Tri-Cities Housing Market Shows Surprising Trend

TRI-CITIES, Wash. - The Tri-Cities housing market has shown a surprising trend - rather than sales sinking, real estate exploded in the last year.

Ron Almberg, president elect of the Tri-City Association of Realtors, says the market only slowed down for about two months, "but then as soon as June hit, the market just caught on fire and it was busier than ever. In fact, if you take out April and May, we sold more homes in the 10 months of 2020, than we did in all of 2019."

Almberg says this is a combination of pent up demand and production slowing down. Construction took a hit, with the number of workers allowed on a site limited and crews getting sick. With fewer new homes being built, the ones available were snapped up quickly. He adds that before the pandemic, there were about 500 homes on the market. Now there's about 200.

"Everything I'm reading in the national as well as local, is saying that we'll be in this kind of market for the next two years at least. We're just so low in inventory, it's going to take a long time for us to build up the inventory again."

Almberg adds that homes are often being bought before they're even built, with the amount of offers on each house increasing. He says a house that is selling for under $300,00 will usually get between 15-20 offers.