How DOGE will impact Washington, DC-area apartment owners


This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

While many apartment markets around the country, like Phoenix or Las Vegas, have gone through boom and bust cycles as supply and job growth ebbs and flows, the Washington, D.C., metro area has stood as a safe haven for apartment owners.

With the federal government and the contracting industry providing steady employment, multifamily executives knew there would be a strong baseline of demand in and around the city, even if new deliveries were high.

But times are changing.

Since Inauguration Day, the new Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have punctured that sense of security long enjoyed by both residents and landlords in the nation’s capital, firing at least 101,022 federal workers around the country, according to CNN. President Donald Trump says thousands more are yet to come, many of them targeting Washington-based workers.

Many of those firings, which have focused on probationary employees with one or two years in their roles and fewer protections, are now being litigated in the courts.

Although apartment leaders and REIT executives on recent fourth-quarter earnings calls say they haven’t yet seen major impacts from the DOGE layoffs on their portfolios, they’re concerned about the effects of the cuts. Still, some take solace that the Washington region’s economy has diversified over the past few decades and that many remaining federal workers are returning to their offices.

Too early to tell

As of December, there were 300,000 federal government jobs located in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A lot of those positions could be vulnerable.

“Based on current information, we believe potentially 100,000 federal government positions may be at risk in the region,” said TJ Parker, senior vice president of research and data analytics at Greensboro, North Carolina-based apartment owner and operator Bell Partners. “It is simply too early to quantify the full impacts on multifamily housing, and we are closely monitoring any changes to that workforce and its impact.”

TJ Parker, senior vice president of research and data analytics at Bell Partners

TJ Parker

Permission granted by Bell Partners

 

Coming into the year, many companies considered the Washington metro area among their top markets. The region was Equity Residential’s top-performing market, with 4.2% revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2024, and the firm still has high expectations for 2025 with 97% projected occupancy, chief operating officer Michael Manelis said on the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call in February. 

“The wild card here is what impact the new administration and its focus on both cost-cutting and a return-to-office policy for federal employees will have on the local job market,” Manelis said.

Others are also in wait-and-see mode. A spokesperson for Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar, the largest multifamily owner, manager and developer in the U.S., told Multifamily Dive that it is too early to tell what, if any, impact there will be from the layoffs.

A sense of concern

Like its peers, Bethesda, Maryland-based apartment owner CAPREIT has yet to see any significant impact from the federal layoffs. But the firm is still wary of potential fallout.

“Considering the scope and scale of the layoffs that Musk/Trump have initiated in the past few weeks, CAPREIT is concerned about the short-term impact to apartment occupancies in the D.C. metropolitan area,” CEO Andrew Kadish told Multifamily Dive.

However, Bell’s Parker said that permanent job cuts could actually boost apartment rental rates in the market from an increase in short-term leases. In the long term, it would drive people to lower-cost areas, reducing housing demand around the nation’s capital.

CAPREIT CEO Andrew Kadish

Andrew Kadish

Permission granted by CAPREIT

 

“Combined with the current slowdown in private-sector hiring, laid-off government employees could face challenges finding another job in the region,” Parker said. “Any migration away from the region would benefit other markets.”

Manelis said EQR hasn’t yet seen job cuts affect its renewals in the Washington, D.C., area, but he also admits there’s concern. “I think everybody is still a little bit on edge,” he said.

Beyond pure layoffs, Kadish sees other risks to his portfolio in federal cost-cutting, including DOGE’s push to sell or break leases at buildings occupied by federal agencies.



Source link

About The Author

Scroll to Top