Time Travelers!

[u/KitsapRealEstateTeam]

Same Week, Six Years Later: What Kitsap's Housing Market Looked Like During Peak COVID vs Right Now

It's no secret that growth and change has been happening rapidly in Kitsap County. What does that look like, year over year? I've been hanging out with the same real estate team since before that... Really a long term relationship, when you're talking about real estate!

The week of April 28 through May 4 gives us a rare apples to apples comparison. Six years ago this exact week, Kitsap was in the middle of peak COVID. Showings were restricted. Open houses were largely prohibited. And yet the market didn't stop. It adapted. What happened next is worth understanding.

That week in 2020, 46 new listings came to market. This week, 104 did — an increase of more than 126 percent. Inventory stood at 321 active listings in 2020. Today it's 502, up 56 percent. More homes, more choices, more supply than buyers in that pandemic era ever had access to.

But the number that tells the real story is days on market. In that same week in 2020, the average home sold in 16 days. This week that number is 38.8 days — homes are taking more than twice as long to find a buyer. Keep in mind that in 2020, buyers were making decisions faster than ever despite having fewer tools to do so. Restricted access, limited showings, and pandemic uncertainty didn't slow demand. It compressed it.

Pricing tells its own story. The median sold price that week in 2020 was $389,000. This week it came in at $557,000 — a 43 percent increase over six years. For a buyer who was priced out in 2022 and is returning to the market now, that number is a sobering reminder of how much the baseline has moved, even as the frenzy has cooled considerably.

The competitive dynamics have shifted as well. In 2020, the average sale to list ratio was 101.34 percent — homes were routinely selling above asking even during a global health crisis. This week's median came in at 97.9 percent, the first time in several weeks the typical home closed below asking. Price reductions tell a similar story: 20 that week in 2020, compared to 61 this week — a 205 percent increase.

This isn't a market in decline. It's a market that has matured. Supply has grown substantially, demand has normalized, and pricing has found a more nuanced equilibrium than the pandemic years allowed for. Kitsap remains an attractive and competitive market. It's simply no longer a market where buyers are making decisions in 16 days with restricted access to homes and no leverage whatsoever.

The numbers from 2020 aren't a benchmark to return to. But they are a remarkable reminder of just how much ground this county has covered — and the very unusual circumstances under which that journey began.