October 2025 Real Estate Market Update: A Surprising Sales Spike

Outside of the pandemic years, it can seem like our local housing market goes through the same cycles year after year. That’s why some of the numbers you see above on this month’s market update are a bit surprising. Active listings typically are still on the rise at this time of year, while the number of homes sold starts to decline.

Neither of those is the case this month! Let’s unpack the numbers.

Inventory of Homes for Sale

There were 1176 homes for sale in the Tri-Cities when we did our snapshot on October 7. As you can see above, that’s down about 3% from September — 32 listings, to be exact. In a typical year, inventory is still on the rise this month and starts to drop in November.

Compared to a year ago, inventory is up 25%.

It’s not that sellers have started to pack it in for the winter. In fact, more new listings hit the market in September (448) than in August (445). It seems the drop in available homes for sale is largely due to another surprise — the rise in homes sold. So let’s talk about…

Homes Sold Last Month

Sales activity typically starts to slow down after the school year, but as you can see above, sales rose 8% across the Tri-Cities in September. Those 364 homes sold are the most we’ve had in a single month since July 2022, when 383 homes sold. It’s also 20% more sales than we had one year ago.

Those sales took a little longer. Our median days on market last month was 29, compared to 27 in August.

Sales were up the most last month in Kennewick and Richland, both of which had their second-highest monthly sales all year!

So what’s behind the rise in sales activity? Probably the decline in interest rates. The Fed lowered its benchmark rate in the middle of September, but it signaled the rate cut was coming back in August, and mortgage rates — which often follow what the Fed does, but not always — started to drop. For parts of August and September, mortgage rates were hovering at or near their lowest levels of the year.

Tri-Cities Home Prices

When demand and sales go up, prices usually do, too. But our median sales price dropped this month by $15,000 to a median of $425,000. That likely means the lower interest rates brought first-time buyers into the market, along with other buyers who were shopping for lower-priced homes with monthly payments that were made more affordable by the drop in interest rates.

Even with the $15K drop, our median price is still smack dab in the middle of that same $400K-$450K range that we’ve been in since January 2022. In fact, exactly one year ago, our median price was $427,500 — this month, it’s $425,000. That’s what I mean when I say that prices are flat/steady.

To sum up: It was an interesting month for sure! We don’t usually see inventory go down and sales go up at this time of year, but I suspect the long-awaited drop in interest rates compelled more buyers to snap up affordable homes. Can’t wait to see if those unusual trends continue this month!

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. )