Southwest Washington’s real estate market remained strong in May, with sharp increases in pending and closed sales and a continued short supply of new listings of homes for sale.
The latest Market Action report from the RMLS listing service, released Friday, shows 920 pending sales, a 23 percent uptick from the 747 pending sales in May 2014. Closed sales climbed by almost 12 percent, to 671 from the previous May’s total of 600.
RMLS reported 1,107 new listings in May, a slight increase from May 2014. New listings in May were up from the 1,000 homes that came on the market in April. Strong demand meant that the average market time for a home listed for sale was just 78 days, a 20 percent drop from the 98 day average in May 2014.
The inventory of homes for sale was just 2.6 months, a slight increase from April but well below the 3.9-month inventory reported in May 2014.
An addendum to the Market Action report, however, presented a picture of a much tighter real estate market than the standard inventory number would suggest. Clark County has a much higher portion of residential listings than any other part of the metro area that are listed as “proposed” and are not yet under construction, the addendum said. When those homes that are not yet build or otherwise not ready for sale are removed from the official inventory, the active listings number shrinks from 1,759 homes to just 1,227 homes, RMLS reported.
As a result, a more accurate number for the inventory of homes ready for purchase would last just 1.8 months.
The median sales price — half sold for more, half for less — of homes sold in Clark County in May was $272,000. That’s a 9 percent increase for the year to date, and 15 percent higher than the previous May’s median sales price of $236,300.
In another sign of the strong housing market, Clark County said it issued 124 permits for single-family homes in May, a 65 percent increase from the 75 permits issued in May of 2014. The county approved 15 multifamily permits in May for 217 housing units. In May 2014, Clark County reported no multi-family housing permits.
