In March 2026, a five-bedroom colonial on Woodacres Drive sold for $1,970,000. It's a resale in one of Bethesda's older, established pockets, the kind of house that comes with a renovation history rather than a builder warranty. At 4,200 square feet, that works out to roughly $469 a square foot.
A few blocks away, EYA was still finishing the last phase of new townhomes at Westbard Square, its brownstones priced from $1,149,900 to $1,599,900 across 2,385 to 3,470 square feet. Run the same math and the base pricing lands between about $461 and $482 a square foot, before a buyer adds a single upgrade.
Same corner of Bethesda, within months of each other. And the older resale did not cost meaningfully less per square foot than the brand-new construction going up around the corner from it.
That's the part of this comparison most buyers get wrong going in. The instinct is that new construction should carry a clear premium over its space, since everything is under warranty and nothing needs replacing for a decade. At Westbard, that premium mostly isn't there. What's actually happening is two different products clearing at similar numbers for very different reasons, and knowing why matters more than the headline price on either listing.
The Two Deals, Side by Side
| Westbard Square brownstone (new construction) | Woodacres resale (established) | |
|---|---|---|
| Recent price point | Base pricing $1,149,900 to $1,599,900 | $1,970,000 sale, closed March 2026 |
| Square footage | 2,385 to 3,470 | 4,200 (this example) |
| Price per square foot | Roughly $461 to $482, before options | About $469; other recent sales on the same street have averaged closer to $555 |
| Outdoor space | Shared green space and a plaza; private yard is an option on select lots | Private lot typical of Woodacres, often in the 7,800 to 8,000 square foot range, with mature tree canopy |
| Systems | New, all-electric, under builder warranty | Original age varies; several recent sales advertise kitchen additions and updated baths |
| HOA | Yes | No |
| Walk to retail | Giant Food, Tatte Bakery, Silver & Sons BBQ, Piccoli Piatti, Starbucks, all within the same plaza | Short drive or walk to the same retail node |
The city-wide numbers don't contradict this. Across greater Bethesda, the three months ending in May 2026 produced a median sale price of $1.3 million, up 3.1 percent year over year, with a median price per square foot of $479, down 1.8 percent over that same stretch. A separate tracker's August 2026 read put the figure closer to $428 a square foot. Different methodologies land in different places, but even the more conservative number sits close enough to both Westbard's base pricing and the Woodacres comps that neither product is clearly winning on a pure dollars-per-square-foot basis. They're overlapping, not competing on the same axis.
The Line Item the Base Price Doesn't Show You
Here's where the comparison gets more interesting than a spreadsheet of square footage. Westbard's townhomes carry recurring costs that never show up in the $1,149,900 headline number, and a Woodacres resale doesn't have an equivalent.
- A market-rate HOA fee of $240 a month, which covers landscaping, snow removal on the private streets and alleys, and upkeep of the plaza and green space
- An initial capital contribution equal to four months of that HOA fee, due at closing
- A private water and sewer submetering charge of $1,540 a year, billed separately through a third-party vendor, running for thirty years, on top of actual usage
Add the HOA fee and the thirty-year water and sewer charge together and a Westbard owner is carrying roughly $2,880 to $4,420 a year in fixed costs a Woodacres buyer simply doesn't have, since Woodacres has no HOA and pays county water and sewer rates tied only to consumption. Over three decades, that's a six-figure gap in carrying costs that never appears when you're standing in a model home comparing granite to quartz. It's the kind of detail that surfaces in the HOA disclosure packet during a contract review, not on the sign out front.
Why the Old House Isn't Losing Ground
None of this means Westbard is overpriced. It means the two products are being valued for different things, and the market is pricing both of those things at close to parity right now.
The Woodacres sale that closed at $469 a square foot sits within walking distance of Woodacres Elementary, on the kind of private, tree-lined lot that doesn't exist inside Westbard's HOA footprint. A different recent sale on the same street, cited by Redfin as a comparable, priced even higher, averaging $555 a square foot for homes sold in that block between $1 million and $2 million. Buyers there are paying for land, canopy, and a house that already has additions and renovations baked into it, not for the promise of a new roof.
Westbard's buyers are paying for something Woodacres can't offer at any price: a townhome you can walk out of and be inside Giant Food, Tatte Bakery & Café, or Silver & Sons BBQ in under two minutes, on a system that's brand new and under warranty from day one. That's a real trade, and both phases of EYA's townhomes sold out fast enough to suggest plenty of buyers wanted exactly that trade. The math isn't broken. It's just not the math most people expect walking in.
What's Still Being Built Around Both
The retail lineup at Westbard didn't happen all at once, and it isn't finished. Giant Food, Tatte, Silver & Sons BBQ, Piccoli Piatti Pizzeria, and Starbucks are open and operating inside the plaza. A tower crane went up in June 2026 for Greystar's final 200-unit apartment building on the site, the last phase of the redevelopment, with delivery expected around mid-2027.
That last piece matters for anyone comparing the two neighborhoods today. The apartments won't be owner-occupied comps, so they won't move the resale math for either Westbard's townhomes or Woodacres' colonials directly. But they will add roughly 200 more households within a few minutes' walk of the same Giant, the same bakery, the same barbecue counter, which tends to support the retail base that makes the whole plaza function. Woodacres, by contrast, isn't adding supply. It's a built-out neighborhood with a fixed number of lots, which is part of why a well-placed resale there can still command $555 a square foot even against brand-new construction two streets over.
What This Means If You're Choosing Between the Two
If you're cross-shopping Westbard against an older Bethesda neighborhood like Woodacres, the question isn't which one costs less. On the numbers available right now, they don't differ by much per square foot. The real question is which fixed costs you're comfortable carrying and which trade-offs matter to your daily life.
A Westbard buyer is trading a private yard and a fixed HOA bill for brand-new systems, a warranty, and a two-minute walk to dinner. A Woodacres buyer is trading a walk to retail for a private lot, no HOA, and a house whose renovation history you'll need to read carefully, since "updated" can mean anything from a new water heater to a full kitchen and bath overhaul. Neither choice is a discount on the other. They're two different bets on what a dollar of Bethesda real estate should buy you.
Does the Westbard HOA fee ever go away? No. The $240 monthly fee and the thirty-year water and sewer charge are structural, not introductory. They're disclosed in the HOA documents you'll review during the contract period, and they should be budgeted the same way you'd budget a mortgage payment.
Are the Woodacres numbers typical of the whole neighborhood, or just this block? Worth checking block by block. The two Woodacres sales referenced here, one at $469 a square foot and nearby comps averaging $555, both sit close to Woodacres Elementary and reflect homes with documented additions. A smaller or unrenovated house a few streets over could land meaningfully lower.
If you're trying to figure out which side of that trade fits your family, or you own a house in an older Bethesda neighborhood and want a realistic read on what a renovation would actually add to your resale number against new construction like Westbard, that's exactly the conversation Dallen Russell has with clients before any offer gets written. Book a free consultation. Coffee's on me.
