Market Update - 6.11.25 — Guy Evans Lake Chelan Real Estate

The Lake Chelan Real Estate market continues to inch along slowly. Local agents noticed a chilling in late April and early May following tariff uncertainties. But activity rebounded in mid-May and the month ended with 19 pending residential sales, one more than May of 2024 (18); and eight more than May of 2023 (11).

The pace of Buyers continues to lag significantly behind the listing pace of Sellers. Accordingly, residential inventory continues to rise. There is presently 10 months of inventory which makes this squarely a Buyer’s market. There were 125 homes for sale in May which is the highest May figure since 2017.

Interestingly, the median price doesn’t show signs of falling given this inventory. It has oscillated for over two years around the $800,000 mark.

This suggests many Sellers are willing to wait out this multi-year Buyer’s market (and not adjust prices appreciably), even if it means not selling immediately. And Buyers are willing to pay for the ‘just-right’ property when it hits the market.

Affordability snapshot

In reviewing these residential inventory numbers, we broke the total listings into three price ranges as shown below. Homes priced less than $500,000 are shown in black, those between $500K and $1.5M are shown in green. Finally, homes over $1.5M are shown in orange.

This ten year window shows the value explosion that the Lake Chelan Valley continues to grapple with socio-economically. Lower priced homes represented 35% of the listings in May of 2017. Today, they represent just 8%. This is shown in the steep fall of the black line in the graph above.

And the higher end of the market (>$1.5M) that was just 7% of the market in 2017 now represents 30% of the listings. This is illustrated by the rise of the orange line. Essentially the two price ranges have swapped, with the volume of homes in the middle ($500K - $1.5M) not appreciably changing. The pie charts below illustrate this 2017 vs 2025 comparison.

This value explosion is not a new story of course. But finding solutions to allow Lake Chelan to remain a vibrant community with a stable workforce will be a long-term project.

** See this blog post about a few of the local non-profits working to meet the immediate and long-term needs of those most challenged by the rising home prices.