Here are two numbers from the same corner of Loudoun, from the same spring, and they point in opposite directions.
In April, the median sale price in the 20165 zip code, which takes in Cascades, Lowes Island, Countryside and Potomac Falls, was $800,000. That was up 10.3 percent from a year earlier, roughly $75,000.
Over the three months ending in May, the median for the Cascades subdivision itself was $679,593. That was down 6.5 percent.
If you own a home in Cascades, you could read either one of those and walk away with a very different feeling about your equity. Both numbers are accurate. Both come from Bright MLS. They are measuring different things, and once you see how, the contradiction goes away.
The first difference is the map. The zip code is a big area, with homes that sell for anywhere from under $300,000 to over $2 million. When a few of the larger homes close in a given month, they pull the middle number up. The subdivision figure only counts homes inside the named community. Different set of houses, different middle.
The second difference is the calendar. The zip figure is a single month, built on 33 sales. The subdivision figure is a median over three months. One month with a few dozen closings can swing hard on three or four of them. Three months smooths that out. Neither approach is wrong, but a single month is a lot jumpier than people assume.
The third thing is the part I pay the most attention to, because it is where the two sets of numbers agree.
In April, homes in the zip sold at 100.9 percent of asking, with a median of 11 days on market. Over the past twelve months that median was 7 days. At the end of April there were 25 homes for sale in the entire zip, against 33 that sold that month. That is less than one month of supply, and active listings were down about 17 percent from the year before. Inside the subdivision, homes sold at 102 percent of asking. Price per square foot there was $296, right in line with Loudoun as a whole at $294.
A neighborhood where values are actually slipping does not look like that. Buyers were paying full price or a little more, and they did not have much to choose from. What moved was the mix of homes that happened to close, and the size of the area someone decided to measure.
I bring this up because the first number a seller hears tends to become the number they hold onto. If a neighbor saw the 10 percent headline and told you your house is up $75,000, you might list high and spend the first three weeks, the ones that matter most, watching buyers skip past you. If you saw the 6.5 percent drop, you might price below where the market is, or decide to wait a year for no reason. Both mistakes cost real money, and both start with a number that was never about your house.
What your home will sell for comes from a much smaller group: the handful of recent sales that look most like it. Same section, similar size, similar condition, closed in the last few months. In an area with this much range, that might be four homes, not forty. That short list is what I build a price on, and it usually tells a calmer story than either headline.
If you are in Cascades or anywhere in Potomac Falls and want to see which sales actually line up with your house, I am glad to pull them for you. Call or text 571-496-9009 and we will go through them together, whenever you are ready.
Source: Bright MLS, April 2026 (zip 20165, single month) and three months ending May 2026 (Cascades subdivision); Loudoun County price per square foot, June 2026.