≈3,000+ HOUSEHOLDS AROUND ONE CAMPUS · 1 DOT = 10 · THE OUTLINED DOT IS YOU
Both instruments are describing your street. One of them can't see you.
D.C.'s trickle ran in three acts. Drag the clock — then watch Atlanta's copy of it, offset by two quarters.
SAME HAND · SAME RATE — THE DIALS MEASURE 24 MONTHS, JAN '25 → DEC '26. PRESSURE IS AN ILLUSTRATIVE INDEX BUILT FROM THE DOCUMENTED BEATS; THE BEATS ARE SOURCED, THE CURVE IS A MODEL. SVNIF · MODELED
THE RECEIPT — BY NOV 2025, THE D.C. REGION'S UNEMPLOYMENT RATE HAD CLIMBED EIGHT TIMES FASTER THAN THE NATIONAL AVERAGE SINCE JANUARY.
SRC · BROOKINGS VIA WASHINGTON BLADE, NOV 2025 T2
The debunk period wasn't wrong about the data it had. It was early. Part Two is built so Atlanta's answer is on the record before the narrative forms — either way.
Federal workers were ~9% of a huge, diversified D.C. economy. Atlanta's shock concentrates on one campus and the four ZIP codes around it — a corridor a metro dashboard cannot see.
SRC · HEALTHBEAT/ROUGH DRAFT APR '25 · ATLANTA MAGAZINE OCT '25 · THE ATLANTA VOICE APR '26 · ATLANTA NEWS FIRST OCT '25
Part One measured a market. Part Two measures a corridor.
Owners with deep equity don't panic-sell — they delay, convert to rentals, or exit quietly. The shock doesn't disappear; it re-routes into channels the dashboard doesn't price. Pick a household:
MECHANISM · TENS OF THOUSANDS OF HIGH-EQUITY / PAID-OFF HOMES IN GREATER DECATUR RECORDS T2 · LOCK-IN: 2021–22 MORTGAGES ≈3% VS ~6%+ TODAY REFRESH
Thin equity breaks abruptly. Deep equity disappears politely.
The layoff is not the whole load. 2026's cost stack decides how fast each month of cushion burns. Set the household. Watch the runway — and watch which domino fires first.
The exit ramp from federal coverage doubled in price the same month the severance ran out.
One income stops. Seven systems feel it — on a schedule. Fire the sequence and watch the two loops draw themselves.
Travel, dining, subscriptions. Already in the record: the corridor's catering orders dipped. Butterfly: small-business revenue → local sales-tax base.
STATUS · DOCUMENTEDCards revolve at ~21%+. TSP hardship withdrawals shift the damage to the future. The score drops — and in Georgia, the score prices your insurance.
LOOP A ARMED · SCORE → PREMIUM → BUDGETFederal TCC at ~102% of full premium vs a post-cliff ACA market. A measurable share go uninsured. One ER visit later: a medical collection — the exact event Episode 03's composite demo fires.
ECHO · EP 03 · THE TRICKLE FEEDS THE TRUST MARKETTwo or three missed payments → repossession in 60–90 days. In transit-thin sprawl, the job-search radius collapses — and every later domino accelerates.
LOOP B ARMED · REPO → SEARCH RADIUS → DURATIONDeferment exists, but interest accrues and the PSLF clock stops — years of a public-health careerist's 120-payment count, stranded. Prior delinquency converts re-employment into garnished re-employment.
15% GARNISHMENT ON THE NEXT JOBRenters first: Georgia dispossessory actions move in weeks. Owners: the 120-day federal runway, then Georgia's fast non-judicial track — Ch 13 filings spike just before first Tuesdays.
RUNGS 4–5 · SEE THE WATERLINEFiFa filings, tax sales, completed relocations — and, at the far end, school-enrollment effects on the district premium that underwrites the price level. Monitored, not claimed.
INFERENCE · LOW CONFIDENCE · LONG HORIZONThe cascade doesn't just impoverish. It re-scores.
SPENDING BREAKS FIRST · THE BALANCE SHEET BREAKS AT DAY ~60 · THE PUBLIC RECORD BREAKS AT CHAPTER 13 · RENTERS BEFORE OWNERS · THIN EQUITY BEFORE DEEP
Everything the sellers'-market dashboard can see. In a buffered corridor, the quietest instrument of all.
The federal-specific stress gauge — damage shifted to the future.
Metro-level, quarterly, cohort-readable.
The 120-day federal runway before any first filing.
In Georgia, the standard foreclosure-stop — filed just before sale dates. It leads completed foreclosures. Metro Atlanta has long carried among the nation's highest Ch 13 concentrations.
Georgia is non-judicial: every pending sale must run 4 consecutive weeks in the county legal organ before the first-Tuesday auction. An address-level public record a month before it happens.
Courthouse steps, first Tuesday, every month.
The slow rung — property-tax delinquency surfacing a year or more out.
Demographic, not layoff-driven — used to classify listing composition so the corridor delta measures the right thing.
A CORRIDOR MIX-SHIFT FROM 13 TOWARD 7 IS THE "STOPPED FIGHTING FOR THE HOME" SIGNAL — READABLE AT ZIP LEVEL IN FEDERAL COURT DATA T1
D.C.'s trickle has a daily local-news apparatus narrating it. Atlanta's corridor gets episodic coverage of a concentrated shock. The gap is measurable — coverage gravity per 1,000 displaced workers — and the instrument is being pointed now.
This is the credibility artifact. The test is registered, the branches are pre-written, and all three publish. Whatever the corridor does, the record shows we called the test before the answer.
If corridor ZIPs 30329 · 30033 · 30030 · 30307 track the metro baseline within normal variance on listings, days-on-market, price-cut share, rental growth, and the distress ladder — foreclosure ads per 1,000 owner households, Ch 13/7 filings and mix, delinquency, FiFa — from Q4 2025 through Q3 2026, the "Atlanta trickle" as a household-finance event is refuted. Tested as difference-in-differences against matched non-federal DeKalb ZIPs: national level-shifts (the ACA cliff, the student-loan wave, rates) hit both arms and cancel. Only corridor excess counts.
Corridor diverges above the waterline and below it. The lag arrived, on schedule, and the pre-registered window caught it.
No divergence anywhere. Equity buffers + hiring absorption metabolized the shock — published with equal prominence. The panic narrative was wrong, and we say so.
Listings quiet; distress rungs active. The buffer thesis confirmed — stress surfacing under the market's surface, invisible to every dashboard now quoting 99% of ask.
| METRIC | 30329 | 30033 | 30030 | 30307 | ATL BASELINE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIAN SALE · YoY | $552K · −4.8% RF 3MO MAY | $496K · −0.3% RF FEB | $715.5K · +0.3% HZ MAR | $765K · +5.5% RF MAR | $429K · −1.6% RF 3MO MAY |
| DAYS ON MARKET · Δ YoY | 35 · −9d RF | 65 · +10d RF | 32 · ~flat HZ | 54 · +25d RF · WAS 29 | 54 · +5d RF |
| PRICE-CUT SHARE · Δ YoY | N/P | 45.3% · +24.9pt OR ~JUN | 21.6% · −12.8pt HZ MAR | N/P | 30.2% · −2.6pt OR JUN |
| SALE-TO-LIST · Δ | N/P | 96.5% · −3.0pt OR | 99.05% · +0.1 HZ | N/P | 97.8% · flat OR |
| ACTIVE INVENTORY · YoY | 83 ACTIVE MV AUG | +39.3% · NEW LISTINGS −29% OR | 3.9 MO SUPPLY HZ | N/P | 5.4 MO vs 3.1 FMLS Q1 |
| IN FORECLOSURE · COUNT | 1 · 1 TO AUCTION RT | 5 · 5 TO AUCTION RT | N/P | N/P | — |
| CH 13/7 MIX · FiFa · LEGAL-ORGAN ADS | AWAITING | AWAITING | AWAITING | AWAITING | RECORDS PULL SCHEDULED |
The minimum publishable unit — every clause documented today: within one year, the region lost a quarter to a third of the CDC's workforce and $334M+ in public-health grants; mutual aid has paid $200K+ toward former workers' rent while the housing dashboards register nothing — and no public instrument measures the corridor at the resolution where impact first appears. Until now.
"Georgia's economy has consistently broken records… we are well-positioned to continue that trajectory." — the Governor's office, on the cuts
OUR ANSWER · WE DON'T ARGUE WITH IT. WE PRE-REGISTERED A TEST IT CANNOT OBJECT TO — AND IF ABSORPTION WINS, BRANCH 2 RUNS AT FULL PROMINENCE.
Know the clock: 120 days of federal loss-mitigation runway before a first filing — then Georgia's non-judicial track moves fast, and the sale must be advertised four weeks in the legal organ. The calendar is public. Use it.
Georgia dispossessory actions move in weeks, not months. Document everything, answer filings on time, and know DeKalb's assistance channels before you need them.
The day-~60 coverage election is the balance-sheet break. Price the options before the window — the post-cliff market punishes deciding late.
| DATE | SOURCE | CARRIES | TIER |
|---|---|---|---|
| APR '25 | Healthbeat / Rough Draft Atlanta | 13K/10K workforce · $334.4M DPH · GSU mechanism · Kemp statement | T2/T3 |
| OCT '25 | Atlanta Magazine · AFGE 2883 | Oct wave · union −4,300 estimate · budget zero-outs | T2 |
| OCT '25 | Atlanta News First · court filing | Shutdown RIFs 1,100–1,200 (HHS) | T1 via T3 |
| APR '26 | The Atlanta Voice | ~¼ workforce gone · mutual aid $200K+ incl. rent | T2 |
| NOV '25 | Brookings via Washington Blade | D.C. 8× unemployment climb · cushion cliff | T2 |
| JUL '25 | Redfin via Newsweek | D.C. listings up, sales down — the lag arrives | T2 |
| JAN–MAR '26 | KFF · CBO | ACA cliff: +58% actual / +114% modeled · ~1 in 10 uninsured | T1/T2 · FRESH |
| 2026 | Market aggregators | Decatur dashboard — and the place-name resolution trap ($715K vs $280K "Decatur") | T3 |
FRAME SOURCE · CITY CAST DC (POST INACCESSIBLE TO AUTOMATED FETCH — DISCLOSED, NOT CITED) T3