We’ve had a few conversations recently with out-of-towners who are thinking about moving to the Tri-Cities, and they’re wondering what’s happening with our home prices and housing market, in general. It’s been nice to share some pretty good news: Home prices are holding steady and inventory continues to rise.
To clarify: It’s still a strong seller’s market, but things are definitely starting to change. Let’s dive into this month’s numbers.
Tri-Cities Home Prices
Home prices are driven to a large degree by supply and demand. As you’ll see below, our supply of homes for sale has gone up four straight months. So it makes sense that home prices have flattened out a bit. Earlier this year, we set a new record when median home prices reached $450,000. Last month, the median price was $440,000 — only $100 higher than the month before.
If you’re a “glass half full” person, it’s good news to see prices remaining flat the last few months. If you’re a “glass half empty” person, $440K is still the second-highest median price we’ve ever seen.
On a city-by-city level, Pasco is the only city where home prices aren’t flat over the past four months. In that timeframe, prices are up 9.9% in Pasco, 3.1% in West Richland, 1.2% in Kennewick … and down 2.8% in Richland.
Tri-Cities Home Inventory
The number of homes for sale (“inventory,” as we call it) has now gone up four straight months. There were 373 homes on the market when we did our snapshot on June 5 — that’s more than double the inventory we had in June 2021. But we still have a little way to go to catch up to our recent high of 444 homes on the market back in December.
More good news: New construction now makes up less than half of our inventory. Of those 373 available homes, only 161 (about 43%) were new construction. That means about 57% of our inventory are homes you can buy and move into as soon as the purchase closes; no waiting months for the home to finish being built. In each of the main three cities, inventory is as high this month as it’s been since late 2021/early 2022.
There are also more lower-priced homes available. We found 66 available homes priced below $400K this month, up from 56 such homes a month ago and 47 two months ago.
So to sum up, the Tri-Cities housing market is definitely changing. Inventory is up for the fourth straight month and prices, while still historically high overall, have stayed steady over the past 4-5 months.
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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