Home prices still rising as COVID-19 keeps available homes low | Local

Nestor Hernandez, a broker with Jody Hurst and Associates in Selah, said he’s used to having 15 to 20 listings at any given time. These days, he has just a handful.

“We’re just having a shortage of homes,” Hernandez said.

Not surprisingly, the number of residential homes sold in Yakima County has decreased. However, the sales volume has kept increasing, driven by still-rising home prices.

For the first six months of 2020, 1,297 homes were sold in Yakima County, a 1.1% decrease from the same period in 2019, according to data from Headwaters-The Source, a Selah-based firm that tracks real estate sales. However, the dollar volume for those sales increased by 10.2% to $344.9 million, reflecting rising home prices.

Hernandez said that in the last 60 days, he’s seen homes sell for as much as 10% above the listing price.

In general, the sellers he’s worked with are highly motivated to leave, usually due to a job change or other personal circumstances.

“I have one person moving out of the state, and they had to sell really quickly,” he said. “And they sold in a week.”

Certain buyers aren’t in the market right now, Nelson said. Namely, buyers who aren’t looking seriously but may visit open houses or do occasional viewings. Open houses are not allowed under current COVID-19 restrictions, and the number of people who can be in a home for a viewing is limited.

Meanwhile, potential sellers may feel uncertainty over COVID-19. Some may decide not to sell because they’re afraid of losing a job, Nelson said.

“There are so many little odds and ends and uncertainties that would affect people’s decision whether to purchase and sell,” he said.

Hernandez said he’s heard from some buyers who are waiting until the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, but he said there are still enough buyers on the market for homes to get multiple offers. That’s resulted in a continued increase in home prices.

The average price for Yakima County home sales for the first half of 2020 was $265,942, an 11.4% increase from the same period in 2019.

Residents of nearby cities like Portland and Seattle may be giving areas like the Yakima Valley a closer look, said James Young, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research, which is based at the University of Washington.

“If you’re worried about a disease or a virus that’s spread through close human contact, do you want to be in a large, crowded city?” Young said.

Older residents have looked at the Yakima Valley as a retirement destination, but he believes that buyers in other age groups might be more open to moving to a less-crowded area, especially if they will be working remotely for some time and could buy a home with more space for the money they got from their previous home in a city like Seattle or Portland.

Rising prices have become more of a problem for local buyers, including those in the Lower Yakima Valley, Nelson said.

Homes in the Lower Yakima Valley are starting to price at well above $250,000, which takes a lot of potential buyers out of contention, he said: Home prices are “exceeding their income levels.”

And with so few homes on the market, negotiating a lower price isn’t an option.

“Any buyer that’s offering less then what the price is being (listed for) is just going to be out,” he said. “Somebody is going to outbid them.”

Nelson said it’s difficult to determine how the local real estate market will fare going forward.

“We’re probably going into the fall, and most of the winter (under COVID-19), 2020 is basically shot,” he said. “After that, what will happen? How do we get out of this?”