September 2026 Housing Market Update: Inventory Hits 13-Year High

Do you remember the movie, Monsters University? What about the song, “Blurred Lines”? They dominated screens and streams in June 2013, which also happens to be the last time there were this many active homes for sale in the Tri-Cities!

It’s true — inventory is at a 13-year high right now. The good news is that homes are still selling. But the added inventory is starting to put downward pressure on home prices, as I’ll show in today’s market update. Let’s dig into the numbers.

Inventory of Homes for Sale Continues to Rise

The number of active listings has risen every month this year. When we did our market snapshot on Sunday (Sept. 6), there were 1,339 homes for sale across the Tri-Cities area. According to PACMLS and Tri-City Association of Realtors data, we haven’t had that many active listings since June 2013. As you can see above, it’s 6% higher than August. Not shown above: It’s 11% more inventory than one year ago.

A couple notes:

• Pasco, Richland, West Richland, and Benton City all have more homes for sale right now than since we began tracking at the city level in November 2018.
• Kennewick is close to having record inventory since that date.

This — plus the home price data I’ll get to below — is all good news if you’re buying a home in the Tri-Cities, or planning to do so soon, because you have lots of options to choose from. But the flip side is that mortgage rates just hit their highest level in more than a year, which is certainly keeping many buyers on the sidelines until they can afford monthly payments.

One note that could lead to lower inventory next month: The number of new listings that hit the market in August dropped more than 15%. That often, but not always, precedes an overall drop in inventory.

Home Sales Are Up, But Slower

The good news is that home sales ticked back up after a big drop the previous month. There were 336 closings in August, a gain of just under 3%. That’s common for this time of year, and driven by many buyers wanting to close and move into their new home before the school year starts. That said, it’s also normal for sales activity to start to slow in September, so don’t be surprised….

Sales activity was especially high in West Richland — those 32 sales represent the city’s second-busiest month of 2026.

Despite the small increase in sales, homes are taking longer to sell — significantly in some cases. For the Tri-Cities as a whole, our median days on market dropped from 22 to 27 in just one month.

Homes took longer to sell in all six cities we track. In Kennewick, the slowdown was only from 22 to 23 days (median). But every other city saw a days-on-market drop of at least five days. Pasco’s slowdown was 8 days and West Richland’s was 10, dropping from 28 to 38 median days on market.

Home Prices Fall Again

Our median sales price in August was $430,000, a modest drop of about 2% from the previous month. It’s also down about 2% from August 2025. Despite two straight months of price drops, we’re still comfortable in that $399,000 to $450,000 window that median prices have been in since all the way back in January 2022.

Pasco was the only city we track internally that had prices go up last month. And Richland led the way in the opposite direction, with its median dropping about 11% to $450,000 in August.

It only makes sense that prices would eventually start to drop as home inventory continues to rise. Sellers across the Tri-Cities are having to drop their prices. Of those 336 sales, 255 were existing/resale properties — i.e., not new construction. Of those 255 sales, 60% sold below the original list price.

To sum up: If it looks like there are a lot of “For Sale” signs in front yards as you drive around town, you’re right. We have more homes for sale right now in the Tri-Cities than we’ve had since the summer of 2013. I expect that number to start dropping in the next month or two as we head into the fall and holiday seasons. Prices have dropped a couple months in a row, which is in line with expectations as inventory keeps going up. The good news is that homes are still selling — provided they’re priced right and in good condition. But a lot of sellers are having to accept less than their initial price in order to get their home sold.

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. )

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