Tri-Cities Real Estate Market Update: October 2019

Look at all the red on that chart. It’s been a while since our monthly market update graphic has looked like a social studies quiz turned in by an 8th grader who didn’t study!

We’re nowhere near a buyer’s market yet, but what you’re looking at is more good news for buyers. The Tri-Cities market continues to shift slowly towards a more balanced environment — not as balanced as it was several years ago when we had 1,000+ homes available, but certainly more balanced than it’s been for most of 2019. Inventory across the Tri-Cities was up 3% from a month ago, while the number of homes sold dropped by 8%. No doubt some of this is just the cyclical nature of the real estate market. Activity tends to slow down a bit when school starts up each year, so what we’re seeing this month may have as much to do with the calendar changing as with the market changing.

Regardless, buyers should be happier to find more homes available and median prices falling back below the $300K mark. OTOH, sellers can be happy that homes priced correctly are still selling pretty quickly — still a median of just 10 days on market across the Tri-Cities.

Some other notes to be aware of:

• Overall inventory has now gone up for six straight months. The 743 available homes in our Monday snapshot is the highest inventory we’ve seen since January of this year. Some sellers are reluctant to list their homes when the weather gets colder (even though there’s really no “best time” to sell in our area), so we’ll keep an eye on how long this streak continues.
• Even though homes sold fell by 8%, that total of 401 closings is still higher than what we saw during the first half of the year. From January through June, homes sold was below 400 every month.
• Richland had the most dramatic monthly change with the biggest rise in inventory (+8%) and the biggest drop in homes sold (-22%). The number of homes sold in Richland has dropped for three straight months.
• With 64 homes available, West Richland’s inventory is the highest it’s been this year.

Give us a call, text or email if you ever have questions about the housing stats here in the Tri-Cities, or even in your specific neighborhood. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the market to help our clients make the best decisions for their buying or selling situations!

(*Remember that days on market can sometimes be skewed by how new construction homes are processed in the MLS.)