March ’24 Housing Market Update: Home Sales On the Rise as Inventory Stays Steady

Spring is approaching and the Tri-Cities’ housing market is starting to show signs of life. As you can see on the second horizontal line above, five of the six cities and towns that we track saw an increase in sales activity last month. Inventory is holding steady and home prices are, too.

Let’s take a closer look at this month’s market stats.

Sales Activity Last Month

We had 209 transactions close last month, a 10% jump over the previous month. Pasco and Richland were especially busy, with sales up 20% and 15%, respectively. Benton City was the only area we track where sales were down month over month. Those 209 sales also represent a 9% increase over our sales activity one year ago.

Another sign that things are picking up: Our median days on market went from 40 two months ago to 33 last month. Still slower than normal, but a good sign for sellers. (Our median DOM tends be to be in the teens during the late spring and summer months.)

Tri-Cities Home Prices

Our median home price last month came in at $405,000. That’s a $10K drop from the prior month, which isn’t unusual. Our home prices typically go up and down by $10-15K in any given month. What’s more noteworthy is that our median price a year ago at this time was $435,000, so we’re down about 9% there.

You can blame Kennewick and Richland for the price decline…or give them credit if you’re a buyer and want to see prices come down!

Meanwhile, Pasco’s median home price last month was its second-highest ever at $443,215. The record happened exactly two years ago, when it hit $490,000 — that month was a total outlier and prices there haven’t come close since.

Tri-Cities Homes for Sale Inventory

Our inventory of homes for sale dropped only about 2% this month. We had 707 homes on the market when we did our snapshot on March 5. That’s 18% more homes for sale than we had in March 2023.

New construction is coming to market at about the same rate as a year ago, but the number of pre-existing homes for sale is way up. We have 402 existing homes for sale this month, compared to 306 a year ago.

Most of our inventory gains are happening in Kennewick and Pasco, both of which have 40-50% more homes for sale now than in March 2023.

And that’s a look at this month’s Tri-Cities housing market! As always, please drop us a note if you ever have questions about what’s happening around town or in your specific neighborhood.

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