Who You Work with Matters.
Online chatter by random unknown persons is no substitute for top-shelf market analysis from a real estate professional that knows our Northern Virginia real estate market.
Over the past few days, you may have heard about or read online "Reports" and Social Media posts that proclaimed the the DC real estate market is "crashing" due to the actions of DOGE relating to reductions in the Government workforce. The media has amplified these "Reports" without questioning the underlying claims.
These claims are not supported by actual data for our real estate market.
These reports/posts appear to originate with an X post last Saturday (Feb 15th) by a subscription service economic newsletter. To put it charitably, this entity had an agenda to drive eyeballs and subscriptions, so they used hyperbolic headlines coupled with data that was misleading, misstated, internally inconsistent, and otherwise non-sensical.
For example, the X post contained an assertion that house values in Washington, DC had declined by 20% since November 2024. No reliable data supports such an assertion. January house sale prices in DC were 7% lower than November sale prices, with that difference likely due to Seasonality factors and longer days on market for houses that closed in January (following a December contract date).
The other hyperbolic claim was that the amount of new listings surged over the past 30 days, allegedly in response to DOGE-related activities to reduce the Government workforce. The post contained an assertion that there are more than 8000 houses for sale (without specifying how far afield from Washington, DC allegedly included this number of listings), with 4000 houses newly listed in the last 30 days.
The facts do not support these "Reports." The Bright MLS data for our area shows no such increase in newly listed houses during the first half of February. The number of new listings for February 1-17 is consistent with the number of new listings in February 2024 and 2023.
Using Bright’s data for its defined-Washington Metro Region (i.e., Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Fairfax City, Fall Church City, Loudoun, Montgomery, Prince Georges, Frederick, & Washington, DC), the number of newly listed properties through mid-February is approximately 50% of the total number of new listings in February 2024.
I created the above chart Monday, after seeing the headlines about the weekend "crashing" post and receiving calls from several agents in my Office asking my thoughts about the post as I am known as a "Data Guy."
Yesterday, Bright posted an update on the DC Metro real estate market in response to the misleading “real estate sky is falling” reports/Social Media posts. Bright's conclusion is the same as shown in my chart above that there is no evidence of a house inventory surge.
The Bright report is at the this link.
Bright looked at data on new listings during the February 3-16 period for jurisdictions in the Greater Washington DC area (which includes jurisdictions beyond the DC Metro area category in the above chart, e.g. Prince William & Stafford Counties). Bright’s summary is as follows:
"Based on our listing data, we’re not seeing any evidence of a surge of listing activity in the Washington, D.C., region. In the broader D.C. region, defined by the counties and cities below, there were 2,829 new listings that came onto the market in the two-week period between February 3 and February 16, 2025. This is virtually unchanged from the same two weeks last year when there were 2,820 new listings on the market."
"This listing data includes both active listings as well as homes that are “coming soon” and is the best measure of new listing activity in the D.C.-area housing market. We’re simply not seeing any inventory surge."
"Although the Washington, D.C., metro area has more federal government workers than any other metropolitan area, federal government employees make up only 9% of the region’s total workforce, according to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Reductions in the overall federal workforce and back-to-the-office requirements may ultimately have some localized impacts on housing market activity; however, so far, there is nothing to suggest that those changes are having a substantial impact on the broader D.C.-area housing market."
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