Jan. ’21 Housing Market Update: Tri-Cities Inventory Down 42% In One Year

The inventory crunch continues. Not only continues, but it’s also getting worse. Still! We’re down to 346 homes available when we did our market snapshot last week. That’s the 4th time in the past 5 months that we’ve set a new low for inventory across the six cities we watch.

For the sake of comparison, here’s what inventory looked like in January the past couple years:

• January 2020: 601 homes available
• January 2019: 669 homes available

With inventory at 346 this month, we’re down 42% from January 2020 and 48% from January 2019. What’s crazy is that we may not have hit bottom yet. In the past two years, inventory kept dropping into February and March. Let’s hope that’s not the case this year, because we really need more homes available.

Just like last month, Kennewick and Richland are again at the lowest inventory since we started tracking in 2018. Kennewick’s inventory is less than half of what it was a year ago. Richland’s inventory is a little more than half of what it was a year ago.

Those are the numbers that matter most right now. I’ll say it again: We need more homes on the market. That’s the bottom line as we start 2021.

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.)