Every election season, buyers and sellers ask me whether they should hold off until the votes are counted. I’ve heard that question in DC for 26 years. So I pulled every month of DC-wide Bright MLS data from September 2012 through September 2026 and looked at what actually happened each fall.
What 14 years of DC data show
The cleanest test is how much contract activity picks up after the summer lull. In a typical DC year, new contracts in September and October run about 9% above July and August as buyers come back after Labor Day. Here is every year since 2013, with the midterm years in bold:
| Year | Election | New contracts, Jul–Aug | New contracts, Sep–Oct | Fall pickup | Oct–Nov median sale price vs. prior year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | No election | 1,474 | 1,546 | +4.9% | +6.7% |
| 2014 | Midterm | 1,399 | 1,552 | +10.9% | +5.0% |
| 2015 | No election | 1,471 | 1,666 | +13.3% | +5.9% |
| 2016 | Presidential | 1,495 | 1,603 | +7.2% | +2.8% |
| 2017 | No election | 1,610 | 1,732 | +7.6% | +0.6% |
| 2018 | Midterm | 1,576 | 1,586 | +0.6% | +9.4% |
| 2019 | No election | 1,592 | 1,746 | +9.7% | −0.3% |
| 2020 | Presidential | 2,013 | 1,968 | −2.2% | +13.0% |
| 2021 | No election | 1,589 | 1,823 | +14.7% | +5.5% |
| 2022 | Midterm | 1,289 | 1,241 | −3.7% | −9.4% |
| 2023 | No election | 1,128 | 1,132 | +0.4% | +1.4% |
| 2024 | Presidential | 1,003 | 1,297 | +29.3% | +3.5% |
| 2025 | No election | 1,005 | 1,113 | +10.7% | +2.3% |
Averaged by type of year, the fall pickup looks like this:
- No election: +8.7% (seven years)
- Presidential election: +11.4% (three years)
- Midterm election: +2.6% (three years)
On its face, that looks like a midterm effect. Look at the three midterm years one at a time, and it mostly disappears.
Why the midterm falls looked slow
- 2014: a normal fall. Contracts rose 10.9% from the summer, right in line with a typical year, and the October–November median price was up 5.0% from a year earlier.
- 2018: rising rates. The fall pickup was only 0.6%, and that November the 30-year fixed rate averaged 4.94%, its highest level since February 2011. Prices didn’t flinch: the October–November median rose 9.4% from a year earlier.
- 2022: the rate shock. Contracts slipped 3.7% from the summer, and the median price fell 9.4% from a year earlier, as the 30-year rate reached 7.08%, near its highest level since 2002.
The tell is 2023, a year with no election at all. Rates kept climbing, to 7.79% in late October, and the DC fall pickup was 0.4%, just as flat as 2018. When a DC fall has gone quiet, it has tracked the rate sheet, not the election calendar. National research points the same way. John Burns Research and Consulting looked at 35 years of data and found the usual fall slowdown in home sales was actually a bit smaller in election years than in other years. The national studies focus mostly on presidential years; the DC midterm numbers point the same way. With only three midterms in the data, treat this as a pattern, not a law.
