It’s an old dark joke among Beltway conservatives and libertarians:

A friend buys a condo on Capitol Hill or in Clarendon, and you say, “Congrats. But are you worried that Republicans will take over and the government will shrink?”

Everyone has a hearty laugh.

In the days of DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency, helmed by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk — the joke has become a bit more weighty and, for some in the bureaucratic class, a bit less funny.

A panic has hit the real estate markets of Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, and the Maryland suburbs, where 375,000 federal workers live.

“DC Housing Market Mayhem As Federal Workers Fear For Their Jobs,” blared a headline at Yahoo Finance.

Realtors rushed to the press to downplay the social media stories reporting massive sell-offs.

But some early numbers confirmed the panic. In the district, 459 homes sold in January 2025, compared to 378 last January, and the prices were down about 10% year-over-year, according to RedFin.

In Virginia’s Loudoun County, the number of listings in February’s first two weeks was 24% higher than the same period last year.

But that’s Loudoun County, which is in the second ring of suburbs outside the district — maybe it’s best to call it the “exurbs.” The county has only three Metro stops, all on the far eastern end. Leesburg is about 50 minutes from, say, the Department of Health and Human Services.

It’s also, by some measures, the wealthiest county in the nation. In short, Loudoun County is where you live if you are a pair of GS-15s making $300,000 from the spare bedrooms in your 3,000-square-foot house.

If federal workers are selling homes in Loudoun County, they might be moving to Fairfax County or the district itself because now they have to show up at the office — or so the panicking homeowners tell themselves.

Also in February, Fox News reported that the mansion and penthouse market in the district was seeing a “Trump Bump.” Demand was up for $5-million-plus homes in Georgetown, Kalorama, and neighborhoods your humble magazine writer is not even allowed to know about, boosted by lawyers, lobbyists, Trump appointees, and probably a good number of foreign oil oligarchs flocking to Trump’s Washington.

That is, the federal government is still a $6 trillion operation, and so it will never be at a loss for courtiers.