Chris Rossi/The Gazette Four Irvington Centre in Rockville’s King Farm would be a model for proposed Health and Human Services offices.

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Sales of new condominiums in Montgomery, with 127 units, and Prince George's, with 107 units, during the past year have fallen to barely 10 percent of the peak in 2006 before the Great Recession ravaged the housing industry, according to a quarterly report by Delta Associates of Alexandria, Va.

Only 234 new condos sold during the 12 months ending June 30, compared with 2,322 in the same period five years ago. The data show the market is still unbalanced, with sales down from 356 units sold in the 12 months ending June 30, 2010. Sales rebounded some this spring, climbing to 85 from 54 units this winter. But that's still down sharply from 109 condos sold during the second quarter of 2010.

The market is more active in the Baltimore metro area, where there were 498 new condos sold during the past year, up 20 percent over the prior 12 months.

But sales are fewer than half the 1,101 units reported in the year ending June 30, 2007.

In one positive sign for sellers and agents, the Maryland suburbs showed no change in new condo prices last year, compared with declines in the rest of the Washington market. But a 25.1 percent drop in resale prices tells another story, showing that whatever the signs are flickering in the nation's economic recovery, the condo market is still lurching at the bottom in the Maryland suburbs.

"Resales are being heavily influenced by foreclosures in some jurisdictions such as Prince George’s County where prices declined 54.6 percent in the past year," the report said.

The drag on condo sales, despite few new buildings coming on the market, is reflected in the continuing glut of new unit supply. During the second quarter, the ratio of sales to inventory in Montgomery was 48 to 608, compared with 37 to 162 in Prince George’s. That translates into 4.8 years of inventory in Montgomery the most in the Washington area and 1.5 years in Prince George's.

With sales so slow, the report said that "for the most part, banks are still not willing to finance large-scale condo projects without significant pre-sales." That leaves little prospect for new building anytime soon outside Bethesda and a few other inside-the-Beltway submarkets in the Washington area.

King Farm was choice for HHS move, until it wasn't

Shifting a major Department of Health and Human Services office complex from elsewhere in Rockville to King Farm was the top choice of federal real estate officials until they were overruled, according to a detailed report by the Government Accountability Office.

Instead, officials awarded the 935,401-square-foot lease to the complex’s landlord at the Parklawn Building, according to the GAO. The GAO last month upheld the protest of competing bidders and ruled that the award process should be reopened.

About 3,000 employees work at the much-coveted complex. The 15-year lease is worth roughly $450 million.

The 20-page report shows that the King Farm plan won the nod from the General Services Administration's source selection evaluation board and was affirmed by the agency’s source selection authority. Both decided that the bid by King Farm Associates/The Penrose Group of Vienna, Va., offered a superior price advantage and access to restaurants, gas stations, hair salons and other amenities that outweighed the fact that the proposed complex was farther from a Metrorail station than Parklawn on Fishers Lane or three competing proposals in Prince George's County.

But the GSA's commissioner for the National Capital Region Public Buildings Service, who also is head of contracting activity for this region Cathleen C. Kronopolus, who was not named in the report overruled the earlier recommendations in favor of keeping HHS at Parklawn.

"She did not accept the [source selection board’s] tradeoff analysis or its recommendation for award," the report said.

The GAO concluded that the bids should be reviewed again after protests by Penrose; One Largo Metro, controlled by Peter Ng Schwartz Management; and Metroview Development Holdings in New Carrollton.

The GAO outlined Kronopolus' decision and showed a selection criteria matrix that subordinate officials developed. She concluded that Parklawn was the better choice because its Metrorail access was rated as "highly successful," which is the second-highest ranking, compared with "marginal" for King Farm, the worst ranking of all five bids. Kronopolus also cited Parklawn's superior, or highest level, access to amenities, compared with a “highly successful” rating for King Farm.

In fact, Kronopolus ranked King Farm as the worst deal for the government, at least compared with Parklawn and the two other protesting bidders, based on the percentage of superior ratings each received. She concluded that the King Farm proposal's marginal Metro access ranking "was the distinguishing difference between the offers, and selected the Fishers Lane higher-priced offer as the best value to the government," the report said.

But the GAO said that Kronopolous failed to properly weigh the quality of access to amenities within a 1,500-foot walking distance cited in King Farm's bid to fill space in the fifth and sixth buildings planned for the Irvington Center business park.

She simply counted up the total amenities King Farm offered 13 amenities from only eight amenity categories, while Parklwan offered 18 amenities in nine categories to conclude that Parklawn offered superior access, according to the report.

But the GAO said "GSA’s counting of amenity categories disregarded King Farm’s identification of three restaurants and three fast food establishments within 1,500 [feet] of its building, as compared to identification by Fishers Lane of only one restaurant and four fast food establishments within 1,500 [feet].

"In short, we find that GSA’s assignment of adjectival ratings based only upon how many amenity categories were offered was not reasonable," the GAO concluded.

The GSA has not responded to the GAO report.

Brexton Health Services buys former Transamerica building

Baltimore nonprofit Chase Brexton Health Services announced that it bought the Monumental Life Building, the former midtown Baltimore base for Transamerica Life Insurance, which signed a lease last year to move to the central business district.

Details on the price of the building, at 1111 N. Charles St., were not disclosed. The property is assessed for $5 million.

The deal will allow Chase Brexton to expand services for almost 20,000 patients. The clinic has outgrown its Mount Vernon Center, where its patient base has grown from 14,000 in 2009 to more than 17,000 last year.

The Monumental Life complex comprises four contiguous buildings built from 1925 to 1968 and totaling 192,000 square feet. Chase Brexton will continue to offer a primary care clinic for children and adults, including dental services, a full-service pharmacy and walk-in testing for HIV and other diseases.

Transamerica, a subsidiary of Dutch financial giant Aegon, signed a deal to move 700 employees in November to 100 Light St., the former Legg Mason building.

Lerner breaks ground on fifth office tower in Tysons II

Lerner Enterprises of Rockville announced that it has begun construction of an 18-story, 476,000-square-foot Class A office tower in Tysons Corner, Va. The building, at 1775 Tysons Blvd., will be the company’s fifth in the Corporate Office Centre at Tysons II.

The building near the planned Tysons Metrorail station is scheduled for occupancy during the first quarter of 2014.