adams Morgan	+3.7%
Brightwood Park	+4.8%
Brookland	+8.4%

Trinidad carries the deepest sample, with 115 recent sales against 216 prior. Four of these ten submarkets fell more than 16% over three years. Brookland rose 8.4%. That is a spread of almost 28 points inside one city, so your submarket sets your number more than the citywide median does.

(My own closed comps, three-year change by submarket. Submarkets with thin or distorted samples are left out.)

What it means for you

Run one check before you talk to any lender.

1. Multiply your unit count by $206,250.
2. Compare the result to your loan balance.
3. If your loan matures in the next 18 months, book a broker opinion of value this month.

Here is the math on a six-unit building. Six units at $206,250 per unit is $1,237,500. That figure is illustrative median math. Your submarket and your rent roll will move it.

With 28% fewer sales than the year before, fewer recent comps sit behind any appraisal. Know your number before the bank orders its own.

Want the full pre-refinance walkthrough? Download the NOI Navigator checklist.

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.

Sources and notes

• CoStar November 2026 DC Multifamily Search Analytics, ref 6297068, report date 2026-11-10, filtered to 0 to 20 units and to 4 or more units. Source of vacancy, asking rent, market cap rate, market sale price, absorption, construction and inventory.
• CoStar sale comps and listings export, 2026-11-10. Source of the 85 sales, $120M, 6.8% median cap rate and the 195 listings.
• remax-intel, build 2026-11-10. Proprietary read of closed DC comps, 1 to 20 units, from CoStar and Bright MLS, from 2019 to 2026-11-05. Source of the closed-sale counts and volume, median price per unit, days on market, sale-to-asking ratio, the reported cap rate, the submarket figures and the quality-adjusted index.

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

• September’s figures have been revised as later sales were reported; this report uses the updated data.
• The reported cap rate of 6.95% comes from 24 sales. Treat it as a direction, not a precise figure.
• Bright MLS data covers buildings of 3 to 4 units only. Crexi deed-only sales are left out of the value figures.
• The quality-adjusted index covers 3 to 20 unit buildings. The closed-comp counts cover 1 to 20 units. CoStar’s search covers 0 to 20 units. The audience for this report is 4 to 20 units.
• Closed sales run through 5 November. The latest weeks are light because sales are reported with a lag.