SnoCo housing costs down slightly, but remain high

Published 6:30 am Tuesday, February 24, 2026

EVERETT — Housing costs in Snohomish County remained high throughout 2025, but the cost to rent or purchase housing declined slightly between 2024 and 2025 when adjusted for inflation, an expert on the local housing market said.

When adjusted for inflation, the median cost of a single-family detached home dropped from about $832,000 in 2024 to about $800,000 in 2025, said Chris Collier, the director of government relations at Housing Authority of Snohomish County.

The required income needed to comfortably purchase a median single-family home also decreased, Collier said, dropping from about $197,000 to $192,000, thanks to a combination of a slight decrease in interest rates as well as the small drop in sales prices.

Rents also continued to decrease after adjusting for inflation. Since a peak in 2022 following the COVID-19 pandemic, they have dropped about 10% since then, with average rent in the county now advertised at about $2,100.

If those dollar amounts still give you sticker shock, you’re not alone.

“Don’t get the party poppers out yet,” Collier said. “… We are still at a historically unusual delta between the household income of Snohomish County and what it takes to actually afford a home.

Collier, who uses data from the Snohomish County Assessor’s office, the U.S. census and other sources to analyze the region’s housing market, has found that most workers living in the county don’t earn enough to comfortably rent — spending a third of their income on housing — the average apartment on their own. Data from 2024 showed that only about 10% of the workforce can comfortably buy a home, including condos, townhomes or single-family homes.

Inflation-adjusted rental costs decreasing, likely due to the rapid influx of apartment construction that began around 2017, is still good news, Collier said. In 2024 and 2025, cities across the county also put long-range comprehensive plan updates into place, which updated zoning laws to allow for more housing construction. Those plans were also spurred on by state laws that require cities to create zones that allow for “missing middle” housing — like duplexes or townhomes — in areas previously set aside for solely single-family homes.

Building additional housing stock could bring down prices, allowing more people to afford rent or have the chance to buy a home.

But it’s too early to tell the impact that the comprehensive plan changes have made. Current difficulties in the housing industry regionally and nationally — increased construction costs, tariffs, higher interest rates, supply chain factors — mean it’s too soon to attribute any changes in development activity to the comprehensive plan updates, members of the Snohomish County Planning and Development Services department wrote in an email.

“The county’s comp plan is a long-range framework intended to guide growth over the next 20 years,” the staff wrote. “Its effectiveness cannot be measured solely by short-term permit volumes.”

Staff at the county planning department wrote that, in 2025, they had received a lower number of permit applications compared to previous years, although they do expect to receive future development proposals. But they wrote that the lower permit numbers likely reflect broader market conditions rather than local land use policies, which allowed for more building.

“Translating capacity into construction takes time,” the staff wrote. “Developers typically need to evaluate the new zoning allowances, acquire land, analyze project feasibility, secure financing, and complete design work before submitting any applications.”

Collier said that, under normal circumstances, he might expect to see an increase in inquiries at local permit desks by the end of 2026, with the completion of some additional units coming by the end of 2027. But the combination of construction and labor cost increases, as well as higher interest rates, are circumstances working against the utilization of the new comprehensive plans.

The city of Everett said it has received “overwhelmingly positive” responses to its changes to its comprehensive plan, city planning director Yorik Stevens-Wajda wrote in an email.

“They have shared that the city is moving in the right direction by increasing capacity and amending development regulations that previously made housing development costlier,” he wrote.

Stevens-Wajda also said that economic considerations are the primary drivers of housing development. He said the city is exploring potential policies like temporarily waiving impact fees and leveraging surplus public property to support affordable housing as ways to lower costs.

Both the city and the county hope that their long-range comprehensive plans will lead to increased housing production across a wider mix of types, concentrating denser housing in urban centers and increasing predictability for residents and developers.

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.