Washington D.C.’s luxury market is ruled by rare inventory — and only a handful of brokers know where to get it.
D.C. is a “rarity of availability market,” said Daniel Heider of TTR Sotheby’s, the broker behind Commerce Secretary and former Cantor Fitzgerald head, Howard Lutnick’s record $25 million all-cash deal for Fox News anchor Bret Baier’s sprawling, five-bedroom home on Foxhall Road in Northwest in December. “When there is a rare home with acreage and privacy, they typically get gobbled up, and they never come back on the market.”
The record sale for the French chateau-inspired estate and Mark Zuckerberg’s purchase of the historic manor that once housed the Textile Museum are illustrative of the market. The town that’s home to the nation’s power players is governed by legacy estates passed down through generations, stately townhouses and one-of-a-kind megamansions.
The highest end of the city’s luxury market is largely a waiting game. Homes with the most coveted addresses in the region only trade every so often, often in off-market deals that never land on Zillow or Redfin or across the desks of the average broker.
The market, especially at the higher end, operates on a two- to four-year cycle coinciding with presidential and midterm elections, which can bring fresh buyers and send others packing with an outgoing politician.
Though the names may change, most wealthy buyers flock to the same few areas: Kalorama, the West Village of Georgetown, Massachusetts Avenue Heights and, outside of the city, McLean, Virginia.
The market’s predictability extends to its brokerage scene: The top of the market is guarded by a select group of agents primarily at two firms, some of whom say they’re among few of their peers with the connections to get a deal done when high-profile properties come online.
In early May, seven of the 11 listings for homes asking $10 million or more on Zillow belonged to brokers at either TTR Sotheby’s International Realty or Washington Fine Properties.
“We led three of the top 5 transactions in the region last year,” Heider said and added that “there is a massive shortage of great inventory in the highest bracket” and that only “ultra-specialists who are in touch with these families can put things together.”
Compass is seeking to make headway on the high end. Compass in February acquired Washington Fine Properties and its 150 agents. With one of the region’s premier luxury brokerages under its belt, there are already some brokers under the firm’s umbrella, such as Mark McFadden and Victor Maddx, with listings exceeding $10 million.
But in the weeks after the acquisition, a team of agents jumped ship from the formerly boutique brokerage, citing the purchase as their reason for leaving.
“It’s Compass,” HRLS Partners co-founder Robert Hryniewicki told Homes.com in March. “In our local marketplace, Compass does not have a luxury presence.”
New term, new money
Some, like Heider, said the latest round of purchases spurred by President Donald Trump’s incoming administration was bigger and better, defying the usual flow of previous election cycles.
More homes, like the estate Heider sold to Lutnick or Mark Zuckerberg’s $23 million purchase in Woodland Normanstone, scored bigger deals than even the first administration, as a larger crop of wealthy buyers flooded the city.
“The difference with this administration is the sheer level of wealth,” Heider said. “These are some of the most successful and wealthy business titans in America, and they are coming from all over.”
But Michael Rankin, a TTR Sotheby’s agent who represented Zuckerberg in his D.C. deal, said he didn’t think the incoming administration, and its cohort of ultra high net worth individuals, was the impetus behind the wave of pricey deals. He chalked it up to a matter of inventory.
“There were plenty of big sales when [President Joe] Biden won,” Rankin said. Baier’s house, for example, “wasn’t for sale before. We just didn’t have the inventory to get the $25 million sale.”