HousingWireHousingWire
Agent Janice Pouch had a listing go up in February for a single-family house in a desirable part of Washington, D.C., where homes typically don’t last long.
She had no reason to think that wouldn’t be the case this time either, especially after a packed open house during its first weekend on the market. Instead, it got only one offer among the 40 people who showed up to see it, and that offer was below the list price.
“I was in shock, truthfully,” said Pouch, a Compass agent. “Two or three people walked in and said they really want to buy a house, but need to wait and see what’s going to happen.”
What they were waiting to see was whether they were going to have a job or not.
President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce has put Washington, D.C., residents and the housing market there on edge. Through his administration’s U.S. DOGE Service, mass layoffs have occurred across virtually every federal department and agency.
While some of these layoffs are currently held up in court or have been reversed, the ripple effect has prompted many to leave their positions voluntarily. And it doesn’t only impact civil servants as many private businesses in D.C. are tied to the federal government.
It has also put many homebuyers in a holding pattern. Altos data shows that inventory for condominiums in D.C. is currently up 59.2% on a 90-day rolling average, compared to 29.1% for single-family homes. It’s a similar story for new listings as condos are up 29% annually and single-family homes are up 17%.
While inventory is rising substantially all over the country, D.C. is outpacing the rest of the U.S. At the national level, inventory is up 32.5% year over year and new listings are up 9.6% on a 90-day rolling average.
“There were a few weird weeks [of data] that we kind of discounted because weekly data are so messy,” Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturtevant of tracking the D.C. market.
“But now that we have two and a half months, we have consistently seen the supply out there growing much faster in the D.C. market than it is in other places. Is that DOGE? Is that just general economic uncertainty? I don’t know, but it’s building a narrative.”
There’s enough evidence to think that upheaval in the federal government is having an impact.
A poll conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University found that 20% of D.C. residents are seriously considering leaving the city. This number rises to 45% among households that had someone lose their job as a result of DOGE-driven cuts.
The condo market — which makes up the bulk of owner-occupied housing in Washington, D.C. —has been particularly sluggish.
On the demand side, pending new sales of condos (-9.1%) are down by more than that of single-family homes (-7.3%). Meanwhile, the median price of pending new sales is rising faster for single-family homes (+7.4%) than for condos (+2.4%).
Some homeowners are in a position where they don’t have much choice but to sell despite poor conditions. Redfin agent Stuart Naranch said that condo owners who don’t want to be landlords are selling for less than they paid — including one who sold for $100,000 less.
“Sellers have to be really realistic with what they can get with so many choices the buyers have,” Naranch said. ”If you bought within the past four years, maybe you’re getting what you paid for it.”
While federal layoffs have impacted residents and appear to be dragging down parts of the housing market, it’s uncertain whether the effects will be as dramatic as the headlines related to the layoffs.
Some of the layoffs are depending on court decisions, and other workers are deciding on whether to take the early buyouts offered to some by DOGE. This could spread out job losses in a way that makes it more difficult to find signals in the data beyond rising inventory and sluggish sales.
Robbie Cook, a partner at D.C.-based brokerage McWilliams Ballard, believes the people who would’ve left as a result of DOGE actions likely did so at the beginning of Trump’s term.
“When the DOGE thing was going crazy, everybody reacted,” Cook said. “If they were going to move, they did, but we haven’t seen some giant upswell in federal employees trying to leave. Those ripples have already normalized.”
