Clark County’s housing market cooled a bit in September, with fewer sales and more homes left on the market, according to real estate data released Monday.
Home sale prices also fell slightly in September, but remained higher when comparing the month with the same time last year, according to the Regional Multiple Listing Service’s monthly Market Action report.
New listings, pending sales and closings fell in September compared to August, and they came in below levels in September 2017. Average and median sale prices also fell from August, although they came in higher than the prices reported in September 2017, continuing an overall trend of higher prices in 2018 compared to the previous year.
Mike Lamb, a local real estate broker at Windermere Stellar, said that the market still saw its fourth best September for new sales since 2005 despite the declines in sales and listings.
“Whatever the causes, whether it was the teacher strikes, interest rate increases, the weather or something else, the September market was still good by historic standards,” Lamb wrote in his monthly report analyzing the Clark County data.
The average sale price of Clark County homes for the first nine months of 2018 was $392,300, an 8.9 percent increase over the $360,400 average for the first nine months of 2017. The median sale price for the first nine months jumped 9.2 percent, up from $325,000 in 2017 to $355,000 in 2018.
Those rates of increase are likely to slow next year, said Terry Wollam, managing broker for ReMax equity group in Vancouver, although prices overall will probably continue to move upward.
“For next year, I would assume that we’ll see a plateauing of pricing — maybe appreciation that will take place equal to the inflationary rate, in that 2 to 3 percent range,” he said. “I’m not seeing our prices softening, just because inventory still has a ways to go before prices fall from it.”
The overall number of active listings in the county has been growing in the past few months, and rose to 1,979 in September, the highest number in any month since the start of 2016. Camas, Washougal, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, Brush Prairie, north Salmon Creek and Evergreen had the county’s most listings.
With new listings on the decline, Wollam said the increase in active listings can be attributed primarily to falling sales.
“We’re seeing an increase in inventory, which isn’t due to an increase in homes on the market, but due to a decrease in sales that we saw in July, August and September,” Wollam said. “So we’re seeing just a slight uptick in our monthly inventory both over the prior month and year over year.”
Wollam and Lamb both said that some slowdown in September is to be expected due to normal seasonal shifts in the market, which tends to cool off at the end of the summer.
Still, Wollam said the increase in active listings in recent months appears to be greater than what would be expected based on just seasonal shifts. And Lamb said the size of the decrease in sales and new listings was surprising.
“With available inventory growing and price increases slowing somewhat, buyers are finally beginning to have better choices and greater opportunities,” Lamb wrote in his report. “In the long run that is very good news for this market.”
Wollam said buyers should be sure to pay attention to mortgage interest rates in addition to changes in home prices. The market report doesn’t include data on interest rates, but Wollam said he’s seen rates increase dramatically in the past two weeks.
“There’s expectations in the market that we may see another half percent increase in rates in the next six months, so if someone is looking to buy, they should be watching interest rates closely,” he said. “We’ve already seen a substantial increase, and that will have a far greater impact on their payment than any potential price increase or decrease.”
