March 2025 Housing Market Update: Buyers Return to the Market

It looks like the spring market has arrived a little earlier than normal. All three of the Tri-Cities saw big increases in homes sold — look at the green on that second section. It’s not just a lot of green, but LARGE green numbers!

That helped push median prices up to a level that we haven’t seen since last summer.

Let’s get right into this month’s update.

Homes Sold Last Month

After dipping below 200 two months ago, we had 251 closings in February — the most we’ve had in any February since 2022, which was the tail end of the COVID market when homes were selling like crazy.

Month over month, it’s a 28% rise in homes sold. A year ago at this time, the monthly rise in February’s sales was just 10%.

Sales were hot all over the Tri-Cities. Take a look:

• Kennewick: up 41% for the month, and also 41% more sales than one year ago
• Pasco: up 25% for the month, and 35% higher than a year ago
• Richland: up 21% for the month, and 8% higher than a year ago

West Richland is an exception. Its 15 sales in February were down a bit both for the month and from one year ago.

Meanwhile, those sales are taking longer than we’ve seen in a long time. We started tracking the market in November 2018, and we’ve not seen 44 days on market for the Tri-Cities area since then. (Prior to 2010, it was common for homes to take more than 100 days to sell!) So if you’re selling now or planning to sell soon, patience is a good idea.

Tri-Cities Home Prices

With all that activity last month, it makes sense that prices rose, too.

Our median price across the Tri-Cities reached $435,000, rising about $6500 from January. Over the past two months, the median has risen a little more than $15,000. Our median home price hasn’t been this high since last July ($436,250).

A year ago, our median was $405,000, so prices are up 7.4% year-over-year.

Inventory of Homes for Sale

Meanwhile, the number of homes on the market is holding steady despite last month’s big jump in closings. When we did our market snapshot on March 6, there were 780 homes for sale — just a touch down from 786 homes on the market a month ago.

Inventory has now dropped for five consecutive months, but that’s normal for the fall and winter months. Despite all those months of declining inventory, we still have 10% more homes on the market than we did in March 2024.

Richland and West Richland are bucking the inventory trend; both have seen two straight months with more homes for sale.

To sum up: It looks like the spring market arrived a month early. Even though homes are selling more slowly, sales activity jumped 28% across the area last month. Home prices followed suit, rising just about $6500 to a level we haven’t seen since last July. Inventory has been declining slowly for several months, which is normal for the fall and winter months. If history is any indication, inventory should start to rise in the next month or two.

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.)