Over the past 12 months, the Washington DC metro’s Home Demand Index followed its characteristic seasonal trajectory — reaching a peak at 102 in April before declining through the fall and bottoming in the low 50s in December, followed by a measured recovery through January, February, and March that culminated in April before reversing in the current period. The current reading of 81 represents a twenty-one-point decline from last month’s 102, interrupting a recovery arc that had been among the more convincing of the three metros covered in this report, and suggesting that the seasonal demand ceiling arrived earlier and with greater force than the prior-year trajectory implied — a pattern that may reflect the DC market’s particular sensitivity to policy-driven household mobility and federal employment uncertainty in addition to the structural affordability and rate headwinds shaping demand across the broader region. At 81, the index trails the 106 posted at this point last year by twenty-five points, a gap that represents the widest year-over-year shortfall in the current cycle for this metro and indicates that Washington DC’s summer 2026 demand entry point is tracking at a materially softer absolute level than the same period last year, underscoring that the spring recovery, while real, peaked in April and did not carry forward into May before seasonal demand forces turned.