"Our lease was about to expire and we didn't want to renew it for another year while we waited for a place to be built," Anita Knighton said.

It didn't matter to the Knightons that an older house meant redecoration and repairs. "We'd rather do the repairs ourselves than deal with a builder's punch list," said Knighton, who only a week after she moved in in late October began repainting her brown kitchen cabinets a bright white. "I enjoy doing the repairs because it makes me learn about the house."

Molly and Edward Newberry also looked at new homes. But it was the trees of the older neighborhoods that drew them to a 22- year-old house in McLean. They settle next month. "The biggest concern we had with new construction was that there are often no trees," said Molly Newberry. "The lot we're buying has so many trees we might have to take a few down."

The Knightons and Newberrys are indeed a sign of the times. Statistics by area realty associations and home builders show that sales of older, existing homes have been increasing steadily through most of 1997 while new-home sales have remained almost flat... Time pressures have also helped spark existing home sales, agents noted. Most new-home communities are in the outer suburbs, which means long commutes for Washingtonians. The alternative is to buy existing homes closer to town,said Stephen Israel, president of Buyer's Edge, an exclusive buyer brokerage firm. "There aren't many good new-home sites inside the Beltway or even close to the Beltway," Israel said...