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Clark County home listings in 2023 and 2024 were the lowest in a decade

Tight supply led to median home cost climbing to $540,000

By Alexis Weisend, Columbian staff reporter
Published: January 13, 2025, 2:54pm

Clark County had fewer home listings last year than in any other year besides 2023 since 2012, leading to higher median home prices in 2024.

The median home cost $540,000 in Clark County last year, $15,000 more than 2023 and 2022. Almost 500 more homes were sold in 2024 than 2023.

“It’s really hard for first- and second-time buyers to get into the market because things are so expensive,” said Mike Lamb, a broker with Windermere Stellar who has been selling homes in Clark County for four decades.

The small number of listings is due to high interest rates, he said. People with low-interest mortgages are hanging on to their homes instead of selling to buy another home that would carry a 6 percent or 7 percent mortgage.

“We need to get more people who give up and say, ‘OK, I’ll go ahead and sell the house with a 3 percent mortgage and buy that house that I want,’ ” Lamb said.

New construction helped fill the void left when existing homes didn’t go on the market. A lot of that new housing was built in Ridgefield, La Center, Camas and Washougal, which experienced an increase in median sales prices between 2023 and 2024.

“New construction pulls existing construction values up with it,” Lamb said.

Still, costly newer homes weren’t easy to buy with high interest rates throughout 2024.

In September, when the Federal Reserve announced a rate drop, people were hoping inventory would increase, Lamb said. But mortgage rates didn’t decrease as much as expected. The average for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.21 percent on Sept. 22, according to Bankrate.

“It wasn’t a bad market, but I think it didn’t live up to what some people hoped it would be,” Lamb said. “It wasn’t the interest rate relief that, as I recall, lots of people thought would happen.”

This month, rates are hovering around 7 percent, right back to where they were before the Federal Reserve’s announcement.

After making four rate cuts in 2024, the Federal Reserve plans to make fewer cuts in 2025, according to the Federal Open Market Committee.

Lamb doesn’t expect many changes in the housing market in 2025, he said, unless more people who want to sell decide they don’t want to wait for interest rates to go down significantly.

“I think activity will breed more activity,” Lamb said. “If we can get decent listing activity, I think we’re going to have a good market.”


Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct years with the least home listings since 2012.

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