Home sales, prices hold steady
This house was listed at $345,000 Wednesday in Moses Lake. Median home prices are up slightly in Washington over last year.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
COLUMBIA BASIN — Home sales increased sluggishly in the last year, according to a report by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which tracks real estate trends in 26 Washington counties.
The inertia is due to the mortgage rate, which has stayed pretty close to the same over the last year, according to the report. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.72% Wednesday, according to Freddie Mac, compared to 6.47% this week in August 2024. Closed sales rose 3.81% statewide between July 2024 and July 2025, according to the NWMLS data.
The picture locally was a little more active, according to the NWMLS. Closed sales were up in Grant County by 30% and in Adams County by 75%.
Active listings were another story, according to the NWMLS. Statewide, 20,781 properties were listed for sale at the end of July 2025, an increase of 4.96% from June 2025 and 37.42% over July 2024. All of the 26 counties saw double-digit increases in listings, except Okanogan, which was up 8.7%. Grant County’s increase was 44.51% year-over-year, while Adams County’s was 26.09%.
Median home prices remained stable statewide year-over-year, according to the NWMLS data, and dropped 2.99% from June 2025. The median price in Adams County in July 2025 was $349,999, an increase of 5.42% over July 2024 and the lowest in the 26 counties. In Grant County the median price was $364,308, up 6.06% from a year ago.
Within Grant County there was a wide variation in price increases. The area south and east of Moses Lake that includes Warden and Wheeler posted a median home price of $415,454, nearly double that of July 2024. Prices in the Peninsula area of Moses Lake, by contrast, were down 19.07% to $278,000.
“As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank kept the federal funds rate unchanged at its July 30 meeting, reflecting ongoing concerns about inflation,” Steven Bourassa, Director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington, wrote in the report. “Although the federal funds rate is not directly related to mortgage rates, this decision does suggest that there is unlikely to be any improvement in mortgage rates in the near future.”