July ’21 Housing Market Update: Inventory Up for Second Straight Month

Something strange happened this month in the Tri-Cities housing market: The number of homes available for sale went up for the second straight month. You might ask, “What’s so strange about that, Cari?” Well, we haven’t seen inventory go up for two consecutive months since September and October…

…of 2019.

It’s true! September/October of 2019 is the last time the number of Tri-Cities homes for sale rose in two straight months. Back then, inventory rose from 632 to 721, then from 721 to 743 homes for sale. This time around, we’ve gone from 163 in May to 176 last month, and now 199 available homes when we did our snapshot this month.

It’s not a big jump and inventory is still way too low, but it’s nice to see some changes in the opposite direction. And another little bit of good news: Of those 199 homes on the market this week, only 63 are new construction. So, more than two-thirds of the homes on the market can be moved into right after closing. Over the past few months, it’s usually been a 50/50 split — half of our inventory was new construction.

Some other notes to pass along this month:

• Pasco, Richland, and West Richland all set new home price records.
• Kennewick’s 76 available homes are the highest there since March.
• The last time our area’s median days on market was 10 or more was back in June 2020, when the median was 13 DOM.

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.)