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This semi-detached Georgetown federal is a masterpiece of sophistication, sort of like a Paris Hilton DJ set, but the complete opposite.  Tall and clean-lined, it's also southfacing, so, unlike me as a child, it'll get plenty of warmth.

There's a huge, bright living room and a subdued study perfect for having a late night cigar with your pals while plotting a coup d'etat, or at least discussing fantasy football.  The formal dining room is elegant and spacious, and the kitchen sports high-end appliances and subtly sophisticated cabinets. The very fine washroom is wallpapered with ornate ink-drawn birds, and it's so nice that you'll basically have to drive to 7-11 every time you need to go to the bathroom, it's just far too disgusting of a thing to do in a room this nice.  Upstairs, the bedrooms have personality plus, and there's a fourth bedroom en suite that could also be used as a library, depending on if you own any books and/or are literate.

And then there's the breathtaking custom-built flagstone garden.  A wide flagstone-lined terrace with a sunbathing area and stairs leading down to an intimate firepit area with stone benches, I'm pretty sure this is the nicest backyard I've ever seen.  It's probably nicer than ninety percent of the actual houses I've been in.  You could have a nice sideline renting the yard out so guys could propose to their girlfriends there.  There's even a fireplace, so if she says no, he can fling the ring directly into the flames.  Even if he kept the receipt, the store probably wouldn't take it back anyway, because of the clinging reject stench.

3053 Q Street NW
4 Beds, 3.5 Baths
$1,735,000

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This wonderfully-restored Federal is over 135 years old, making it about as old as my father's suits.  (Depending on the season, he can look like anything from an extra from "Boogie Nights" to a Civil War reenactor.)  Though it has all the modern finishes you could ask for - expanded bedrooms, up-to-the-minute kitchen - it's also retained a lot of the little touches that make it so warm and inviting.  This sounds like an obvious, easy thing to pull off, but judging from all the real estate I see that try and fail to capture this vibe, it must be pretty difficult, sort of like all the women that go for the Rihanna look and end up looking like David Bowie.

The house, which is very pleasantly set back from the street, sports a quaint front porch and a small stone patio.  And the wall of the adjacent house, which isn't as set back, is covered with lush climbing vines and greenery, creating a sort of Southern gothic atmosphere.  If I lived here, I'd have a special bodysuit made with ivy leaves all over it, and then film myself standing stock-still against this wall and leaping out at terrified passersby.  Then I'd put the footage on Youtube and let the millions of clicks pay my mortgage.  (Yes, I'm half-joking, but we both know it would probably work.)

Inside, the living room is warm and inviting, with a vintage fireplace and more than a touch of period charm.  Right off the living room is the formal dining, wide and high-ceilinged, and the kitchen is outfitted with all the modern finishes you could ask for.  Upstairs, the bedrooms are generously proportioned - time to order that California king - and outside you have a nice yard, and parking secured by a rollup gate.  Located in Logan Circle which, if you ask me, is still arguably the best location in the city, with easy access to tons of amenities and neighborhoods and bars and restaurants.  You'll have access to so many options, that going out is virtually guaranteed to be an exercise in hand-wringing and paralysis, followed by a wave of regret no matter what you pick, because deep down you know something else could've been better.  Enjoy!

1219 S Street NW
2 Bedrooms, 2 Baths
$759,900

Washington DC real estate news - well, sort of news

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Rare in Georgetown (or any other neighborhood in the District), this house features a two-level floor plan, with half the first floor elevated.  The effect is of a larger, offset living space, and one in which you're guaranteed to trip on the steps in the middle of the house at least once a month, probably while carrying beverages and/or attempting a seduction.  The main living area is flooded with light, as is the dining room, thanks to some extremely oversized windows, large even by oversized window standards.

The huge master bedroom features long, wide windows and tree-filled views, and a fantastic mirrored closet.  The master bath has a really cool curtain-less shower, with a small protruding wall instead of a door or curtain.  It felt very European to me, plus you wouldn't have to worry about your significant other coming in to grab something "really quick" while you're showering, seeing you through the shower curtain, and being like, "are you shaving your chest with my razor?"  ("Um, yes, and just be glad you didn't see what I was shaving with your razor thirty seconds ago.")  The guest bedroom has fantastic built-ins and a massive skylight; definitely get your guests drunk and then crouch outside their door the next morning and howl with laughter at their moans as they're awoken by the intense midday light streaming in.

Finally, the crown jewel of this house is undeniably the garden.  Designed by Oehme Van Sweden, this backyard paradise is lush, intensely green, and decorated with a discreet Far East vibe.  (Loved the marble Buddha head.)  It's like your own little piece of Thailand, only without the eight year old pickpockets and Frenchmen wearing sarongs.

1313 28th Street NW
4 Bedrooms, 3.5 Baths
$2,695,000

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This U street home isn't at all what you think of when you hear "U Street."  (Drunk projectile vomiters, perpetual go-go music blasting at all hours.)  No, this house is a ways down U Street, where the narrow rowhouses and nightlife give way to 24/7 tranquility and homes of more stately proportions. No, the only vomiters out here are rich bulimic high schoolers.

This massive Colonial is newly-built and correspondingly pristine.  It's got that "new house" smell permeating every room, which isn't a "smell" so much as an "absence of smells," which makes sense considering how many thousands of odors have been slyly secreted over the years in the average pre-inhabited house.  There's a huge open formal living room and dining room, each of which seems as big as a regulation ice rink. The gourmet kitchen sports luxurious marble countertops and the family room (complete with fireplace) looks out, via a wall of triple-sized windows, onto the massive fenced-in backyard.  There's a large flagstone patio out there, but the rest of it is a long flat grassy area that's so big you could probably do an emergency plane landing back there.  I mean, there probably wouldn't be any survivors, but the plane would, technically, be on the ground.

Upstairs is a master bedroom suite that's truly palatial, with a sitting room and a master bath that features a massive shower and a freestanding soaking tub.  The house also features two separate libraries, so you can have one library for all those paperbacks with raised metallic lettering you buy in airports, and another for the serious literary books and statesman biographies that you're saving for when your tastes mature, which we both know will never happen.

Topping it all off, the house is one of an enclave of eight newly-built homes, so if you've got seven good friends with stellar credit and/or a million dollars lying around, you all could conceivably buy all the houses and form your own little independent breakaway republic.   I mean, it worked out so well for David Koresh!

4800 U Street NW
5 Bedrooms, 5.5 Baths
$1,895,000

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This beautiful corner home has been extensively remodeled after being vacant for decades.  I live just two blocks away and I can attest that for the past five or six years, it was the scariest, filthiest, most haunted-looking house in the neighborhood; I wouldn't even let my dog crap in the trash-strewn yard for fear it would step on a syringe and contract hepatitis B.  Now that this place has been turned into a crown jewel of the neighborhood, the crappiest scariest-looking crown has been passed down to ... crap, it's now my house!  (True story:  the sinkhole that's formed on my stoop as a result of a botched water main repair is so wide and deep that the mailman just tosses our mail onto the stairs from the sidewalk, lest he plummet to his death.)

A duplex condo, this unit has huge, oversized windows wherever you turn, flooding the living spaces with natural light.  Maybe too much natural light - I went to this open house with my girlfriend, and when we were in the light-flooded living room I caught her looking at me up and down, as if seeing me for the first time, and muttering, "wait a second, does my boyfriend look like a Depression-era Mexican standup comedian?!"  (Answer: yes.)  There are gleaming hardwood floors and recessed lighting throughout, and the kitchen sports granite countertops and beautiful custom cabinetry.

Upstairs is a similarly light-filled master bedroom (check out those closets!) and a fantastic master bath featuring side by side twin basins for those late night handwashin' competitions (what, you thought no one knew about that?), and a huge glass cube shower that's equal parts Vegas and Star Trek.  And on the roof is a fantastic 800-square-foot roof deck from which you can juuuuuust see the Washington Monument, which you will never ever look at, but which you can casually mention to people at cocktail parties as a subtle way to convey that despite all appearances to the contrary, you're actually quite annoying.

1600 8th St. NW #1
3 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
$895,000

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This stunning townhouse sports a limestone facade, which means that, what, it'll dissolve like tissue paper if exposed to Coca-Cola?  I only vaguely remember high school science class, as I was sleep-deprived and sexually frustrated the whole time.  And high.  (I just got really depressed, writing that paragraph, when I realized that nothing has changed.)

The house features a one of a kind recessed arch "porte-cochere" entrance, which is French for "always leave the outside light on or a homeless person will sleep there."  With almost six thousand square feet of space, this house sports four fireplaces AND an elevator - I was almost disappointed when I looked into the elevator and there wasn't another small fireplace inside.  The formal dining and living rooms are "Great Gatsby"-level nice, and the kitchen is huge, with a glass-enclosed eat-in dining area that looks out onto the rolling backyard.

The master bath is incredibly glamorous; you could shoot a rap video in here.  It's got more mirrors than suburban hotel's honeymoon suite (with none of the hidden cameras!), and twin vanities separated by a plush little bench, so whoever finishes getting ready first can sit there and offer super helpful unsolicited advice to the other.  ("I'd never tell you what to wear, but that dress makes you look like an obese wet clown.")  There's a stunning, presidential-quality office (with a fireplace), and au pair suite for the stunning eastern european you hired to take care of your kids.  (I'll let you decide if "kids" in this context is a euphemism or not.)  Out back is a flagstone patio, surrounded by greenery and wrought-iron fencing.

The top level is a huge entertaining area that opens onto an equally huge roof deck; I feel like the buyer of this house should have to sign a legally binding contract promisng to throw parties here.  Not using such a fantastic space would be like buying the Mona Lisa and then locking it into a closet.  It belongs to the world!

2328 Massachusetts Avenue NW
4 Bedrooms, 4.5 Baths
$3,295,000

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This 1885 red-brick Victorian was exhaustively renovated in 2006, making it the perfect blend of the best things old and new.  Sort of the opposite of my house, which is the perfect blend of the worst things old (lead paint, horribly inefficient steam radiators) and new (cheap storm windows that don't close all the way, a "Did I Do That?" Steve Urkel poster that's been permanently steamed onto my bathroom wall.)

There's an excellent foyer with a little airlock-like entryway between two doors, so cold air doesn't rush in during the winter, and which you can also use as a sort of holding pen for prospective guests.  ("Sorry, I just now noticed you're wearing flip-flops, I can't let you come into the party.  Sorry.")  The salmon-walled, glass-front-cabineted kitchen has more personality than the love child of Oscar Wilde and Nicki Minaj (so the rumors ARE true!), and opens onto a small family room, which makes a crap-ton of sense since everyone eats dinner in front of the television now anyway.  (Not only do I eat while watching television, I've starved myself for two or three hypoglycemic hours just so I could eat dinner during my favorite show.  Yes, I'm thirty-four years old.)

Upstairs you have the luxurious master bedroom suite, and a five-star marble-lined, glass-doored master bath that's so nice you could reasonably pretend you're George Clooney at his Italian Lake Como villa, just make sure you don't look into any reflective surfaces and shatter the illusion. There's a garage too, so you don't have to endure the neverending Kafkaesque hassle of street parking.  I recently had to look after a friend's car for a couple weeks while she was out of town, and I swear the city is playing a practical joke on us with those parking signs.  "Two hour parking:  All cars will be towed after ninety minutes, except on weekdays and weekends, when all parking is prohibited.  Just kidding.  Possibly."

1518 T Street NW
2 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
$1,495,000

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This 1920 modified Dutch Colonial sports a superlative front porch that's bigger than each of my first three apartments.  A big front porch is a must if you have adolescent children; it provides a place for them to go to get away from you, but keeps them close enough that you can still peek out the window during commercial breaks to make sure they aren't doing hard drugs or groping on the porch swing.  (I should know, I was caught attempting both on the porch during my teen years.)

Though it's over a century old, this house is extremely roomy, with sprawling, open rooms and an open-ish floor plan.  It's actually sort of eerie how accurately the original builders' aesthetic anticipated our contemporary tastes, sort of like if you found an old black and white photo of your grandparents and they had tattoo sleeves and lip piercings.  (Pause to imagine what your grandchildren are going to think when they look at your Facebook.)  With over 4200 square feet of space over four levels, you are guaranteed to never feel small and insignificant while between these four walls, except when your mother yet again casually mentions in an email how similar your childhood circumstances were to Barack Obama's.  The formal living room and dining room are huge and bright, and the massive kitchen was made for hosting dinner parties.  There are beautiful and authentic aged hardwood floors throughout; new hardwood is nice, but you really can't beat well-maintained old hardwood.

There's a beautifully rough-around-the-edges attic, with exposed rafters and unfinished wood floors, that would make a picture-perfect artist's garret, if you're into Les Miz reenactments. Way down below is a huge semi-finished concrete-floored basement that's perfect for storage, or using as a dungeon, if you're a pervert.  (I mean that in a good way, I don't trust anyone who's not a little perverted.)  Out back is a two-car garage, for your two cars, or your one sloppily diagonally parked car because why not, in a hundred years we'll all be dead.

3717 Ingomar Street NW
5 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths
$999,999