How Trump’s Return-to-Office Order Is Impacting the DC Real-Estate Scene

Recently, federal employees who have been called back to the office full-time have been scrambling to figure out the logistics of their new work situations. But for one group, things have been particularly challenging: those who were no longer living in the area. Though the DOGE-driven slashing of the federal workforce could soon impact the local housing market, real-estate agents we talked to say they haven’t seen that so far. In fact, return-to-office orders seem to have increased demand.

Kelly Hasbach, an agent at Compass’s Vienna office, says she’s been hearing a lot from government employees who sold their homes and moved elsewhere when it became clear that working remotely would be a long-term option. Now they need housing ASAP—and everything is more expensive. “They’re calling me going, ‘Oh, my gosh, we could never afford the home that we owned there three, four, five years ago,’ ” Hasbach says. The average selling price for a detached house in the Washington area has increased by nearly 25 percent since the end of 2020, according to data from Bright MLS, the multiple-listing service.

And many returning workers aren’t actually sure where to focus their property searches, according to another Compass agent, Katie Hunter, who is hearing that a lot of them don’t yet know where they’ll be working, because so much federal office space was shuttered in the pandemic’s wake. With no established commute, people are prioritizing listings near Metro stations and parking lots. But with the Trump administration making noise about many federal jobs moving out of the area, even that seems risky.

For some federal workers in need of new housing, all of the uncertainty is pushing them to think about things differently.
At a Silver Spring open house that GoBrent Realty agent Cari Jordan hosted in early March, one couple mentioned that they were returning to the area from another state, where they’d bought a home. Both work for the federal government. Jordan asked if they were interested in buying property, and they said they weren’t. For now, they’re planning to rent and keep their other house, they told her—because they have no idea if they’ll still have their jobs in two weeks.

Kate Corliss

Editorial Fellow