Bates Area Civic Association

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/where-we-live/wp/2015/03/30/1-million-condos-proposed-for-d-c-s-truxton-circle/

Truxton Circle, nestled between booming Bloomingdale and Shaw in Northwest Washington, has been slower to change than its neighbors.

The modest rowhouses, smaller than Bloomingdale’s Victorians, change hands quietly, with an occasional gut renovation. The 13 social service agencies packed into the small neighborhood attract a sizable population of homeless and needy citizens to the sidewalks during the day.

According to Trulia, the median sale price year-to-date for Truxton Circle is $645,000, marking a 14 percent increase since 2014.

Now, one development firm may significantly boost the upper level of the neighborhood’s price range with $1 million condos.

Ditto Residential is gathering final approvals to construct a four-unit condo building at the corner of 4th and P streets NW and New Jersey Avenue. Ditto is building two four-story houses and dividing each into two 2,200-square-foot units. Two of the units will have two bedrooms plus a den while the other two will have three bedrooms.

“It will be an outlier in terms of quality and value, but it’ll be a lot of fun for me to build,” Martin Ditto, founder of Ditto Residential, said in an interview. “This is an opportunity to create a crowning element on that corner, and the person who lives there will have the opportunity to purchase a property that they ordinarily wouldn’t have.”

The condo is priced comparably to similar properties in Shaw, just west of Truxton Circle, said Suzanne Des Marais, associate broker of  Keller Williams Realty’s 10 Square Team.

“A 2,200-square-foot condo priced at $1 million is only $454 per square foot, which is pretty typical and even low,” Des Marais said in an interview. Des Marais noted that a similarly sized condo sold for just under $1 million a few blocks away at 1401 5th St. NW.

Ditto is working with the architecture firm Dep Designs — it previously worked with the firm on the Roundhouse in Brookland and the OSLO at 6th and S street NW — and is throwing luxury elements onto every inch of the property. Advanced flooring systems, custom cabinets, integrated appliances, commercial window systems, below-grade patios crossed overhead by metal bridges and cypress exteriors all add cost to the project, Ditto said: “Nice things cost money.”