Washington, DC home sales tumble amid National Guard presence

Across the country, contracts for home sales are slipping, especially in major markets like New York and Chicago.

But pending sales have plunged the most in Washington, D.C. — likely due to seasonal trends that hit the nation’s capital particularly hard and a barrage of news stories that haven’t necessarily painted the city in the best light.

From Aug. 4 through Aug. 31, pending sales — deals that went into contract — fell by 10.6 percent compared to the prior four-week period, July 28 through Aug. 24, according to an analysis by The Real Deal of data from brokerage Redfin. This is nearly 9 percentage points higher than the 1.8 percent drop across all metropolitan markets in the U.S. during the same period.

It’s also the worst decline among the top 10 most populous metro areas in the country. Houston followed, with a 5.2 drop in pending sales during that period.

Los Angeles was the only top-10 market where pending deals rose during this time, by 1.5 percent. Miami’s was nearly flat, as pending sales there ticked down by just 0.4 percent.

In its weekly housing market report for the D.C. area, Bright MLS attributed a drop in demand in the district to, in part, the presence of the National Guard in the area. President Donald Trump deployed thousands of troops about a month ago to D.C. in an effort to tackle what he called “a situation of complete and total lawlessness” in the city.

“News from afar is often more emphatic than news from within,” said Nathan Julian Guggenheim, an agent with Washington Fine Properties. “People are reading that the National Guard has taken over D.C., but I have not gotten pulled over by a National Guardsman, nor has one walked across my front yard, nor have I really seen more than a handful. We’re really not as much under occupation as, I think, one might say.”

Daniel Heider, founder and CEO of The Heider Company at TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, lives in Northwest Washington.

“Perception is reality,” he said. “So you see a lot of things online and on TV that don’t necessarily truly represent what is actually going on here.”

Instead, both brokers said, the drop in demand is typical for Washington, D.C. this time of year. 

“August in Washington has always been a much, much, much, slower period of time,” said Heider, who added that new administration officials who moved in after Trump’s inauguration also have long been settled and no longer looking for deals.

From July to August, the number of contracts — in Washington, D.C. only — dropped more than 20 percent. That is in line with, but lower than, the 24 percent and 26 percent drops in 2024 and 2023, according to Bright MLS data provided by Guggenheim.

“The cyclicality is consistent even in a highly active market versus a less active market,” Guggenheim said.

Other key factors playing a role in the market’s sluggishness include: high home prices, especially compared to renting, and — perhaps unique to D.C. — the federal layoffs from earlier in the year. Since January, nearly 200,000 federal workers have left the workforce, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

“People are thinking about what’s going on in the government, and government layoffs have had a psychological effect on D.C. that can’t be ignored,” said Guggenheim, who had buyers who lost their job and opted to put home purchases on hold as a result.

The number of homes sold in the D.C. metro area fell more than 5 percent year over year during Aug. 4 and Aug. 31, according to Redfin. The median sale price is $588,000, up 3 percent from the same time last year but down from this year’s peak of $615,000 in May.

Despite what the numbers say, the demand for ultraluxury properties — those above $5 million — in D.C. has never been stronger, Heider said.

“Washington is very much a tale of two markets,” he said, adding: “As long as we can get the inventory available at the magnitude to satiate the type of demand that we have, I don’t see this slowing down because I’m not slowing down. I’m busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.”