Home prices and active listings both up in Grant County

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.