SPOKANE, Wash. — Realtor.com has named Spokane a city that people cannot wait to move to and locals have no interest in leaving.
Clare Trapasso, who wrote the article on the website, said people are always moving to big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago but eventually move away in search of bigger homes and a more relaxed lifestyle.
Far more buyers are looking for homes in the Spokane metro area than are looking to move out of it, according to a recent report from realtor.com economists. The metro area includes the surrounding suburbs and small towns.
The economists looked at the number of listing views on realtor.com in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the third quarter of the year. Then, they broke it down by where those views were coming from— inside or outside the metro area. Spokane topped the list with the most listing views from non-residents hoping to score a home in the city and the fewest listing views by locals looking for a home out of town.
About 36.4 percent of the Spokane shoppers came from other states, although the majority of potential buyers were based in Seattle, according to realtor.com.
Home prices in Spokane sat an average $290,000 as of Oct. 1, according to realtor.com data. Meanwhile, homes in the Seattle metro area are listed at nearly $555,050.
The Inland Northwest’s regional economy is also continuing to attract a lot of newcomers, according to Avista Corp. chief economist Grant Forsyth.
About 740,000 people live in the greater Spokane-Kootenai metro area and that figure could rise by nearly 15,000 more residents in 2019 if estimations of economic growth are correct, Forsyth said. He presented this information at Greater Spokane Incorporated's recent economic forecast.
Forsyth said this influx of people is related to employment growth and relatively low cost of living in the greater metro area. In 2016 through 2018, employment growth in the area was around 2.5 percent, according to Forsyth. This is a full percentage point higher than job growth in the U.S. overall.
The cost of living in Spokane and Kootenai Counties is also about 24 to 25 percent cheaper than California’s Bay Area and around 15 percent cheaper than the Puget Sound Metro Area in Western Washington, Forsyth said.
Overall job growth is expected to continue in 2019 but could slow due to international trade conditions, including trade disputes with China, Forsyth said.