Pent-up demand and other factors drive the booming Grant County housing market

MOSES LAKE — Judging by the building permits issued by Grant County and its cities, home construction is booming. Buyers for those homes, according to local home construction companies, are not only local families looking for something new, but people from other parts of the state.

Bruce Preston, of Bruce Preston Construction, cited a recent customer as an example of one kind of buyer. The buyer had a home in the Puget Sound area and worked in downtown Seattle. But the buyer and her employer determined she could work just as well out of the office.

“She doesn’t have to buy lunch, doesn’t have to buy work clothes, doesn’t have to commute,” Preston said. Her company was subject to a tax on its parking spaces, he said, and it helped the company when workers went remote.

A second customer is employed with Boeing, but all he really required was a good internet connection, Preston said, and he could live anywhere. He chose Grant County.

“It’s kind of a lifestyle choice,” Preston said. “People are leaving Seattle. For multiple reasons.”

Very low mortgage rates and high housing prices in the Puget Sound area have created an opportunity for some homeowners, Preston said. They’re thinking about moving elsewhere in the state, he said.

And Grant County. Rachel Covey, co-owner of CAD Homes, said the company’s website gets a lot of traffic from the Puget Sound. “We’ve had a ton from the Bellevue area,” Covey said.

While CAD Homes always has had buyers leaving the Puget Sound for Grant County, the majority were retirees, Covey said. But there’s been a major shift in customer inquiries, she said. Now many of their Puget Sound customers are still working.

“You have your remote worker,” said Keith Lenssen, owner of Lenssen, Inc., but he’s also building homes for retirees from the Puget Sound and what he called sportsmen, people who like outdoor recreation.

There are also plenty of local customers. Lenssen said the current demand has its roots in the housing market of the last 15 to 20 years. Looking at interest rates over the last 20 years, “they have precipitously gone down,” he said. “Interest rates have been amazing” in the current market, Covey said. Home prices have gone up, but the drop in interest rates has offset some of that increase, so the home payment hasn’t increased as much as might have been anticipated, Lenssen said.

With payments that are still relatively affordable, people of all income levels are looking to buy.

But housing construction has lagged, Lenssen said, since the 2008-09 recession. “That was a fun market to go through,” he said, wryly.

The recession also depressed demand, as people deferred buying. Those potential homeowners are looking for a house now. “That pent-up demand is firing on all cylinders,” Lenssen said.

Covey said CAD Homes has experienced that demand in the development the company is building near Royal City. The company’s second phase of the development was half sold within a week. “Royal City has had pent-up demand for a long time,” she said.

People have been home a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for some people that has prompted a search for a new home. “People are realizing the shortcoming of what they’re currently in,” Covey said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].