2025 Q1 Market Analysis

New Listings
 

Listing inventory is up 30% compared to Q1 of 2024 (721 vs 553 new listings). Within this past quarter, March showed an intense surge of new homes on the market, with 321 homes listings versus February’s 196. This was the strongest March for new listings in the last few years (although some were close), and hopefully indicates a strong spring-summer listing season.

Seasonal context

Monthly new listings in Whatcom County range heavily due to seasonality; with December’s 85 new listings as our lowest individual month in NWMLS history. By contrast, summer months in the last two summer seasons have peaked at 403 (May 2024), a sharp decline from the 535 new listings in our highest listing month since the Great Recession (June 2022).
 

Closed Sales
 

Whatcom County had 411 closed single family home sales this quarter; only a handful of homes away from both Q1 2024 (415 closed) and 2023 (416 closed), but much lower than 2022’s closings (558). This also means that for every home sold, 1.75 new listings came on the market.
 

Expired/Cancelled Listings
 

On the flip side, 133 home listings expired or cancelled this quarter; this means that for every 3 homes that closed, 1 was pulled from the market, unsold.
 

With that being said…
 

Annualized sales activity in Whatcom County is higher than it was a couple years ago, but we’re still in the lowest period for sales activity since the Great Recession recovery period, more than a decade past.  We might be seeing a tiny increase from the pit of the post-Covid death-drop slide, when annual closings dropped 32% in a mere three years. 
 

In this sort of market, buyers and sellers aren’t necessarily competing against each other first - although it’s true that negotiations are back in full force!
 

What I mean by this is: 
 

With 1.75 new listings coming on for each home sold in Q1, there is competition for buyers’ attention.  Sellers are competing first with one another, to have the best-priced, best-maintained, best value in their specific market niche. 
 

However, buyers don’t have it easy either. While we have the MLS to track available homes coming on and leaving the market, buyers are a more fluid group, a collection of people inquiring with lenders and real estate agents about the could-bes and may-bes of their next home move. A stock market shift, a job change, an interest rate fluctuation, and many buyers can either enter or leave the market - and our industry has no concrete data for this. 
 

What we do know is that today’s economic uncertainty, the increase in the cost of basic goods and services, and interest rates staying stubbornly over 6% for 2.5 years, have all led to an environment where many buyers have been entirely edged out of the market, and where many mortgage payments are double what they would have been just three years ago.
 

In Summary
 

Even as data shifts and markets morph over the years, our recommendations often echo the same themes: 
 

Hire a professional agent who will provide detailed analysis (whether you’re buying or selling) and be able to explain it to you.
 

Sellers: know your competition and prepare your home to be the best it can be on the market. 
 

Buyers: work to improve your buyer profile (and it’s okay to have a consultation or two or three as you’re doing so!) and be realistic about what’s possible.

Questions? Reach out to comms@bhamre.co.

Data and information derived from the Northwest MLS. Cover photo by Radley Muller Photography.

By Tiffany Holden-Ng, a licensed Managing Broker at Bellingham Real Estate Co, 2900 Meridian St. AI is never used in the research or generation of Tiffany’s analyses.