Posted on 02/17/2025 8:40:11 PM PST by SeekAndFind
What happens when the swamp drains? All the critters hiding in it find someplace else to go. And fast, before predators begin picking them apart.
That process may have already begun in the biggest swamp of them all. According to the Daily Mail, the housing shortage in the Washington DC area has turned almost overnight into a glut. Prices have fallen by double-digit percentages since Donald Trump got elected and Elon Musk started rooting out profligate spending, with thousands of listings appearing over the last thirty days.
Is this true? I want to believe. The Daily Mail got the data from analysts at The Kobeissi Letter (TKL), which got it from Redfin:
In November, the median home in the nation's capital was worth $699,000, according to Redfin.
By February, the median home value dropped 20 percent, bringing the price down to $560,000.
TKL found there are now nearly 8,000 homes listed for sale in the Washington, DC metro area, and almost half of them have been put on the market in the last 30 days.
TKL is a subscription-only investor newsletter, but they do have an active Twitter/X account. TKL posted this data in an intriguing thread on Saturday. Besides the above data, TKL also drilled down more and got an even better look at what may be happening in the FedZone:
Year-over-year, home listings in the Washington DC metro area are up ~23%.
Parts of Virginia are seeing 60%-70%+ jumps in year-over-year listings.
Keep in mind, this is during the winter months in a housing market that has been historically LOW on supply.
Truly insane.
pic.twitter.com/mgbeUCeCLG— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 15, 2025
This accelerated after Donald Trump and Elon Musk announced the federal employee buyout plan, TKL notes. However, this may be the piece de résistance, heavy on résistance:
Here's where it gets even more interesting:
There has been a SURGE in new listings in Washington, DC with a listing price of $1,000,000+.
There are now 525 listings of $1+ million and 44 listings worth $5+ million.
This suggests high-profile job exits are rising.
pic.twitter.com/WR2bDApWt0— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) February 15, 2025
Why would federal employees own million-dollar-plus homes? The answer: They don't. Those are not likely homes owned by federal employees, but rather homes owned by executives at NGOs who receive the grift money from federal bureaucrats at places like USAID. In the first term, these wealthy activists would have led La Résistance 1.0, or at the very least occupied themselves with the usual Beltway task of ensuring a Republican president couldn't put his policies fully into place.
If the Flight of the Progressive State includes the multi-millionaire class, then the swamp may truly be draining for the first time in decades -- if ever.
But are these figures accurate? It's tough to pin down, although there's no reason to believe that TKL is partisan in its observations. Long & Foster, another investor analyst service, also began seeing a sharp decline in the DC real-estate market, but their data is for January only. Even so, they also saw signs of a sharp fall-off, even comparing the same season last year, but the data was a bit mixed:
There was a decrease in total units sold in January, with 450 sold this month in Washington DC Real Estate versus 553 last month, a decrease of 19%. This month's total units sold was higher than at this time last year, an increase of 23% versus January 2024.
Versus last year, the total number of homes available this month is higher by 144 units or 7%. The total number of active inventory this January was 2,166 compared to 2,022 in January 2024. This month's total of 2,166 is lower than the previous month's total supply of available inventory of 2,273, a decrease of 5%.
Last January, the median sale price for Washington DC Homes was $605,000. This January, the median sale price was $552,500, a decrease of 9% or $52,500 compared to last year. The current median sold price is 10% lower than in December.
Redfin sees much the same situation, with median prices down 8.6% and price per square foot down 7.2%, both year-on-year. However, the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors (GCAAR) paints a more pessimistic picture of their market in January, comprising both DC and Montgomery County in Maryland:
Clearly, something is happening to the DC market, which extends beyond the borders of the district itself. And that has implications beyond a potential housing glut around the nation's capital. Both Maryland and Virginia have deep-blue districts bordering DC that have some impact on their state elections, especially in Virginia, where the northern counties (called NOVA) have become more or less determinative in their elections. I wrote about NOVA in my 2016 book Going Red, noting that the top three counties in the nation for household income were Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington, all extensions of the DC federal-bureaucratic state industry. Three others were in the top 13 counties nationwide for that measure as well.
Maryland is probably too blue for a Burexodus to matter, but Virginia isn't. If those who benefited from the pre-DOGE progressive grift in DC are packing up and moving out, those counties may get a lot less Democrat in coming elections. That would allow the rest of Virginia (ROVA), more conservative politically and culturally, more of a say in state election outcomes.
Stay tuned. DOGE may create even more earthquakes in culture than politics by the time it finishes its run through the bureaucratic state.
It’s the not so little things…..
The ripple effect will have impacts on Pennsylvania’s York, Adams, and Franklin Counties.
Long overdue!
Yep. I’ve said for a long time that dramatically shrinking and scattering the bureaucracy would turn Virginia red again.
I travel to DC about once a year and usually land at Dulles. The growth along the Metro line into DC has been astonishing. Every year I have seen brand-new high-rises that weren’t there before. And everyone living and working in those new high-rises votes blue, which is why Virginia is now a blue state.
If you dig a little, you’ll find The Kobeissi Letter - the basis for the clickbait, erm, article - is published by Adam Kobeissi, a Gen Z who graduated from college in 2020. https://michiganross.umich.edu/news/adam-kobeissi-bba-20-transforming-hobby-industry-leading-commentary-capital-markets
Now, I am not anti-youth and don’t believe everyone under 30 eats Tide Pods for breakfast. But when this kid’s recommendations are back-tested, they suck - see https://www.bullbearpig.com/trading-service-reviews/trading-alert-service-reviews/the-kobeissi-letter/ and https://fintwitfurus.com/sub-services/f/3-masterwupanda-kobeissi-letter-—12999mo-furus-—awful.
In addition, there are no comparative data presented….is the same thing happening elsewhere? Is there seasonality to an influx of supply coming in the market? Thus, assuming Mr Kobeissi isn’t making up data (he hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt IMHO), this DC situation may be par for the course.
Let’s be TRUE patriotic adults and reject Authority Bias. Let’s do our own homework.
Go to realtor.com and use their search and filter features. Set the parameters to pull up single unit homes, condos, and townhomes for sale between $400,000-$2MM with 1+ bedrooms and 1+ bathrooms. Finally, toggle the “Days in Realtor.com” filter between 14 Days and Any, and search across DC and other cities/areas
The results may surprise you. The following are the current ratios of residence in that filter put up for sale over the past 14 days vs the total “for sale” stock in that city:
DC: 307/1849=16.6%
Philadelphia: 227/1282=17.7%
NYC: 810/7897=10.3%
Ft Lauderdale: 270/2095=12.8%
Chicago: 508/2174=23.3%
Dallas: 353/1831=19.2%
LA: 879/4739=18.5%
Phoenix: 892/3834=23.2%
When we think for ourselves, a clearer picture emerges. DC real estate hasn’t become a dumping ground over the past 14 days relative to other cities. Sure, its ratio is higher than that in NYC and Fr Lauderdale, but it’s lower than that for Phoenix, LA, Dallas, Philadelphia and Chicago. Indeed, CHICAGO is the grand prize winner in this metric across the sampled cities.
In addition, the opposite may be happening: Fox Business reported on a Trump Bump in the luxury home market in DC. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/washington-dc-gets-trump-bump-in-luxury-home-market/ar-AA1z9kyM. The data source, The Agency, is a boutique residential real estate brokerage firm, not some rando on Twit or some GenZ hypester.
As for actual, closing/sales prices, the Gold Standard is the Case-Shiller Price Index. The index is calculated from data on repeat sales of single-family homes, versus the median or average which could be comparing 2 bedroom condos with 4 bedroom townhomes. See https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WDXRSA for the DC values. Play with the index on the FRED website (for data junkies, it’s dope), and do comparative analyses. You’ll see that DC doesn’t suck (yet), contrary to the aforementioned neophyte.
Maybe DC will crash. But at this time, thinking people realize it’s the first inning of the game, annd Hotair and Mr Kobeissi need the clicks.
The agreement was that only a handful of homes in a hood would be posted for sale in order to keep prices up.
Those not on the market would be maintained by lawn services so homes might look occupied.
Tell tail signs of empty homes were lack of any vehicles in the driveway and no curtains in windows viewable from the street.
It took several years to sell all the excessive homes on the market.
Reports also from real estate agents were that homes closed up for years developed roof leaks; when the homes were opened up to put on the market, many had mushrooms and mold growing in the carpets.
Going after USAID was a master stoke.
Maybe my cousin who lives there can finally find a house! At least he has a blue collar job doing something worthwhile.
DC's bureaucrats are already living that far away from DC?
“Going after USAID was a master stoke.”
How the scam works.
1. The government (Demonic-Crats) want to fund a policy that they can not fund legally.
2. The governments gives money to an NGO (Non Government Organization) that reflects government philosophy and perfectly legal.
3. The NGO then funds political organizations to promulgate the political philosophy of the government that the government could not do legally. Oddly perfectly legal.
4. The NGO also donates money to political organizations and politicians that reflect their ideology. Also perfectly legal.
Lastly the unknown is how much money is direct bribes to politicians. I suspect a lot. That part is illegal.
They can turn DC into a homeless shelter.
It seems as though Trump's first term was an educational exercise for him.
And BOY is he bringing his knowledge to bear.
Look at the VA suburbs. That is where the havoc will occur and is occurring. Downtown DC is a small area. Easy access to downtown will be at a premium with return to work and the Cush of growth over the last few years is just increasing the pressure. The mansions owned by the grifting NGO class are in Potomac. McClean is not on the chart above and that and Georgetown are places where the old patricians hang out- hereditary money, sovereign wealth….
Bribes? You put them on the board of a foundation where they draw a salary.
Sadly many deals were snapped up in NOV and are now selling with cheap flipping renovations for huge profits.
Thank you for the back check! I have family going to DC soon. I looked at it from the perspective of a bargain hunter. I also didn’t see what the article presents, but your excellent explanation is much better (& appreciated) than my gut driven conclusion. CBNS
Let’s not miss the forest through the trees. Yes somewhat click bait but stories like this have a way of creating an outcome. Cascade effects are indeed a real phenomenon :)
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