PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION BY CONNIE ZENG; PHOTOGRAPH OF MONEY BY KATIV/GETTY IMAGES; HOUSE BY OLEKS YAROSHYNSKYI “The number of billionaires I’ve seen in the last three weeks has been pretty shocking.”   It was late December and Jim Bell, an executive vice president of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty, was describing the state of the post-election luxury market. He’s sold real estate in DC for decades. He’s observed his share of administration changes, from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden. He’s very familiar with the ultra-luxe bracket, the prominent families and power brokers who inhabit this city. But he’s never witnessed anything quite like this: “It’s never happened on this scale before.”  Meaning the influx of new political appointees and advisers, who—with an estimated net worth of more than $450 billion—have created a Trump bump in the local luxury market. When you assemble what stands to be the wealthiest cabinet in history, there are bound to be ripple effects. One of the first: the $25 million all-cash purchase of Bret Baier’s estate on Foxhall Road in late December, the priciest residential transaction ever in the District. “I’m in the midst of selling more real estate than I’ve ever sold in a short period in my career,” Daniel Heider of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty told Washingtonian a few days before his client, reportedly Howard Lutnick—Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary—closed on the sale. “It’s not a Trump bump. It’s a Trump surge.”  Between Election Day and mid-January, more than 56 area homes priced at $4 million and above either went under contract or sold. The new administration is part of the reason, but some locals as well as nonpolitical transplants have conspired to make this moment resemble a gilded-age buying spree. Or, as Bell calls it, “a changing of the guard, politically and socially.”   Even before the election, the luxury market—typically defined by top-bracket agents as $3 million–plus, with ultra-luxury starting around $7 million or $10 million, depending on whom you ask—was already thriving, thanks in part to a stock market that hit record highs this year. Heider’s group logged more than $487 million in closed or under-contract transactions in 2024, about $231 million more than in 2023, and HRL Partners at Washington Fine Properties  posted more than $197 million in closed sales last year, about a $38 million increase. Much like the Baier purchase, cash has been king: According to Bright MLS, more than 51 percent of transactions above $3 million in the region were all-cash last year.   Bret Baier’s Foxhall mansion, reportedly purchased by Howard Lutnick. Photograph by Studio Trejo. The election unleashed a wave of activity, with more than a few high-income Washingtonians deciding the time had come to trade up, before incoming MAGA members had a chance to snag the best properties. Those befitting a billionaire cabinet member are limited, centering around a few key neighborhoods: the likes of Georgetown, Kalorama, Wesley Heights, Massachusetts Avenue Heights, Berkley, Kent. For this select group of buyers, the property’s provenance matters (who built it? who owned it?) and, more important, the capacity to conduct business there, to hold dinner parties and shape policy over a cocktail or chocolate torte.   Bell rattles off some of the questions members of his buyer pool might ask: “Where is the caterer going to go? Where are the coats going to go? Who’s going to come to this house? How many people can we have? How many can sit at the dining  room table?” In fact, he recently started a Substack, “The American Table,” that explores the intersection of food and politics. “You eat with the people you trust,” he says. These houses help the newly arrived “succeed with their agendas while in DC.”  Demand has outpaced supply. Michael Rankin, a managing partner at TTR Sotheby’s, says he’s done some targeted outreach to past clients to see if any are contemplating a move in the near future, but the new inventory hasn’t kept pace. “If I had three townhouses in Georgetown priced at $3 million to $6 million and they all had parking and a garden, I could sell all three in 30 days,” Rankin said on a December afternoon right before showing a house to an incoming administration member.   Robert Hryniewicki of HRL Partners has recommended that, when possible, sellers list their properties in the MLS, or multiple-listing service, to reach the widest possible swath of buyers. But for many in the billionaire bracket, discretion and privacy trump all else. In this luxe shadow market, listings aren’t added to the MLS, transactions come together through word of mouth and agent networking, and sales close quietly, with the purchaser typically shielded behind an LLC or other entity, the agent prevented by a nondisclosure agreement from sharing information. When there isn’t much public inventory, Hryniewicki says, the question becomes: “What’s available on the shadow market?”  In the coming weeks and months, a combination of gossip and intrepid reporting will conspire to make some details of these transactions public. It may take time, in other words, to pinpoint the scope of the Trump bump, to see if it is, in fact, a surge, or to learn where Elon Musk has bought a property here, assuming he decides to add to his existing real-estate empire in Texas. For many of the incoming tycoons, Washington remains a relative bargain compared with the price per square foot that luxury listings in Manhattan or San Francisco can command.  For now, the evidence is partly anecdotal: Hryniewicki getting a call at 10 pm on a Monday to schedule a showing in Georgetown for 8 the next morning, or Heider suggesting he’s never worked this hard before in his career. “You will see, very shortly, a number of market-changing events,” he promises. “The luxury market is back, and it’s roaring.” Notable Recent Transactions Photograph by Mid-Atlantic Drones. Bret Baier’s mansion on Foxhall Road, reportedly purchased by Howard Lutnick on December 20 for $25 million, all cash. Photograph by Sean Shanahan. The former Kalorama house of Adolf Miller, a Federal Reserve board member, purchased on December 20 for $9.35 million. Photograph by Joe Hodgson/Homesight and Peter Papoulakos. The Robert P. Dodge House in Georgetown, formerly owned by Republican strategist C. Boyden Gray, purchased on December 20 for $10.5 million. Photo courtesy of Oleks Yaroshynskyi. A penthouse condo at the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown, purchased on December 20 for $10.25 million.The post Luxury Real Estate Is Hot. Welcome to the Trump Bump. first appeared on Washingtonian.