May ’24 Housing Market Update: Sales & Inventory Both Rising

Look at all the green! Buyers and sellers are out in full force right now, as evidenced by the increases in sales activity as well as the number of homes for sale.

Meanwhile, home prices fell just a bit despite all the activity, which isn’t always the case when activity picks up. So let’s dive into this month’s numbers!

Tri-Cities Home Inventory (aka active listings of homes for sale)

After dropping for five straight months, the number of homes for sale across the Tri-Cities is finally on the rise again. During our May 7th snapshot, we found 748 active listings — that’s 9% higher than our inventory in April and 24% more homes for sale than we had in May 2023. This is great news for buyers, who have more options for their home search. It’s been at least five years since we’ve had this many active listings in the month of May.

The biggest increase in home inventory is happening in Richland, with 234 homes for sale—the most we’ve seen there since last October. Inventory has also gone up in Richland for three straight months. None of the other cities we track can say the same.

On the flip side, inventory remains low in West Richland. Between October and March, West Richland averaged almost 60 homes for sale. But in each of the past two months, they’ve had less than 30 available homes.

Sales Activity Last Month

There were 311 homes sold in April, an 11% gain from the previous month. That’s 26% more homes sold than May 2023. It’s also the most closings we’ve had in a single month since last September. You can see on the graphic above that the entire middle row is green. Each city we track saw home sales rise last month.

Interest rates were below 7% for most of March, and that may have contributed to more closings in April. Rates have been back above 7% since the second week of April, so we might see fewer closings this month — and that could also be contributing to our rise in inventory.

Homes are also selling a bit faster. Our median days on market last month was 24, down from 28 in March. Average DOM last month was 57.

Tri-Cities Home Prices

Despite the rise in sales last month, prices went down a bit across the area. Our median sales price in April was $422,000, an $8K drop from March. In May 2023, our median sales price was $432,500.

It’s remarkable how consistent our home prices have been. For 19 consecutive months, the median price has stayed between $399K and $430K.

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.)