Condo conversion in DC, explained by someone who has actually done one.
Condo Conversion DC is an owner-side condo conversion advisory based in Washington, DC. Search this topic and you get lenders selling loans and title companies selling settlements, none of whom will tell you what the project costs or how the tenant rules actually work. This site does both, with the numbers on the page.
Converting a DC rowhouse into condos typically costs $45,000 to $110,000 on top of construction: the District charges a 5 percent conversion fee on each unit’s sale price under the Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act, condo documents and legal work run $10,000 to $20,000, survey and plats $3,000 to $6,000, a structural engineer letter $2,500 to $5,000, CASD filing and recording costs sit in the low thousands, and the paperwork tail adds several months of carrying costs after construction ends. Most projects are two-unit splits of RF-1 rowhouses or English basement carve-offs, and the whole conversion runs 12 to 24 months from purchase to final settlement. Buildings with tenants route through TOPA and the tenant election; vacant buildings apply for a vacancy exemption through DHCD’s Conversion and Sale Division. The calculator and process guide on this site break down every line.
The people ranking for this search do not do conversions.
Type the question into Google and look at who answers: a hard money lender in Gaithersburg, a nationwide lender in Illinois with a template page for every city, a title company, and one thin specialist site with no prices on it. They rank because nobody who actually runs conversions ever bothered to write things down. The result is a market where owners learn the 5 percent fee at settlement, discover TOPA after going under contract, and model six months of carrying when the paperwork takes ten.
This site is the version of the internet I wanted when I ran my first conversion: the all-in numbers, the actual process with the tenant rules stated plainly, and a phone number that reaches a person who has sat on the owner side of the table, not a loan officer working a lead list.
Three things nobody else will show you.
The all-in cost calculator
The 5 percent conversion fee, condo documents, survey and plats, the engineer letter, CASD filings, and the carrying-cost tail, itemized against your unit count and sale prices. Nobody else in this market publishes a single number.
Read it →The process, actually explained
TOPA rights, tenant election mechanics, the vacancy exemption path, and what CASD registration involves, with realistic timelines. The pages that rank today are lender blogs that skip all of it.
Read it →Basement condos, the Hill special
Carving an English basement into a sellable unit while you keep the main house: when it pencils, what the two-unit regime looks like, and the rental-history question that decides your filing path.
Read it →Neighborhood by neighborhood, with the local math.
Petworth’s proven up-down splits, the Hill’s basement carve-offs, Shaw’s half-finished rescues, Trinidad’s thin-margin frontier: each page covers what actually converts there and what it costs.
Have a specific building in mind? Talk it through.
Whether it is a Petworth rowhouse under contract, an English basement you are thinking of selling, or a conversion someone else abandoned mid-filing, describe it below. You will get a straight read on the path, the costs, and the timeline, from an investor who runs these projects, not a pitch for a loan.