Sales rose, prices rose and 9 homes sold for at least $1 million in Thurston County in 2017

The Thurston County housing market experienced strong growth in sales and median price in 2017 to cap a year in which sellers continue to dominate buyers.

The year was marked with homes selling quickly and inventory remaining low, according to Northwest Multiple Listing Service, which released its year-end real estate data this month for several counties throughout the state, including Thurston County.

“It was a record year on lots of fronts,” said Ken Anderson, president and owner of Coldwell Banker Evergreen Olympic Realty in Olympia. “Record sales, record pace of sales and record prices.”

For single-family homes in the county, sales for 2017 rose 11.4 percent to 5,466 units from 4,907 units in 2016, the year-end data show. Median price had a healthy bump, too. It rose 7.2 percent to $284,000 — inching closer to the $300,000 mark — from $264,950 in 2016, the data show.

Neighboring Pierce County finally hit a median price of $300,000, as prices surged more than 11 percent to $307,000 in 2017 from $275,000 in 2016.

All of this was good news for home sellers, but less so for buyers, particularly if they were trying to compete for a house with a traditional mortgage compared to someone with cash.

“You have one winner and five or six losers,” Windermere Olympia designated broker Steve Garrett told The Olympian over the summer, adding that after prospective buyers have been through that three or four times, “buyer fatigue” sets in.

“It becomes very frustrating,” Garrett said.

Inventory all year was well below the four to six months supply needed for a balanced market that doesn’t favor buyers or sellers, Northwest MLS officials said in the report.

Plenty of listings came to market last year, but they sold quickly, Anderson said.

“At just 15 days on market, it was the swiftest pace of sales our market has seen,” he said.

Hold onto your hats: Anderson expects more of the same this year.

That because Thurston County is friendlier for buyers than King County, where the median price was $627,000 and Snohomish County, where the median price was $441,000 in 2017.

“While prices took a big jump up, our county is still the most affordable of all the major Puget Sound counties,” he said. “That means going forward, we expect a tremendous amount of in-bound migration. The buyer pool will grow as a result. We expect prices to see another big jump up.”

Another piece of eye-opening data: The numbers of single-family homes that sold for at least $1 million.

▪ King County: 4,936.

▪ Pierce County: 133.

▪ Thurston County: 9.

More than 5,000 homes sold for at least $1 million in 23 counties tracked by Northwest MLS in 2017, an increase of 76 percent over 2016.

This story was originally published January 27, 2018 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Sales rose, prices rose and 9 homes sold for at least $1 million in Thurston County in 2017."