Slow start to prime buying season in the marketplace

Published on: May 6, 2025

Northwest MLS, the source for the most current, accurate market listing data in Washington state, today released its Market Snapshot for the month of April 2025.

Market Recap

As spring gets underway, inventory levels are high but the pace of sales is relatively slow. The number of active listings showed double-digit year-over-year increases in most counties when compared to April 2024, demonstrating that homeowners are primed and ready to sell.

Buyers were granted a bit of a reprieve as mortgage rates stayed relatively consistent throughout April, finishing out the month at 6.76% – the same rate as the end of March 2025. In addition, the median sales price for residential and condominium sales stayed virtually unchanged from March 2025, increasing from $649,999 to $650,000 in April 2025.

“As the number of sellers continues to outpace buyers, it is not surprising that price growth has slowed,” said Steven Bourassa, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research (WCRER). Recent media coverage identifies not only socioeconomic uncertainties such as tariffs and inflation, but also the willingness of both buyers and sellers to make concessions as potential factors in final sales prices in the last month.

April 2025 Key Takeaways

Active Listings

• There was a 47.4% increase year-over-year in the total number of properties listed for sale in the NWMLS service area. There were 14,459 active listings on the market at the end of April 2025,compared to 9,813 at the end of April 2024.
• When compared to the previous month, active inventory increased by 2,819 listings (+24.2%), up from 11,640 in March 2025.
• The number of homes for sale year-over-year increased throughout the NWMLS coverage area, with 24 out of 26 counties seeing a double-digit year-over-year increase. The six counties with the highest increases in active inventory were Snohomish (+84.8%), Columbia (+76.9%), King (+71.3%), Clallam (+70.7%), Whatcom (+68.1%) and Grant (+59.8%).

Closed Sales and Months of Inventory

• The number of closed sales slightly increased by 0.7% year-over-year, up from 5,847 in April 2024 to 5,887 in April 2025. When compared to the previous month, the number of closed sales increased by 8.9%, up from 5,406 sales in March 2025.
• The five counties with the largest increases were Grays Harbor (+54%), Kittitas (+44.9), Island (+29.9%), Chelan (+28.9%) and Skagit (+23.5%).
• A balanced market is considered around 4 to 6 months of inventory by most industry experts. At the current rate of sales, it would take around two and a half months (2.46) to sell every home that is active in the NWMLS inventory.

Median Sales Price and Total Dollar Value

• Overall, the median price for residential homes and condominiums sold in April 2025 was $650,000, a slight decrease of 0.2% when compared to April 2024 ($651,000). When compared to last month, the median price was virtually unchanged ($649,999 in March 2025).
• The three counties with the highest median sale prices were King ($907,000), Snohomish ($755,500) and San Juan ($665,000), and the three counties with the lowest median sale prices were Okanogan ($289,000), Columbia ($305,000) and Adams ($310,000).
• The total dollar value of closed sales in April 2025 for residential homes was $4,393,208,459 and was $523,944,227 for condominiums ($4,917,152,685 in total), an increase of 1.2% when compared to April 2024.

Consumer and Broker Activity

NWMLS also provided insights into consumer activities during the month of April 2025:

• Keyboxes located at listed properties were accessed 153,949 times in April 2025, a 27.7% increase from March 2025 when they were accessed 120,586 times. Keybox activity slightly increased year-over-year by 0.2%, with keyboxes being accessed 152,999 times in April 2024.
• The total number of property showings scheduled through NWMLS-provided software decreased 4.7% from 122,099 in March 2025 to 116,336 in April 2025. This was a year-over-year decrease of 5.4% from the number of showings in April 2024 (122,975).
• In April 2025, there were 16,830 listed properties that were eligible for the Down Payment Resource (DPR) program offered by NWMLS, a 24.2% increase from 13,552 in March 2025. This was also a 22.3% year-over-year increase from 13,761 eligible listings in April 2024.