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Wooo numbers! Delta Associates is out with its mid-year reports, providing a pretty in-depth picture of the area office, condo, and apartment markets. Overall, things continue to steadily improve—unless you’re looking to buy a home, of course. Here are some highlights:

(Delta Associates)

Condo market:

  • New unit sales were up 62 percent over the last year.
  • Condo sales prices sank 6.0 percent over the whole metro area, but went up 1.3 percent in the District.
  • 4,624 unsold units are actively being marketed in the metro area—the lowest level since 2003.
  • The average purchase price per square foot in the District is $465—$550 in the Central area, $435 in Mideast, $595 in upper northwest, $385 in Capitol East (see map at right).

Office market:

  • The overall office vacancy rate is 12.8 percent, up from 12.1 percent a year ago, and projected to continue rising.
  • There’s 4.6 million square feet in the pipeline, compared to 10.5 million a year ago.
  • The pre-lease rate for square footage in the pipeline is 51 percent, up from 32 percent last year.
  • Rents were down 4.2 percent during 1st half of 2010.
  • Housing prices were up 11.7 percent in the last year.

Apartments:

  • The report projects “widespread shortages in late 2011 into early 2012.”
  • The vacancy rate for investment-grade apartments is 3.1 percent, down from 4.3 percent a year ago. The national rate at 8.2 percent, making D.C. the lowest in the country.
  • Rents went up 3.6 percent over the last 12 months.
  • The pipeline is 17,309, down from a high of 36,951 units in December 2007.
  • Construction starts are still slow, at about 900 units breaking ground in each of the the first and second quarters, less than half the long-term average.
Presumably those bars will start getting bigger soon.