Market Report | Q2 of 2026

Q2 usually sees a surge of inventory, and 2026 was no exception. In Bellingham, 554 homes came on the market, part of the total of 1307 new single family residential listings in Whatcom County. Quarterly numbers are comparable to the same quarter last year, while significantly higher than the new listing count of 2023 and 2024.

However, the high supply was not met with high demand. The number of closed sales in Whatcom County for Q2 2026 nearly matched that of Q2 in 2020--the time period when our industry shut down temporarily and then relaunched with a bevy of Covid restrictions and a wary consumer base.

In both Whatcom County and in Bellingham, closings each month neutralized only about half of the new listings, meaning that we have nearly a quarter’s worth of listings sitting in surplus as we head into Q3. (In specific terms: Bellingham had a net gain of 254 listings and Whatcom County had a net gain of 634).

Of course, listings don’t only leave the market when they sell. If we compare cancelled and expired listings as a rate of activity against the new listings, about 22% of new listings cancelled or expired*.

And for every 10 homes that closed, 4 ¼ fell off the market, unsold.

Buyers continue to feel squeezed by interest rates and prices that have generally stayed level for the last 18 months. They now have a bevy of homes to choose from, they negotiate inspections much more intensely, and they also walk away from a deal much more readily than they would have just a couple years ago. While it can seem strange, it’s actually similar to a lot of buyer behavior pre-2020, just with an impending mortgage payment that makes a lot of buyers think--and think again.

More than ever, sellers need to present a well-maintained home that is priced competitively to attract the limited pool of qualified buyers.

*this is an estimate using the number of new listings in one quarter compared to the number of cancelled/expired listings in the same quarter. These are not exactly the same group of houses but can be used to illustrate a general trend.

Tiffany (Holden) Ng has been preparing local market reports regularly since Q2 of 2020. She posted daily reports during Covid lockdown and recorded more than 75 livestream and video editions of her report in the two years that followed. Now she prepares a quarterly and annual overview report, looking at the larger trends of the housing market right here in Bellingham.