It’s way too soon to use the word “normal” to describe the Tri-Cities housing market, but we’re still taking small steps in that direction. In real estate, we say that a “balanced” market is when there are 4-6 months of inventory on the market. In other words, when the number of homes for sale is 4-6x more than the number of homes sold, you have a balanced market — one that favors neither buyers nor sellers.
This month, we have two months of inventory for sale. As you can see above, our snapshot this month found 667 homes on the market — twice the 338 homes sold last month. The last time we had two months of inventory was March 2019!
Let’s take a deeper look at this month’s numbers.
Tri-Cities Home Prices Rebound
As I said last month when home prices fell by $30,000, “one month does not make a trend.” Sure enough, home prices rebounded this month and regained most of that decline. Overall, home prices are up $20,000 across the area. They spiked dramatically in both Richland and West Richland, while Pasco saw a more moderate rise.
Notice, too, that the homes which sold last month stayed on the market for a median of 15 days. The median DOM hasn’t been that slow since March 2020, when homes sold in a median of 17 days on market.
Tri-Cities Home Inventory Rises Again
Those 667 available homes for sale as of October are the highest monthly inventory we’ve seen since December 2019, when we had 680 available homes. It’s also 67% more homes for sale than we had one year ago.
Of those homes for sale, 42% (or 282) are new construction; the other 58% are existing homes that can be bought and moved into right away. Here’s a look at homes for sale in different price points:
- 21% of available homes are priced below $400,000
- 39% of available homes are priced below $500,000
The number of homes for sale at the low end of the market (below $300K) has gone down two straight months, from 51 back in August to 39 this month.
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.)
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