National Association of Realtor’s chief economist Lawrence Yun took to social media to deflate the idea that massive layoffs of federal government employees are leading to a collapse in the Washington, D.C.,-area housing market.
Yun noted on a LinkedIn post that housing inventory has increased 100% in the D.C. market from December to January, but he said this is a normal increase at the beginning of the year.
“From a year ago, inventory changes are minimal, say from January to January or from February to February,” Yun wrote.
About 20% of the 2.4 million people in the federal workforce live in the D.C. area. Thousands of federal workers have received layoff notices although there is no official tally of how many and where those workers are located, according to The Associated Press.
The Office of Personnel Management said that about 75,000 federal workers accepted a “deferred resignation” proposal in exchange for a reported offer of eight months’ pay, according to AP.
Most of the federal workers who have received layoff notices are probationary workers, who have been on the job for less than two years. Those workers account for about 220,000 federal employees as of last year.
Even with the layoffs, it would be unlikely that affected workers would have listed their homes already, Yun wrote. A person who loses their job won’t put their home on the market the following week, going through the stages of grief before deciding on the next steps, he noted.
“Need more proof?” Yun wrote on LinkedIn. “Ask any serious homebuyer in the region to see if there are sudden bargains.”
