It’s been just about a month since President Donald Trump took office, and already he is carrying out his campaign promise to cut swaths of federal jobs.
Thousands of government employees have been sent home in recent weeks. While the exact number of workers let go is in flux, roughly 75,000 have separately accepted a buyout option offered by the administration.
Those dismissals and other separations have led many to speculate about the potential impact on the greater Washington, D.C., housing market and whether a surge of homes will suddenly be listed for sale as newly unemployed homeowners search for greener pastures.
Exclusive Homes.com data shows that hasn’t been the case, at least not yet.
Since the beginning of January, neither D.C. nor the surrounding suburbs in Maryland and Virginia have seen any drastic changes to the number of active listings, sold properties or median sales prices, according to the data.
Moreover, when compared to the same time period a year earlier, the data show no sharp changes. Though there’s been a slight increase in the number of listings and asking prices, that trend started before the new administration took office.
Not yet in the clear
Of course, that’s not to say that there can’t or won’t be changes in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia, or DMV, housing market as the tumult in the federal workforce continues to play out.
Any big change in the size of the federal workforce is likely to drive countervailing trends. Some people could leave the area but others who once might have moved to take advantage of the region's reputation for stable government and government-related employment may decide the outlook no longer looks so bright. It's difficult to know how supply and demand will take shape.
Teasing out the effect of federal job cuts could also be difficult with the approach of spring, a time when more people tend to list their homes for sale and consider moving anyway.
One notable change taking hold in the DMV housing market, though, is an increase in ultraluxury listings and ultraluxury buyers.
Over the past month alone, there have been 13 houses in the city and its suburbs have hit the market priced at $7 million or higher, according to Homes.com. Moreover, that only accounts for houses that have been publicly listed on multiple listing services, or MLS, the online platforms real estate agents use to share their for-sale properties.
Local real estate insiders expect that trend will continue.
“I do anticipate this continuing just given, again, the shift in the way I think businesspeople are thinking about the policy that’s very quickly changing,” Daniel Heider, executive vice president and agent at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, said in an earlier interview. “These folks feel as though, economically, they’re going to do quite well.”