May 2025 Housing Market Update: Home Prices Hit 33-Month High

Tri-Cities home prices didn’t set a record last month, but they sure came close. And it wouldn’t take much of a rise this month to set a new record.

That gain in prices happened even though more homes are on the market now than we’ve had in six months. So let’s dive in to this month’s Tri-Cities real estate market numbers and see what’s happening around the area.

Tri-Cities Home Prices

The median sales price last month jumped to $445,000 — up more than $11,000 from March. That’s a 2.6% rise in just one month. It’s also 5.5% higher than prices were a year ago at this time. The gain was powered primarily by the city of Richland, where 70 home sales last month had a median price of $505,000. That was 5.4% higher than the previous month. It was also the first time in five months that Richland’s median home price went above $500K. (Prices also rose significantly in both West Richland and Benton City, but they have so few sales each month that it doesn’t have a huge impact on the area as a whole.)

About that record: Tri-Cities home prices haven’t been this high in 33 months. It was back in July 2022 when we set the current record with a median price of $450,490. As you can see, it wouldn’t take much of a rise in prices this month for us to set a new record.

Sales Activity

Even though the busy spring market is in full swing, the number of sales actually dropped a tiny bit last month. We went from 267 sales in March to 265 in April.

“Cari, that seems odd. Shouldn’t home sales be on the rise at this time of year?”

Yes, you would think so. But I went back through our records and, well, check it out: Sales rose 11% between March and April 2024. But they were down 10% between March and April 2023, down 9% between those months in 2022, and down 16% between March and April 2020. So it’s not unusual at all for activity to drop like it did last month! But even if this small drop in sales is normal for April, I also wonder if the economic uncertainty could keep more buyers on the sidelines and lead to two straight months of declining sales.

Even though the number of sales dropped a bit, sales have started to happen more quickly. Across the area, our median days on market dropped from 35 in March to 20 in April.

Inventory of Homes for Sale

Meanwhile, as is totally normal for this time of year, the number of homes for sale is up for the second straight month. There were 905 active listings across the Tri-Cities when we did our market snapshot on May 6. That’s a 7% rise in just a month. It’s also 21% more available homes than we had on the market in May 2024.

With 307 homes available, Richland has more inventory than at any time since we started tracking our own market data in 2018. West Richland’s 63 available homes are the most that city has had since December 2023.

To sum up: For the most part, we’re experiencing a pretty normal housing market so far in 2025. Inventory is rising and homes are starting to sell faster. But we could see a new home price record soon and I’ll also be watching if sales activity picks up after last month’s slight decline.

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.)