Musk’s DOGE Cuts to the Federal Workforce Are Already Upending the D.C. Area Housing Market

Melissa Harris had her meticulously planned future. But after more than 37 years in the public service, these plans collapsed when President Donald Trump and the Elon Musk Government Department (DOGE) ravaged his workplace at the National Institute of Health (NIH).

Harris therefore took an early retirement at the end of April, wrapped his Gaithersburg house in Maryland, and moved to North Carolina.

“For the moment, I cannot imagine that no one wanted to go to DC and live there,” she said.

Harris, 60, had planned to retire in two years so that she could receive maximum payment after about four decades of service. Instead, she expects her to receive less than she would have, “even with the bonus they offered,” she said. The day she entered the office to take advantage of her anticipated retirement celebration, mass layoffs were struck by NIH. Obviously, the party has been canceled. But the blow of Doge in Harris was more than symbolic. The unexpected retirement precipitated pushed her to leave the region earlier than expected and to buy a house in North Carolina before having the chance to sell her property in Maryland.

“”[I] I pay for two houses until I have my other repaired to sell, “said Harris.

Two months later, Harris says that she was not paid and is not sure when she receives her first check. “No one put me in contact,” said Harris. “It’s a bit scary.”

The radio silence, she said, forced Harris and her partner to reduce costs in financial uncertainty.

“We have just had a new house,” she said, “and we are just going to pretend to be poor house for a while before discovering what’s going on.”

Stories such as Harris can prove to be part of a trend that real estate experts are watching closely: licensed officials or otherwise affected by Doge cups leaving the Beltway. In the DMV region, encompassing DC, some parts of Maryland, Virginia and Virginia-Western, more than 500,000 people work directly for the federal government, according to data from the American Community Survey 2023 and 2025 current employment statistics compiled by the Institute of Economic Policy this year. These figures do not explain the vast network of external government entrepreneurs who depend on federal dollars. Camps of jobs and mass contracts should modify the socioeconomic geography of the Beltway in a way the New York Times compared to the devastating impact of the collapse of manufacturing on the Midwest.

The complete image of the number of workers who have lost their jobs following the “strength reduction” initiative of the Trump administration is difficult to paint. About 75,000 workers have taken a buy -back offer, Reuters reported in February, while others took the Harris early retirement program by trusting the most. In total, Reuters estimates that 260,000 federal workers have been dismissed, accepted buyouts or taken an early retirement.

They are now struggling to find work, said Karen F. Lee by Fedsforward. Its organization, launched after the start of Doge Cuts, helps federal workers in transition to the private sector. “There are absolutely difficulties,” she said, including people who are trying to have camp for their children this summer. “We are in a place where, I think, there is absolutely concern.”

New unemployed workers are afraid of being rent or having no health care. Some have abandoned the workforce all together.

Paying for a house is another area being upset by the reorganization of the federal government.

A Bright MLS report published Tuesday in questioning of real estate agents in the DMV region in May and found that almost 40% of them said that they had had real estate transactions affected by job cuts from the federal government.

More specifically, real estate agents of the Metropolitan DC region “said they worked with a customer whose decision to buy or sell was due to federal workforce and the workforce,” according to Bright MLS Survey. Entitled “Monitoring of the impact of DOGE on the housing market”, the report revealed, among other things, that retirees in the region like Harris were more likely to be home sellers, “suggesting that federal workforce reductions and uncertainty have had a greater impact on older workers in the DC metro region”.

Sam Medvene is the president of the DC Association of Realtors and has experienced the consequences of federal job loss in real time. Medvene said that the real estate agents of his association worked with buyers who had to suddenly cancel contracts when their job offers in the probationary government were revoked.

“We have had many people under lost contract,” said Medvene.

The reshuffles also have an impact on the sellers who wanted to sell their houses, were under contract, then had these offers withdrawn due to the benefits of federal employment loss.

“The combination of economic uncertainty and federal changes that occur, as well as locally, has led to this retraction”, the interest of buyers and an increase in stocks, said Medvene. For the moment, however, he said that the situation was more expected than a disastrous reduction in the housing market.

May has seen active lists in the Metropolitan region of DC has reached their highest level in four years, said the main economist of Redfin Asad Khan. The region ranks among the first 10 among the 50 largest metropolitan areas by active lists, Khan said.

There are signs that the region’s housing market holds hard, but it is on a wobbly foot.

According to Bright MLS, younger families struck by layoffs and Doge cuts can also seek to leave the region, but could start the process later this year due to school and child care.

This is what the real estate agent of the DMV region Richard Pearrell predicts. Pearrell maintains online database tracking accommodation and a condos inventory and average selling prices. On the one hand, Pearrell considers panicked reports on federal layoffs as a “media threshing” and stressed that the region had still not returned to pre-countryic housing inventory levels. On the other hand, he recognized that the economic uncertainty of the toll took in particular buyers.

“It’s just more,” say and expect all these irons themselves “,” said Pearrell. “” Will I have a job or not? ” Or, will the spouse have a job or not? These are the conversations I have.

Note that workers who took buyouts have months of track before the rubber meets the road, Pearrell expects to see an increase in people who try to sell their homes from which it is in August.

“This is when people will have to make the decision,” he said. “” Well, if I don’t have a job because I took the dismissal, what will I do? “”

And the metropolitan region of DC is not the only one to be struck by the effort of washing of the government. Pearrell saw the quantity of houses for sale in Texas and Florida increase “astronomically”, while less are sold, creating a peak in the housing inventory.

The mortgage broker and elected president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, Kimber White, is based in FT. Lauderdale and indicates Florida as a hub for distant government employees who settled in the region during the cocovio pandemic, and are forced to return to Washington to comply with the return to work. He notes that there was a slight increase in mortgage delinquency in the first part of 2025, but not enough to indicate a crisis.

“Right now, no,” said White. “Do I think we will see [increases in delinquencies]? Yeah. We will see an increase, “he said.

For his part, Harris considers herself lucky. Although her lifetime service was interrupted and the retirement plans almost thwarted, she was able to jump the city and settled elsewhere. But what she had to face the NIH still stings.

“See the president and [Musk] On television, that affected us a lot, “said Harris.” Because seeing that, it’s almost like a personal attack … “You are the problem”. That’s what they say.