Trump Demands You Back at the Office
Well, you have a problem. Trump wants all Federal Workers back in the office. But you got caught up in the torrential winds from that giant Covid sneeze and moved out to the suburbs. Or worse, the exurbs. And now, you have to figure out what to do. Do you commute 90 minutes each way, letting your soul be sucked out exit after exit? Or do you move closer to or back into DC?
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We never left the city. Michael and I still live here. But, we watched you all leave. And we enjoyed less congestion on the streets – for a while. But we miss you and we want you back! We love busy restaurants and seeing action on the sidewalks. So you need us for your quality of life and DC needs you so let’s talk about moving you back toward or into the city!
This is going to be a huge lifestyle shift for a huge population of people. There are a lot of unknowns right now, but if you’re even remotely thinking of getting ahead of this, let’s talk about what your options are.
Sell Your Home in the Suburbs and Move to a Closer Suburb
Depending on your feelings about the city or the close-in suburbs, this could go a few different ways. If you have kids who are entrenched in their lives, it might be impossible to uproot them. We’ll get to that shortly. But if they are close to finishing high school and you won’t need the large house for many more years, this may be time to put a plan into place. Only you can decide what is right for your family but know that you have options.
If moving closer to the city to ease up the commute is what you are thinking, it’s mostly good news here. It’s likely that since you moved, some key things have improved. The Silver Line extension in Northern Virginia opened a lot of possibilities. Most stops along the Silver Line are in the throes of serious development, being recreated into huge live/work/play communities. Something like this could check several boxes – you can downsize from that large home in the exurbs, you can stay in a suburban life, you can improve your commute to work and you can buy into a cool urban community where you can walk to most conveniences.
If you moved to Maryland, the purple line metro extension is fully under construction. This will navigate people between Bethesda and New Carrollton, but it is creating additional flexibility for commuting.
As far as selling your current home and buying a new one, we will have a specific conversation with you. There isn’t a brush we can use to paint broadly to tell you what the market is like for your current home and what the prospects are like where you want to move. Michael has sold as far west as Berryville and Front Royal and as far south as Dumfries all along the way. He knows those areas. Definitely reach out to us so we can chat specifics about your situation. We have had several of these fact-finding calls with clients over the past couple weeks already and we expect that trend to continue. We have been working in the suburbs for the past decade already, and we can navigate you through the sale and new purchase closer to on in DC.
Sell Your Home in the Suburbs and Move Into DC
There were a lot of empty-nesters who downsized in the pre-pandemic years and moved into DC. This had become common in 2014 – 2020. There was a trend in that time that when the suburban homes were listed for sale, we would have to downplay just how big the house was! If it was 7 bedrooms we would call it 5 bedrooms with a home office and a workout room.
Once the pandemic hit though and businesses started to close, people didn’t want to be within 6 feet of each other. The city wasn’t exciting anymore and the trend beckoning the suburbanites to the city came to a halt. Then we had the peak crime wave of 2022 and 2023 and in 2024 came the real estate fallout. We saw the slowest real estate market for DC proper in many years.
Now that we now have numbers for 2024, something interesting to take note of – even though it wasn’t a great year, the prices of what sold in 2024 was still up year over year. When DC was all the rage, people would buy properties that may not have been perfect, with the intent to upgrade them to their taste. That trend shifted though and only the most updated and renovated homes sell whether they be condo or house. There are some great opportunities to pick up a home that needs a new kitchen or new bathrooms and some updating for a lot less than the true market value.
Trend Alert! With the dismal real estate years in the rear-view mirror, activity is already up – at least in our company. The number of homes listed is up over last year, hopefully bringing a reprieve to the “inventory” issue and in January alone the closings were up 8x over January 2024 in our company. This is of course an indicator of December contracts but all signs point to there being early birds out there going after the worms.
Can’t Sell Now but the Commute Will Be Intolerable
What if you have kids entrenched in schools and activities and you can’t uproot them at this point in time? You should consider a pied-a-terre. This is such a great alternative to spending hours a day in the car commuting. The smallest of condos in DC do not sell as rapidly as larger homes. People want space and that hasn’t changed. No one wants to live in a shoebox anymore. That means, you could get a great deal on a studio or one bedroom condo. This decision will have some seriously positive outcomes too.
First, you can likely furnish it with items already in your home. Second, you could use the condo on the weekend and enjoy being a tourist in your own hometown. Third, if you find you no longer need it, it’s a great investment to turn into a rental. And fourth, because this is where my brain is currently at – in a decade or less this could be your child’s first home as they start their career post-college.
There are so many wins to the pied-a-terre scenario that I’m sure people will consider this option too. We have watched these small properties sit on the market, and even helped some of our clients pick up some of them for great prices in the past couple years. They make great investments because there is always a captive audience of renters in DC, and the rents always go up.
Other Things to Consider that May Factor Into Your Decision
- Will you get any metro subsidies? If so, finding a location that’s easily accessible to metro will be important.
- Can you negotiate any days at home? Just because it’s being demanded for everyone to come back 5 days a week doesn’t mean it will happen. If you had 1-2 work from home days, it could change your outlook on location.
- Will you have parking at your office? If you plan to drive, we won’t have to focus on metro proximity but there may be areas to live that are better suited to commuting.
- Can you downsize your living space? If you have a lot of heirlooms and pieces you have inherited that you can’t part with, it may be difficult to downsize.
- Will you need the home office anymore? Everyone wants a home office, but don’t you usually just end up working from your couch?
- How long have you owned your current home? Does it make sense to sell or should you hold on to it? And if you don’t have a lot of equity, does the outlook indicate that will improve or will the growth in value remain flat so that it doesn’t matter if you sell now or later?
- Do you want to sell your current home or rent it out? If your current home is one of your largest investments, timing this properly is critical. You no longer have to “test” the market by going on the market though. Our brokerage has about $400M of homes in our Private Exclusive Network. This has been a very successful way for property owners to “test” the market without starting the “days on market” countdown.
This is a lot to digest and it is a rapidly changing pain point because you were told that your job would never return to the office. Don’t panic. It is better to get ahead of this and create a plan of action then sit and wait until the last minute. The people who wait until the last minute are always the ones who end up paying the most.
While more homes are finally starting to hit the market, we continue to be in a historically low inventory situation. There are buyers still looking out in the farther out suburbs and exurbs. Get ahead of the curve and get ready to list your home before everyone else does. As more people face what their new work-reality is, they will list their homes further out and there may be an influx of inventory in the near future. That will mean increased competition, and this could begin to affect pricing negatively for you.
Downsizing may be an adjustment but the perks of being closer to work will improve your quality of life. Everyone is lamenting that traffic is back to pre-pandemic levels and how much it sucks to commute again. More time at home and less time spent on the train or in the car means more time for family, friends, hobbies and relaxation. Quality of life is a reality that you can’t afford to ignore.
Please don’t wait until everyone is trying to do this at the same time and competing for scarce inventory in and around the Beltway! Let’s connect and discuss your options so you can create a plan of action.
