Home market moving, but affordability still iffy
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 1 year, 8 months AGO
This four-bedroom home in Moses Lake was listed at $589,000 Wednesday. The median price for a home in that area of Grant County was $535,000, an increase of 42.86% from January 2024.
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. | February 14, 2025 3:00 AM
MOSES LAKE — The housing market is moving faster than a year ago in Washington, but affordability is still up in the air, according to data released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service for January.
Active listings increased 44.6% between January 2024 and January 2025 in the 26 Washington counties covered by the NWMLS data. Grant County had one of the largest rates of increase in the state at 48.8%, but Adams County, with its much smaller population, dipped very slightly.
New listings were up 74.1% in Grant County in January 2025 over January 2024, possibly due to an increase in new construction. The greatest activity in Grant County occurred in the western part of the county, according to the NWMLS data, which includes Quincy, George, Desert Aire and Crescent Bar. New listings in Adams County dropped from 15 to seven in the same period.
“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, wrote in the NWMLS statement.
However, interest rates remained high as median home prices rose, making homes less generally affordable. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage interest was 6.59% on Wednesday, compared to 6.77% a year earlier and 3.92% this week in 2022. Grant County prices decreased slightly, while Adams County median home prices rose by just over 2%.
“Both prices and interest rates continued to increase, having a negative effect on affordability,” Steven Bourassa, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington, wrote for NWMLS. “The median price rose by nearly 4% to $615,000, while interest rates rose from 6.69% at the end of January 2024 to 6.95% now.”
The changes in political and economic climate following the November elections may have been a factor, according to Bourassa.
“New immigration policies are expected to have an inflationary impact on home construction costs,” he wrote. “And the National Association of Home Builders has warned that tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico would have a significant impact on materials such as lumber and gypsum, while multiple researchers have documented the possible impact of immigration policy on labor supply for home builders. All of this suggests that the affordability of homeownership, which has been declining, will continue to do so.”
ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”