Fauquier County’s median sale price was up 9.5 percent from a year earlier. That is one of the bigger gains in Northern Virginia. The typical home there still took 38 days to sell.
In Loudoun, the median price was basically flat, down 0.7 percent. Homes sold in a median of 13 days, at 101 percent of asking.
If you only read the price headlines, you would guess Fauquier was the hot market and Loudoun was the slow one. On speed, it was the other way around.
I bring this up because sellers almost always ask me two things at once. What will my house sell for, and how long will it take. They feel like one question. They are two, and this year’s numbers show it pretty clearly.
Here is how a handful of counties lined up in the latest Bright MLS figures:
- Arlington: prices up 16.2 percent, 8 days on market
- Alexandria: up 7.0 percent, 28 days
- Prince William: flat, 18 days
- Loudoun: down 0.7 percent, 13 days
- Stafford: down 5.7 percent, 35 days
- Fauquier: up 9.5 percent, 38 days
Line those up by price and then by speed, and you get two different orders.
Why they come apart
The price trend compares this year to last year. Days on market tells you something else: how many buyers are out there right now for each home like yours.
In Arlington, there are a lot of buyers chasing a short supply of homes close to work, so houses go in about a week. In Fauquier, the homes vary a lot more. A house on a few acres outside Warrenton, with a well and a long gravel driveway, has a smaller pool of buyers than a townhouse two blocks from a Metro stop. It can sell for a strong price and still take longer to find the right person.
Fauquier also has far fewer sales than its neighbors, so its median can swing more from one stretch to the next depending on which homes happened to close.
What it means if you are selling
First, plan your timeline on the speed number, not the price number. This matters most when your sale and your purchase are in different markets. A lot of people I talk to are selling farther out and buying closer in. That can mean your house needs five weeks to find a buyer while the home you want gets three offers in its first weekend. That gap is the real thing to plan around. A home sale contingency, a rent-back after closing, a bridge loan, or simply selling first are all ways to handle it. Each one has a cost, and the right one depends on your numbers.
Second, a slow county median does not sentence your house to a slow sale. Thirty-eight days is the middle, not the rule. Half the homes in that county sold faster, and the ones priced against real recent sales and ready on day one are usually in that half.
Third, rising prices are not a reason to stretch the list price. Fauquier homes sold for about 99.2 percent of asking on average, a little under list, while Loudoun was at 101 percent. In the slower markets, buyers have more time to compare, and they use it. A home priced on the county headline, instead of on the three or four sales most like it, is the one that sits.
None of this predicts any one house. It is a reminder that "what is it worth" and "how fast will it go" have different answers, and you need both before you put a date on a move.
If you are trying to line up a sale in one county and a purchase in another, that is worth sitting down over. I can walk you through both sides, price and timing, before you commit to either one. Call me at 571-496-9009 whenever it is useful.
Source: Bright MLS, June 2026. Fauquier and Stafford medians are three months ending May 2026; Loudoun and Alexandria days on market are May 2026.