Pierce County home sales were sluggish in June. Here’s what we know about why

June home sales figures released Wednesday by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service showed the number of new listings added in Pierce County remained roughly the same as last year.

Pierce County’s median closed-sale price for existing homes hit $563,500 for a single-family house. For condos, it was $394,000.

Here are some regional comparisons, with median closed-sale prices in June for homes and condos, respectively:

▪ King County: $965,000, $555,090

▪ Snohomish County: $830,000, $530,000

▪ Kitsap County: $577,500, $299,450

▪ Thurston County: $524,945, $339,750

▪ Mason County: $430,000, $390,000

Active listings were up more than 45 percent from the same time a year ago as more houses lingered on the market. Pending sales in June for existing homes were down 5.2 percent from the same period last year. The condo market, in contrast, showed a more-than 34 percent increase in pending sales.

Closed sales for existing homes were down just over 5 percent, while the number of sold condo units was almost exactly the same as a year ago.

CoreLogic chief economist Selma Hepp said in Wednesday’s news release from NWMLS that the region’s market was slowly moving toward normalization.

“While increased inventory of homes on the market this spring offered potential home buyers more options, elevated mortgage rates put affordability at the forefront of housing market concerns,” Hepp said.

Hepp added, “More inventory will slow pressure on home prices over time.”

Pierce County was among the lowest in the state in terms of available inventory, along with King, Snohomish, Thurston and Kitsap counties.

John L. Scott Real Estate, in a separate mid-year report, stated that when mortgage interest rates “dip into the upper 6 percent range, we expect to see 5 percent to 10 percent more buyer demand.”

The report added, “This will elevate the intensity, especially in the more affordable and mid-price ranges where 80 percent of transactions happen within each market.”

The rate on an average 30-year mortgage was above 7 percent as of July 3.

Local challenges

Dennis Folk is the designated broker at Terrafin Real Estate in Puyallup. He described Pierce County’s market this summer as being in “kind of a weird time.”

“I’ve been doing this for about 20 years,” he said in a recent interview. “I tell people that you’re working really hard, a lot of times seven days a week, to at best, close about half of what we were closing prior to the fourth quarter of 2022.”

“In Pierce County, things are moving,” he added. “It’s just that they’re taking a lot longer to sell. And they’re taking a lot of work.”

He noted that both the buyer volume and showing volume “is still down.” For sellers, “If you’re above about a million, that’s a tough price point.”

Closings can take longer for a variety of reasons, Folk noted, with properties sometimes going to the brink of sale multiple times before finally closing.

A deal can “fall apart on the inspection, or the buyer gets cold feet or the appraisal or underwriting goes south,” he said.

Add to that now challenges for some buyers in finding home insurance, which he described as a first in his career.

With a lower number of available insurers, Folk said, many of those have been stretched thin with existing policies in markets hard hit by extreme weather events.

That’s had a ripple effect, he noted, particularly for those involved in buying larger properties, such as multifamily units.

“You end up now having to get multiple carriers on one property,” he said.

The Seattle Times in September reported that wildfire-risk scoring by insurers was adding to pressures of some homeowners to keep or even obtain homeowners insurance, with little recourse.

Folk also noted that relocations, from his agency’s perspective, seem to be slower.

“We did benefit from a lot of relocation stuff. We’re not seeing near that (volume) in the last six months,” he added.

Despite the challenges, there are some bright spots, he said.

For buyers, fewer bidding wars in Pierce County than in areas such as King County have helped to calm the market.

“If you can stomach or find a way around the interest rates, the buying process is actually, in general, fairly normal,” he said.

There also are some people coming back to the area from previous relocations that didn’t turn out quite as planned.

Folk recounted one client telling him, after moving back from Texas, “The winter was way too cold, and the summer was way too hot.”