Dec. ’21 Housing Market Update: Inventory Up Year-Over-Year (Finally!)

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It’s been a couple months since our last Tri-Cities market update (my husband and I were in Hawaii much of last month celebrating our anniversary!), but as the year comes to an end, we’re still seeing small signs of a more balanced market. Maybe “balanced” isn’t the right word; we’re still in a seller’s market, but things continue to improve for buyers.

Consider this: There are more homes on the market right now (444) than there were a year ago (386). It’s the first time we’ve had year-over-year inventory growth since April 2020 — right when the pandemic started to impact the real estate market. Let’s look a little deeper at what’s available right now.

Current Tri-Cities Home Inventory

As I said above, we’re at 444 homes on the market right now. Those active listings have a median price of $527,800 and a median of 51 days on market. Higher-priced homes usually take longer to sell, so that’s no surprise.

More than half (247) of those available listings are new construction — homes you can buy now but can’t move into yet. The new construction inventory has a $569,900 median price and a median of 69 days on market.

The other 197 available homes are not new construction. They have a median price of $450,000 and a median of 34 days on market.

Tri-Cities Home Prices

More good news for buyers: Tri-Cities home prices are basically unchanged over the past six months. Our median price in June was $389,900 and this month it’s $391,000.

We’re also seeing the usual winter slowdown in activity: 372 homes sold last month, the lowest number of closings we’ve had since March.

Some other numbers you should know about:

  • Kennewick’s inventory is the highest it’s been since November 2020.
  • Richland’s inventory is the highest it’s been since September 2020.
  • Inventory in Benton City is the highest we’ve ever seen in the 3+ years we’ve been doing monthly market reports. The previous high there was 37 homes on the market in December 2018.
  • Pasco’s median price of $396,000 is an all-time high.

As always, please drop us a note if you ever have questions about the housing market here in the Tri-Cities, or even in your specific neighborhood/town/city.

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

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About The Author
Cari McGee

My husband and I came to the Tri-Cities in 1994, and we thought it would be a temporary stop on our way to larger cities. He was a television sports anchor at the time, and we planned to go wherever the "next step up" took us. Twenty-plus years later, we're still here and we've loved every minute of it! We have two children now, and we've found the Tri-Cities area is a wonderful place to raise a family. It's a great place to do outdoorsy things -- I like to hike Badger Mountain or run along the river path. I also love reading ... by a cozy fire in the winter or a beautiful picture window in the summer (with the A/C on!). I've been a licensed Realtor since 2004. I earned my managing broker's license in 2016, which means I can run my own brokerage, or create a team of real estate agents and supervise them, which is exactly what I did when I formed the Cari McGee Real Estate Team in 2018! We have administrative and marketing personnel, as well as additional agents to serve you. I became a director of the Tri-Cities Association of Realtors Board of Directors in 2016, became Secretary/Treasurer of the organization, and was elected to Vice President in 2019. Want to talk about real estate? Click here to schedule a meeting with me!

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