Washington, DC's luxury real estate market had a January and February this year that were, by most accounts, flat. Then May happened. According to Daryl Judy, Associate Broker with Washington Fine Properties, a sudden shift has occurred. “All of a sudden, people are like, okay, I’m going to sell my investment, we’re going to make the move now. Something has shifted,” Judy says. That shift is not random; it follows a pattern Judy calls the cascade effect.
Activity at the top of DC’s luxury market does not happen in a steady trickle but clusters. One significant sale creates the conditions for the next. The trigger is not interest rates or stock market movements; buyers who can afford $6 million properties are largely insulated from both. It is about social permission. Buyers at this level want to know that other serious buyers are moving. They want confirmation that the neighborhood, the price tier, and the type of property they are considering are ones that people like them are actively choosing. Judy draws a parallel to investment behavior: “People don’t want to invest in a company until they know someone else invested. Who else bought here? There’s security in knowing other people are willing to spend that kind of money.”
Judy describes two recent examples from Georgetown. In the first case, a buyer had been considering a property that had been on the market for over two years. When her agent told her another party was coming back for a second showing, she moved, but within 24 hours, the competing buyer had already placed an accepted offer. That same buyer then turned to a second property, the one that had been sitting for two years. The day she placed her offer, a second offer came in. “That’s the cascade effect,” Judy says. “These were both beautiful homes in the same incredible neighborhood. The moment someone saw someone else was ready to act, everything accelerated.”
In the second case, Judy was working with a buyer on a property at 1671 31st Street NW, which ultimately sold for $6,525,000. The buyer had also viewed 3307 N Street, the home Jackie and John Kennedy owned when he ran for president. When word came of competing interest on the 31st Street property, that information pushed her to act. The house sold.
The pattern is backed by market numbers. Across the DC, Maryland, and Virginia metro area, sales above $5 million rose from 45 transactions in 2023-2024 to 78 in 2024-2025 – a 73 percent increase. In Georgetown specifically, only nine properties have sold above $6 million in the past 365 days out of 134 total sales. Those nine transactions feed each other. “Once something gets going and people start realizing there’s been a big sale in this neighborhood, the cascade happens,” Judy says. “January was flat. February was flat. May was straight out.”
For buyers, the practical implication is straightforward: a property that has sat for two years can go under contract with competing offers in a single day. Judy advises buyers to get clear on what they want before that pressure arrives. Knowing your priorities in advance and being prepared to act when a property meets them is the difference between buying and watching someone else buy. For sellers, the cascade effect means that the pricing strategy at the outset matters more than it might appear. Overpricing a property tends to leave it sitting while the market moves around it. A well-priced home in an active market can generate its own momentum. “Most of these people don’t have to buy and don’t have to sell,” Judy says. “But when the right house comes, there’s an emotional attachment, and the market rewards the people who are ready.”
