Housing Didn’t Crash At The DMV

February 19, 2025
  • X/Twitter Is Chock Full Of False Housing Narratives To Drive Traffic
  • Employees Don’t List Their Homes A Few Days After Getting Fired
  • Stating The Obvious: Former Respected Media Outlets Who Rely On Misinformation Should Be Avoided

In today’s insanely toxic media environment, chock full of misinformation and misdirection, the housing market is starting to experience something similar. There was a full-on smackdown between credible experts with the actual data and social media trolls looking for clicks on X/Twitter over the past week. Reports of massive federal government layoffs by an unchecked team of roving 20-year-olds from DOGE who don’t know how to build websites have been a big part of the DMV (DC/MD/VA) housing market narrative that listing inventory was surging! I was skeptical, having consulted for the MLS there about 15 years ago and seeing firsthand how the housing market behaves during shifts in administrations. Incidentally, I grew up there, and we never called it “The DMV” – I still think of DMV as the Department of Motor Vehicles. Once respected news outlets, the usual suspects, as well as sketchy X/Twitter feeds, reported without context that listing inventory was surging, and the market was imploding. As an aside, as we see in the following chart, employment in the federal government has remained remarkably stable since the 1950s (of course, this represents the U.S., not DC).

X/Twitter Misinformation Falsely Indicates Federal Layoffs Caused DC Metro Listing Inventory To Surge

Here’s an example of the toxic hellhole that X/Twitter has become (yet I still read sparingly). Here’s the beginning of the falsehood. They claim a large number of listings but don’t provide context.

The above post is a typical example of false claims on the surging DC metro housing supply on X/Twitter. There is another prolific X/Twitter troll that creates housing market confusion in other markets to shill his app. It’s not that the data can’t be useful, it’s the hyperbole in the analysis that is exuded online that I find problematic. Whenever I read it, I feel transported back to the GFC.

But I digress…

Here’s the reason the claims of “the DC market is collapsing right now” are ludicrous, from two housing market pundits I very much respect – John Lansner of the Orange County Register and Mike Simonsen, who recently sold his respected Altos Research to the media publication Housingwire.

DC Listing Inventory As Of Monday

Logan Mohtashami is another Housingwire pundit, and he is all over the false narrative of DOGE layoffs causing the DC metro housing supply to spike. The current data doesn’t show it. The false X/Twitter narrative is made up. However, this doesn’t mean that listing inventory won’t rise if DOGE ends up severely damaging the DC metro economy. There is no evidence of any atypical change in the data right now.

Logan calls them out to have a discussion but with no response. In his second post below, he suggest we look at jobless claims first, then new listings (supply that came in during the month of reporting) and listing inventory which is cumulative (a December contract that hasn’t closed by now but still on the market is still counted as a listing).

ResiClub by Lance Lambert (I subscribe) is like Housingwire, a good information source on the housing market. Supply is up in the region, following the same pattern as much of the U.S. While DMV listing inventory is up 36% YOY, it is 33% below pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

Final Thoughts On Housing Pundits Versus Trolls

Like anything in the housing market, caveat emptor. But in current society, trolls have become especially good at feeding us false narratives. Lying is now prolific across society (next thing you know I’ll be hoisting my pants with suspenders to my armpits and complaining full time about the government). But X/Twitter is ground zero for toxic spills on social media yet it still offers some content that I find interesting. But it continues getting a lot harder to find the good stuff. The messages of these particular DC trolls were picked up by many people I know in different parts of the U.S. so I felt compelled to write about it. I suspect there will be a lot more trolling of this kind as data analytics become more and more accessible to more and more people.

If you take the trolls seriously, you’ll end up living in a Van (Gogh) down by the river (I’ve actually got a framed version of this in our home). Given that artwork and the SNL50 celebration, here’s a story near and dear to my heart from many, many years ago – I was appraising a big, beautiful Manhattan co-op (not down by the river) for a senior NBC executive. When I entered the apartment, I saw a young Conan O’Brien (a former SNL writer) who was apparently visiting the apartment owner with a bunch of other people. When he saw me holding a clipboard and a measuring device, he knowingly looked around the apartment and exclaimed, “What a dump!” It took all I could to hold back from bursting out in laughter. One of the perks of being a Manhattan appraiser for nearly 40 years is having hundreds of those moments. Ha.

Did you miss the previous Housing Notes?

February 17, 2025

Werewolves Of High-End Housing: You’ve Already Let ‘Em In

Image: Grok 3

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