Between January 1 and October 2, 2026, the District's standard estate docket passed case number 2026-ADM-001079 — roughly 5.7 new estate administrations every court day. Two in five of them involve real property in DC.
What this report is, and where the numbers come from
The D.C. Superior Court Probate Division publishes its docket case by case, but it does not publish a summary of it. So there is no public answer to the questions families and attorneys ask us most often: how common is this, how many DC houses are sitting inside an estate right now, and where are they.
We track the standard estate docket — the 2026-ADM series maintained by the Office of the Register of Wills — case by case as it is opened, and we record one thing about each: whether the petition lists real property located in the District, and if so, which part of the city it is in. Everything below is aggregated from that running count.
Coverage window: January 1 – October 2, 2026 (cases through 2026-ADM-001079). Universe: standard estate administrations (the ADM series). Small estates, guardianships, conservatorships, trust matters and foreign/ancillary proceedings are outside this count, so the true number of DC families dealing with an inherited property is higher than what follows.
The headline numbers
| Measure | Jan 1 – Oct 2, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Highest standard estate case number tracked | 2026-ADM-001079 |
| Approximate pace | ~5.7 new estates per court day |
| Annualized pace | ~1,400 standard estates a year |
| Cases where the petition lists DC real property | 430 |
| Share of estates involving a DC property | ~40% |
| Of those, condominium or unit-style addresses | 72 (~17%) |
Two useful ways to read that. First, an inherited DC house is not an unusual situation — on the current pace something on the order of 550 to 575 District properties a year pass through a standard estate administration, which is a meaningful slice of a market that trades roughly 7,000 to 8,000 homes a year. Second, the majority of estates — about three in five — have no District real property at all, which is why generic probate advice so often misses what the families with a house actually need.
Where the properties are
Estate properties are not evenly spread across the city, and the pattern is stable month to month. Of the DC properties where the filing records a quadrant:
| Quadrant | Share of estate properties |
|---|---|
| Northwest | 42% |
| Northeast | 31% |
| Southeast | 25% |
| Southwest | 2% |
Broken down further, by ZIP code, on the subset of filings that record one. These are counts, not rates — a big ZIP code will naturally produce more of everything:
| ZIP | Roughly where | Count |
|---|---|---|
| 20011 | Petworth, Brightwood, Manor Park, 16th St Heights | 52 |
| 20019 | Marshall Heights, Capitol View, Deanwood, Benning | 35 |
| 20002 | Trinidad, Carver-Langston, Near Northeast, Ivy City | 33 |
| 20020 | Anacostia, Hillcrest, Fairlawn, Randle Highlands | 20 |
| 20032 | Congress Heights, Washington Highlands, Bellevue | 19 |
| 20018 | Brookland, Woodridge, Langdon | 16 |
| 20009 | Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, U Street | 14 |
| 20017 | Michigan Park, Brookland north, Fort Totten | 14 |
| 20003 | Capitol Hill, Hill East, Navy Yard | 10 |
| 20001 | Shaw, Bloomingdale, LeDroit Park, Truxton Circle | 9 |
One ZIP code, 20011, produces more estate properties than any other by a wide margin — about half again as many as the next one, 20019. That is what you would expect from a part of the city with a large stock of mid-century row houses and bungalows bought by families who stayed in them for forty and fifty years. The same logic explains why Ward 7 and Ward 8 ZIP codes cluster near the top: long tenure, high owner-occupancy, and a generation of original owners.
We write in depth about the neighborhoods that show up most often in this count — see our DC neighborhood pages, including Petworth, Trinidad and Carver-Langston and Marshall Heights and Capitol View.
What kind of property it is
About one in six estate properties in the District is a condominium or a unit in a multi-unit building rather than a whole house. That number matters more than it looks, because a unit sale carries a set of obligations a row house does not:
- A DC resale package from the condominium association, which the seller pays for and which takes time to produce.
- Association dues that keep accruing while the estate is open, whether or not anyone lives there.
- In some buildings, a right of first refusal or a board approval step that adds weeks to settlement.
The remaining five in six are single-family homes and row houses, which is where the District's as-is buyer pool is deepest and where condition matters least to the outcome. More on selling as-is in DC.
What the numbers mean if you are the one holding the keys
Three practical takeaways fall out of the data.
Limitations, stated plainly
- It is a count of filings, not of houses. A single estate can hold more than one property, and a handful in this window did. We count the case, not the doors.
- It is the ADM series only. Small estates, trusts, jointly held property and transfer-on-death deeds never appear on this docket, so the real number of DC homes changing hands after a death is meaningfully larger.
- Not every filing records a quadrant or ZIP. Geographic percentages are computed on the subset that does, which is why the quadrant and ZIP tables have different bases.
- Petitions can be wrong or incomplete. Values and property descriptions are as filed, and filings get amended.
- This is not legal, tax, or investment advice, and it is not a prediction of what any individual property will sell for.
Journalists, attorneys and researchers are welcome to cite these figures with attribution to DC Probate Properties. If you need a cut we have not published — by month, by ward, by property type — ask and we will run it, at the same aggregate level.
How often this updates
We refresh the count monthly as the docket advances and keep the earlier figures here, so the trend is visible rather than overwritten.
| Snapshot | Highest case tracked | Estates with DC property | Share | Unit-style |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| September 3, 2026 | 2026-ADM-000960 | 370 | ~39% | 63 (~17%) |
| October 2, 2026 | 2026-ADM-001079 | 430 | ~40% | 72 (~17%) |
The share of estates with a DC property has held steady at about two in five. The one change at the top of the ZIP table: 20019 (Marshall Heights, Capitol View, Deanwood) moved past 20002 into second place. Starting with the October snapshot we also read the quadrant and ZIP from more of the filings, which is why the location tables now rest on larger bases; the shares barely moved. Next update: early November 2026.
If you are looking at a specific DC property in an estate rather than the city-wide picture, send us the address. You will get a written opinion of what it is worth today and what it was worth on the date of death, with no listing agreement attached.
Sources: D.C. Code Title 20 (Probate); D.C. Law 25-302, the Strengthening Probate Administration Amendment Act of 2024; the Office of the Register of Wills, D.C. Superior Court Probate Division (dccourts.gov); and the D.C. Office of the Chief Financial Officer on deed transfer tax and real property tax classes (cfo.dc.gov). Rates and rules change and individual cases vary — confirm anything that affects a decision with the Register of Wills, OTR, or your own attorney or CPA.