January 2025 Housing Market Update: A Normal Month with One Surprise

It’s always interesting to put together a January market update. This month’s numbers serve as a kind of benchmark or barometer that we’ll use for comparison all year long.

As is usual at this time of year, we have more red than green in this month’s update graphic — but the number of homes sold last month is a bit of a surprise, as I’ll explain below.

Homes Sold Last Month

We had 260 homes close in December. As you can see, that’s a very modest 2% gain over the month before. But it’s surprising to any increase in closings at this time of year. In the past two Decembers, homes sold were down 13% and 17%, respectively! A year ago, there were only 214 homes sold — so we’re up 21% this year.

I suspect this year’s bump has to do with how many buyers and sellers waited until after the November election to re-enter the housing market. They went under contract post-November 5 and were able to close in December.

Tri-Cities Home Prices

More usual is the small drop in home prices. December’s sales had a median price of $419,950, which is just about $10K below the previous month. Prices were down substantially last month in Richland, but it didn’t have a huge impact on the Tri-Cities overall because Kennewick prices were up more than $17K — and Kennewick had almost twice as many sales last month as Richland.

Our median sales price one year ago was $399,027. So our December-over-December price is up 5.2%.

Active Inventory of Homes for Sale

It’s also normal for the number of homes for sale to drop over the winter, and that’s happening this year, too. As of January 7, we had 801 homes on the market. That’s a 9% drop from one month ago, but it’s 6% more than we had in January 2024.

Inventory is up year-over-year in Kennewick, Pasco, Richland, and Burbank…and down in West Richland and Benton City.

To sum up: Overall, the market is doing fine right now and behaving pretty much as expected. The only surprise is the increase in sales last month, but it was small and may have been a one-month thing caused by the election.

As always, please get in touch if you have questions about what’s happening around town or in your specific neighborhood. Use the TEXT US tool below to send a text, call us at (509) 392-4705, or contact us via email — whatever’s best for you!

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