For all the talk of affordable housing, the luxury housing market has never been better in the Tri-Cities.

Sixty-one homes sold for $1 million or more in 2024, beating out the 2022 record of 59 properties, according to data collected and released by the Cari McGee Real Estate Team.

Kennewick saw the most closings on luxury homes with 24 properties, followed by Richland with 20, Pasco with 15, and West Richland and Benton City with one each. Five of the top 10 most expensive homes sales were in Pasco.

The average sales price among all the properties was $1.24 million.

The Tri-City market is consistent with the national luxury home sales trend – the typical U.S. luxury home sold for a record $1.18 million in the second quarter of 2024, up 8.8% from a year earlier, the biggest increase in nearly two years, according to Redfin, a Seattle-based real estate brokerage. 

More than a third of the Tri-City luxury properties sold in 2024 were newly built and thus designed to be luxurious.

However, many other homes, while pricey in the past, have crept up into the luxury category as homeowners have made improvements and as property values have gone up. For example, a 2015 Parade of Homes winner built by Prodigy Homes.

“We sold that home for $570,000 and it would easily go for $1.4 million today,” said Jason Wilkinson, Prodigy’s owner.

Panoramic views are just one of the reasons this Pasco home along the Columbia River is listed at $1.6 million. The Tri-Cities luxury housing market hit a new high in 2024, with 61 homes worth $1 million or more being sold.

| Courtesy Shane Martin Photo for Cari McGee Real Estate Team

The Tri-City housing market has seen consistent demand in recent years as the population continues to grow. The area remains one of the more affordable metropolitan areas in the state with the average sold price of a home in 2024 being just under $460,000. Some homes have sold for double or more what they were valued at 10 years ago. That has led to an emphasis by city leaders as well as builders to develop lower cost housing projects, such as apartments and townhomes.

The steady increase in sales prices for existing homes partly explains why so many homes are now selling at the luxury price level, McGee said. Homes originally built for the average middle-class family are now reaching or surpassing the $1 million mark.

She said her parents bought her childhood home in Southern California for $33,000 in 1965 and sold it years later for $100,000. Today, that same home is valued at $650,000.

“I can tell you I didn’t grow up in a half-million-dollar home,” McGee said.

Luxury homebuyers largely aren’t facing the same challenges as middle-class buyers. High-end buyers are more likely to make all-cash offers and less likely to be affected by the mortgage rate lock-in effect, prompting many to stay put instead of selling and buying another home at a higher rate, according to Redfin. High-end homebuyers also are more likely to have benefited from a strong stock market and high levels of home equity. 

The Tri-Cities luxury home market is above where it was prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is not the case nationwide. Before 2020, only a handful of million-dollar Tri-Cities homes were sold per year, with the peak being seven in 2019. That increased in 2020 to 13, then nearly tripled to 35 in 2021 and at least 50 luxury homes have been sold in the Tri-Cities annually since 2022.

Wilkinson said this growth is remarkable, even as Prodigy built 14 of last year’s million-dollar homes and is on track to beat that number in 2025.

The owners of this home along the Columbia River in Pasco added a pool, gazebo and outdoor kitchen after originally purchasing it for just over $1 million. Those improvements combined with rising home prices now have it listed for $1.6 million.

| Courtesy Shane Martin Photo for Cari McGee Real Estate Team

McGee noted that the rise of remote work gave people more flexibility in where they live, and that’s led them to relocate to communities outside major metros. And often, those transplants are coming in with more buying power, given how much they sold their previous homes for.

“People are selling their $3 million home in Seattle or San Francisco and then buying a $1 million one here and still having money in the bank,” Wilkinson said.

That also means there’s more demand for upscale finishes and features such as custom textures and oversized doors, as well as property perched along the ridges or hills in Benton County or the Columbia River in Franklin County. These in-demand lots cost at least $250,000 alone, Wilkinson said.

And then there are those who have upgraded their already higher-end homes.

One of McGee’s listings features a home with views along the Columbia River in Pasco and a four-car garage with one bay large enough for an RV. It was last bought for just over $1 million in 2022.

However, the current owners embellished it further, adding a pool, gazebo, outdoor kitchen and water feature between the home and the shoreline. Today, it’s on the market for $1.6 million.

“We’re kind of growing up,” McGee said of the market.