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June 17, 2003
SPOKANE (AP) -- For the first time since the mid-1990s, home prices in Spokane County and Idaho's Kootenai County are rising faster than inflation.
Spokane-area home prices in the past seven years have produced average annual increases of just 1.4 percent. The median selling price of a Spokane home at the end of last year was $111,500, about 40 percent below the state median.
But in March, Spokane's median price jumped 11 percent over March 2002. April was up 12.7 percent compared with a year earlier, and May prices were up 7.5 percent.
Volume was also up, with pending sales 18 percent ahead of last May's pace.
Experts point to low interest rates, a shrinking inventory of homes for sale, fewer low-end foreclosures clogging the market, a growing population and relatively low home prices.