Cathi Miller here with Hagan Realty. I am your Real Estate Partner in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Buying or selling a home is often one of the biggest and most important financial decisions of your life. That’s why working with the right professional is essential. With a client-first mentality, I am here to guide you every step of the way.
The market is cooling with listing activity being up around 20% year over year and demand (both contracts and showings) being off about 10%. The situation is much worse in the beltway counties than in the outer suburbs, like the Frederick Maryland real estate market, but weekly data at a county level is too volatile to say for sure that this trend will continue to play out.
NEWS: The big headlines for housing this week since our training on Saturday was that the Department of Education will lay off 50% of its staff.
The headlines are that the DOE (Department of Education) employs approximately 4,100 staff and is based in Washington, DC. Researching it, 1,100 of those staff are located in 10 regional offices across the US which means there are about 3,000 in the DC offices. DOE’s main office is located in Southwest, DC, basically right across from the Air and Space Museum. It is one block from the Federal Center metr0 and 2 blocks from L’Enfant Plaza. Those stations are Prince George’s County and then Arlington and Alexandria. The vast majority of their staff are from DC and those areas.
Layoffs will start next Friday, March 21, 2025, and the employees will get full pay and benefits through June 9th. The actual number of people being laid off is under 50%, more likely 45%. That includes 6% of the staff (259 employees) who accepted the voluntary buyout agreements weeks ago, which means the actual figure is closer to 39%. Still not good, but not 50%.
This is the second largest percentage layoff behind the EPA.
Supply Side: Listing Activity in Frederick Maryland Real Estate
Listing activity is continuing to climb year over year, but the pace seems to have stopped accelerating although it’s still too early to tell that for sure. Loudoun County saw a huge jump this week, as did Prince George’s County, Maryland, but the rest of the area was much more moderate. Overall, the DC metro’s listing activity is 20.5% above that of last year compared to 14.3% for the entire Bright MLS service area. So, it is higher… but not massively so.
Demand Side: Contracts
Contracts are down in all of the inner suburbs, but actually up in the outer counties. Howard, Frederick, and Loudoun Counties all saw increased contract activity year over year this week, while all of the beltway counties were down.
Overall, the DC metro’s contract activity is down 6.0% from last year and this pace has been steady for the past 3 weeks.
Showings
Showings are also off year over year but are seeing a similar inner-county vs outer-county bifurcation as contracts are, but with Howard County, Maryland being a bit off trend here.
Showings are up in both Frederick County and Loudoun County, but down in all of the other areas. Howard County’s showing activity fell off a cliff, down 30.3% year over year, but that’s a weekly kink in the data as that was not the case for them either of the two previous weeks.
If you would like assistance navigating the market trends and the changing economy, please reach out with any questions.
