Washington has been a magnet city for as long as most of us have worked here. People came for the jobs, the stability, the schools — and they stayed.

2025 broke that streak. And 2026 is confirming it.

Start with the Census numbers, because they are stark. In 2025, the rate of DC residents leaving for elsewhere in the U.S. jumped from about 0.6 per 1,000 people to 6.0 per 1,000 — a tenfold increase in one year. At the same time, international migration into the District — the flow that powered DC’s growth for a decade — fell sharply. Put the two together and the District’s net migration gain in 2025 was zero.

0

DC’s net migration gain in 2025. Not small. Zero.

The city’s own financial office now forecasts the population will shrink in fiscal 2026 and again in 2027.

The reason is no mystery. The District has lost a net 45,600 jobs since January 2025 — about 6% of its entire employment base — and federal employment in DC is down 14.6%. Two-thirds of DC households say the federal cuts hit them directly. In the 2026 VoicesDMV survey, about 1 in 7 DC residents said they are considering leaving the region within the year. Their reasons, in order: the cost of living, the cost of housing, and the job market.

You can see it in both housing markets

So where is everybody going? It turns out there are two answers, and they matter very differently.

Story one: most people aren’t leaving the region. They’re leaving the District.

About 42% of DC’s domestic movers land in just five neighboring jurisdictions: Prince George’s County, Montgomery County, Arlington, Fairfax County, and Alexandria. Same metro, same jobs, same Metro lines — more space, lower taxes, a yard, a school they like better. Redfin’s searcher data even shows the metro’s single most popular destination right now is Salisbury, Maryland — the Eastern Shore is pulling people who want water and quiet without leaving Maryland.

If that’s your move, you’re not really going anywhere — and that’s good news, because it’s the move we handle every week. A DC condo sold well still funds a strong Alexandria or Arlington purchase. At 4600 Duke St in Alexandria, for example, homes in that condo community are trading from the low $200s to the mid $400s — numbers that buy a lot more life than the same money inside the District right now.

Story two: the long haul is real — and Florida is winning it.

For the people truly leaving, the map is clear. Florida drew more inbound home searchers in the second quarter of 2026 than Arizona, South Carolina, and Tennessee combined — Tampa and Orlando keep absorbing DC professionals who are done with DC prices and DC winters. Behind Florida: the Carolinas (Charlotte, Raleigh, and Wilmington, which United Van Lines ranked the #2 inbound city in America in 2025), Nashville, Texas (Dallas and Houston), and Phoenix.

Baltimore is the quiet giant of this story — more than 11,000 millennials moved DC-to-Baltimore in the last measured year, trading a $540,000 DC condo median for Baltimore prices roughly half that. And some go the other direction entirely: Seattle, where our Sotheby’s colleague Grace Yu at Realogics works the Mercer Island and Eastside market for exactly the DC transplants who land there.

One more destination worth naming: Chicago. Home prices there are rising faster than any of the 20 big metros Case-Shiller tracks — up 6.9% year over year — and I’m licensed there with Baird & Warner. If your landing city is mine, you don’t need a referral. You need one phone call.

If you’re thinking about leaving, three things to know

1. You are selling into a soft market and buying into somebody else’s hot one.DC sellers have less leverage than they’ve had in a decade; Florida and Carolina sellers have plenty. That asymmetry is exactly why planning matters — price your DC home for the market that exists, not the one you remember, and line up local intel in the destination city before you fall in love with a listing.
2. A trusted local agent in the new city costs you nothing.Referrals between brokerages are paid by the brokerages. If you tell us where you’re headed, we will put a vetted partner on the ground there — someone whose work we know — and stay in the loop until you’re settled. Searching cold on the internet gets you whoever bought the ad.
3. Renters: run the numbers before you renew.With DC rents flat-to-down and landlords competing again, your renewal is a negotiation. And if the move you’re dreaming about is really about owning something, a market with 4.92 months of condo supply and sellers cutting prices is a strange one to walk away from without at least pricing the alternative.

People leave cities for jobs, for family, for room to breathe. Nothing about that is new. What’s new is the direction of the flow — and if you’re part of it, in either direction, the move goes better with a plan.