May 2026 Real Estate Market Report: Home Prices Stay Near All-Time High

How many months does it take for something to become a trend? I’m asking because we might have a home price trend happening this spring. We also saw a noticeable rise in sales activity last month, so there’s a lot to talk about today. Let’s dive in to our May 2026 Tri-Cities Real Estate Market report!

Tri-Cities Home Prices

Our median sales price landed at $445,850 for last month’s sales, which was barely higher than the previous month. It’s also within $5,000 of setting a new record.

But what’s interesting is that we’ve reached three straight months with prices above $440,000. Compare that to 2025, when we only had two months all year where the median was above $440K, or 2024, when we had zero months with home prices that high. I asked above if this is a trend — what I mean is, are we setting a new plateau for the year? Instead of fluctuating between $400K and $450K, will we go higher than that and see prices fluctuate between, say, $425K and $475K? Only time will tell, obviously.

If you’re curious, the current median price is almost exactly the same as a year ago. Last April, the median was $445,000.

Pasco and Richland both saw pretty big jumps last month, as you can see on the graphic above.

• Pasco’s median of $449,900 represents its second-highest monthly sales price ever, behind a real outlier in February 2022 when the median soared to $490,000.
• Richland’s median of $524,900 is also its second-highest ever, behind November 2023, when the median reached $525,000. It’s also the first time in a year prices in Richland have gone above $500K.

Home Sales

Sales activity was up for the third straight month, which is a good sign for the strength of the market. There were 323 homes sold in April, a 13% gain for the month. That’s also 60% more sales than we had in January.

Activity was especially high in Pasco and Richland, both of which haven’t seen that many sales in one month since last October-November.

Even with the increase in activity, homes continue to sell a lot slower than a year ago. Our median days on market was 29 in April — compare that to just 20 DOM in April 2025.

Inventory of Homes for Sale

Much like sales activity and home prices, the number of homes for sale is also up this month — and that’s quite normal for this time of year. When we did our market snapshot on May 6, there were 1095 homes for sale across the six cities we track. That’s up 2% compared to April, and 21% more than in May 2025.

For the second straight month, Pasco’s home inventory hit a high level since at least 2018 (when we began tracking data).

To sum up: Home prices, which often seesaw up and down from one month to the next, have stayed above $440,000 for three straight months and might be setting a new plateau. Meanwhile, sales activity remains strong (even though homes are taking longer to sell), and inventory of homes for sale is rising, too. Both of those are what you’d expect to see at this time of year.

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 me 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. )