Home prices and active listings both up in Grant County
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 6 months AGO
This home was listed at $369,000 in Moses Lake Wednesday. Median home prices were up 15.54% between March 2024 and March 2025.
JOEL MARTIN/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | April 11, 2025 3:00 AM
MOSES LAKE — Active listings are considerably up in Washington compared to a year ago, and a Washington city showed the highest growth in homeownership in the U.S. over a 12-year period, but rising prices are still making the dream of owning a home difficult to fulfill.
According to data released last week by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service, active listings rose 44% between March 2024 and March 2025 in the 26 Washington counties that the NWMLS tracks. That increase, combined with a small decrease in interest rates between February and March, is cause for some optimism, according to Selma Hepp, chief economist at real estate data tracker Cotality.
“Easing of mortgage rates into spring home buying season has helped bring some home buyers off the sidelines,” Hepp wrote in the announcement from NWMLS.
Active listings dropped slightly in Adams County between March 2024 and March 2025, but Grant County’s listings mirrored the statewide trend at 44%. Grant County had the fifth-largest increase in the state, according to the NWMLS.
New listings were up statewide by 14.1% year-over-year, according to the NWMLS, but the increase between February and March of this year was 44%. In Grant County, new listings rose 14% year-over-year and 44% from February, while Adams County listings were up 0.83% in the last month and down 109% year-over-year.
Median home prices continued to rise between March 2024 and March 2025, according to the NWMLS data. Statewide, the average cost of a home rose 3.2% during that time. In Grant County, the median home price rose 15.54% to $375,499, while in Adams County, the increase was only 0.66%.
“Rising median house prices continue to exacerbate affordability issues,” Steven Bourassa, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, wrote for the NWMLS. “In the first quarter of the year, median sale prices increased by 9.5%, which would translate into nearly 44% if compounded over the course of a year.”
Meanwhile, the city of Kent, a suburb south of Seattle, showed the largest growth in homeownership among U.S. cities, according to a study by the home improvement website Home Gnome. The study tracked the difference in homeownership rates – the percentage of households that own their home rather than renting – in 500 cities across the country between 2010 and 2023, according to Home Gnome. Besides Kent, two other Washington cities placed in the top 25: Everett at No. 4 and Tacoma at No. 18.
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Home prices up in most Basin markets
MOSES LAKE — Home prices increased in most, but not all, markets of the Columbia Basin this year, according to data from the real estate website Redfin. The median home price in Moses Lake in September was $364,821, according to Redfin’s data, up 5.4% from September 2025. Ephrata’s median price wasn’t far off, at $368,824, but that represented a 12.5% increase over the same time period. Quincy’s median price topped the list of local cities at $405,235, a 10.1% year-over-year increase. Othello, in contrast, dropped by 17.1% year-over-year, to $298,226.
BASIN EVENTS Nov. 6-14
COLUMBIA BASIN — Now that everyone has adjusted from the Daylight Saving Time changeover, it’s time to get out of the house and off to something fun. Here are a few destinations to check out. Nov. 6 Members Exhibition Gallery opening for show of artworks by museum members. Opening reception 4-7 p.m. at Moses Lake Museum & Art Center, 401 S. Balsam St. Info: www.moseslakemuseum.com.
Going rogue
Moses Lake salon celebrates creativity and independence
MOSES LAKE — The new salon on East Broadway is called Rogue Collective for a reason. “We had this dream to do it all together,” said owner Dana Mendoza. “That’s where the ‘collective’ came from. It’s a pretty amazing group of women. Everyone has their own separate gifts and talents.” The “rogue” part of the name comes from the fact that the professionals all came from other salons with the same idea: to do things their own way.