August ’23 Housing Marketing Update: Inventory Up 4 Straight Months as Prices Hold Steady

When our monthly graphic is half-red and half-green like this month’s is, it usually means some good news for buyers and some good news for sellers. And that’s pretty true this month, depending on where you own a home or where you’re looking to buy one. But overall, the Tri-Cities market continues to stay strong and buck a lot of the national real estate trends. Let’s dive in to this month’s numbers!

Tri-Cities Home Prices

Home prices remain steady as she goes. Our median sales price last month across the six cities we watch was $425,000, which is down about $7,500 from last month. But we’ve now reached seven straight months where prices have stayed between $415,000 and $435,000. And going back to January 2022, home prices have stayed within the $400K – $450K window.

This month’s prices are down 6% from one year ago, but that’s when we set an all-time record of $450,490.

Homes Sold Last Month

We had 307 closings in July, a 4% drop from June. That’s still a healthy level of activity, especially when you consider mortgage rates were pushing 7% for most of June and July. We currently have about 2.4 months of inventory (more on that below), which is definitely a seller’s market. But we barely had two months of inventory as recently as April 2023.

Home are selling a little more slowly, too. Those 307 homes sold after a median of 14 days on market. We’ve been between 11-13 DOM the past three months.

Homes for Sale in the Tri-Cities

Our inventory of homes for sale continues to rise, which is good news for buyers. It means more homes from which to choose.

The number of homes for sale has now risen four straight months. Our snapshot this month found 731 homes for sale, a 9% gain over July and almost 15% more than we had a year ago.

Even better news:

• Almost 60% of that inventory is existing homes, meaning homes you can purchase and move into right at closing — no waiting for new construction to be built.
• The number of homes for sale below our median price has risen for four straight months. At this month’s snapshot, we had 116 available homes priced below $400K. That’s the most in that price range since February 2023.
• Even new construction is getting more affordable. There are 86 homes being built under $500,000. A year ago, only 37 new construction homes were being built in that price range.

And that’s a look at this month’s Tri-Cities housing market! As always, please drop us a note if you ever have questions about what’s happening around town or in your specific neighborhood.

(*Remember that days on market can sometimes be skewed by how new construction homes are processed in the MLS.)