September 2024 Housing Market Update: Inventory at Highest Level in ~10 Years

There’s an argument to be made that right now is the most buyer-friendly the Tri-Cities market has been in years.

Here’s why: Buyers have more homes to choose from today than in ~10 years, prices are steady, and interest rates are at their lowest in the past 12-18 months.

(Yes, rates are much higher than they were during the pandemic, but we may never see rates that low again. And back then, there were so few houses for sale that buyers usually had to offer way over asking price to have a chance at getting their offer accepted.)

With all that said, let’s dive into this month’s numbers!

Current Inventory of Homes for Sale

When we ran our snapshot on September 6, there were 917 active listings. Just like last month, that’s more homes for sale than we’ve seen in the six years we’ve been tracking market conditions. We checked TCAR’s stats (which cover more than just the immediate Tri-Cities) and they don’t show inventory at this level since late 2014!

The number of homes for sale is up 5% since last month and 15% since this time last year.

Both Kennewick and Pasco have more inventory right now than they’ve had in at least the past six years.

Tri-Cities Sales Activity

The market continues to grow slowly, too. We had 341 closings in August, making it seven straight months with increasing sales activity. Closings are up 1% over the previous month and up 2% from this time last year. If history holds true, activity should begin to slow down in the next month or two — that’s pretty common for September/October.

The homes that closed last month sold much faster than we’ve seen much of 2024. Our median days on market last month was just 15 — the lowest/fastest we’ve seen all year.

Median Home Prices

Home prices continue to hold pretty steady — up one month, down the next, and not really changing much in the big picture.

August’s sales had a median price of $430,000, down about 1.5% from the prior month. But prices are unchanged over the past year — 12 months ago, our median sales price was, you guessed it, $430,000.

To sum up: Lots of homes for sale right now, activity has risen slowly for seven straight months, and prices remain steady.

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.)