With President Trump and his DOGE team slashing government waste, and with massive layoffs and firings of government workers, a glut of real estate is coming to market in the DC metro area.
If you’ve ever been house hunting, there is a good chance you’ve been to realtor.com to take a look at listings. The “Map” button at top right will show the listings on a map of the area you are searching. You will typically see three types of listings:
- Existing listings, which have the price in a white bubble. These generally constitute most of the listings.
- “New” listings, which have the price listed in a bubble, along with a blue header that states “New.”
- “Coming Soon” listings, which also have the price in a bubble, and also a green header that states “Coming Soon.” These usually make up a very small percentage of the listings.
Based on all the “New” and “Coming Soon” listings for the DC Metro area right now, there is a mass exodus taking shape.
This is a map of Fairfax County, VA from realtor.com. There is an abundance of blue “New” listings, with an incoming wave of green “Coming Soon” listings.
By contrast, below from the Dallas suburbs is a map of listings in Grapevine, TX. This is more typical. These maps look rather different, don’t they?
Below is the map of listings for Washington, DC proper. Again, there is a sea of green “Coming Soon” listings.
The DC Metro area has been virtually recession-proof for decades, as it had a rock-solid business model of extracting money from the citizenry, sending it to Washington, then disbursing it to government employees and hangers-on. Government was the local industry, but that seems to be changing. At a minimum, there is a massive downsizing occurring.
It will be fascinating to see what happens to this wave of real estate. These listings appear pricey, consistent with the historical wealth that comes from feeding at the government trough, but prices are already coming down rapidly, as there are clearly not enough replacement buyers for those being displaced.
Where will all these soon-to-be-former DC residents go? Displaced government employees will overwhelmingly have left-wing politics. Maybe they can go to California and try to get a new start there. They’d be just like Dust Bowl migrants heading to California, except rather than looking for manual labor jobs, they’ll be seeking taxpayer-funded “remote work.” Gavin Newsom ought to be able to accommodate them.
Domestic migrants in the 1930s were called “Okies.” What should we call the caravans of people leaving DC?
One political benefit that may come from this is that a mass-exodus of government-dependent residents from the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington could help tilt Virginia further back toward the red column. Without Fairfax and surrounding counties, which are realistically more a part of DC than of Virginia, the Old Dominion state would be solid Republican.
It looks like the Maryland suburbs of DC are also about to see an exodus too. Here is the realtor.com map of Prince George’s County. The state of Maryland currently has eight seats in Congress (seven of which are held by Democrats) and 10 electoral votes. Perhaps each of those numbers can be reduced upon the 2030 census if Maryland is de-populating due to DOGE.
Beyond those receiving money directly from the government, the area surrounding DC has become the wealthiest region in the country due to the cascade of money transferred from taxpayers to the DC Metro area. Per this chart (below) attributed to information provided by the Census Bureau for 2020, four of the seven wealthiest counties in the United States are northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. These include the nation’s two wealthiest counties, Loudoun and Falls Church.
While I do not relish economic harm falling on those not directly receiving taxpayer money, this obscene transfer of wealth needs to stop, and it looks like it is being stopped. The DC real estate market and overall economy are in for a big change.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]