Home sales and new listings increased year over year in January, according to the latest report from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS).
Closings rose 10.8% year over year in the NWMLS region, with 3,737 homes sold last month. Pending home sales also rose 5.3% year over year, with 5,564 homes going under contract.
Meanwhile, brokers added 6,693 new properties to the NWMLS database, a 35.1% increase over January 2024. Total inventory jumped 44.6% year over year, with double-digit increases in 22 out of the 26 counties in the region. Inventory increased the most in Snohomish (up 96.9%) and King (up 62.6%) counties.
Given the current rate of sales, it would take 2.75 months to sell all the listings in the NWMLS region.
“For-sale inventories are continuing to rise from historical lows, and that’s helping bring some life to housing market activity in the NWMLS area,” Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic, said in a press release.
However, the median price rose 3.6%, from $593,500 in January 2024 to $615,000 last month.
“Both prices and interest rates continued to increase, having a negative effect on affordability,” said Steven Bourassa, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington. “Moreover, new immigration policies are expected to have an inflationary impact on home construction costs … Multiple researchers have documented the possible impact of immigration policy on the labor supply for home builders.”
Bourassa also said that tariffs on housing-related imports from Canada and Mexico would significantly impact construction costs.
“All of this suggests that the affordability of homeownership, which has been declining, will continue to do so,” he said.