An interior view of the Johnson house.

PENINSULA — Pacific County recorded a 14.5 percent surge in home prices this spring compared to a year earlier — among the largest gains in Washington state, according to the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington.

Real estate agents on the Long Beach Peninsula — where most of the county’s home sales occur — say sales remain strong and that interest has been growing in the area’s most valuable listings. There currently are five active oceanfront listings on the Peninsula priced $850,000 or above, with the most expensive at $1.6 million for a 10-acre estate just outside of the Long Beach city limits.

Even so, Pacific County homes remain a bargain compared with the rest of the state, with an average sales price of $166,000 this spring, compared to the statewide figure of nearly $338,000. The county is playing catchup. Statewide prices increased 6.6 percent this spring, less than half Pacific County’s gain.

Pacific’s pace of sales also is up — by 9 percent in the second three months of 2017, to annualized estimate of 2,100. (That number represents the number of homes that would be sold if the quarter’s pace continued unchanged for a year.) This is more than twice the rate of sales in the spring of 2011, in the aftermath of the national real estate crisis. The county’s pace of sales growth somewhat trailed the state as a whole, where sales were up 12.6 percent this spring compared to a year before.

Homeowners have definitely recognized the recovery of the local real estate market and are acting accordingly, a sales agent observed.

“With the market returning almost to pre-recession prices, property owners who bought or built at the height in 2006-7 are seeing this as an opportunity to recoup their costs. And if they are going to be buying elsewhere in the country, they are facing higher prices in those markets too,” Leslie Ferguson of Discovery Coast Real Estate said last week.

The Peninsula’s highest-end properties come with special attributes that may be difficult to find elsewhere, in some cases including private access to the seashore or large areas of accreted dunes that may offer development potential.

“The challenge to selling higher-priced homes is that people who can afford to buy a million dollar home don’t necessarily think of the Peninsula,” Ferguson said. “The current high-end listings are breaking ground on the Peninsula, and it’s a struggle to find buyers in that bracket who are willing to take a chance on a new market. And if they need financing, finding suitable comps is a problem. The last time a home was sold here for over a million dollars was back in 2006. The most expensive house this year was sold by Cheri Diehl in our office for $625K and the new owners bought it as an investment and will be turning it into a vacation rental.”

Zoning and homeowners association rules in Surfside and Seaview don’t allow vacation rentals, however, and the possibilities are somewhat constrained elsewhere.

The most popular local listings are under $200,000. UW real estate center comparisons show houses here have the sixth lowest average prices in the state and the second lowest in Western Washington after Grays Harbor County, where the spring average was $164,700.

“People see us as a value, and the market moves swiftly if the house is priced right,” Ferguson said. “The biggest change we are seeing is that younger people are buying here. The Peninsula still offers housing in the price range where it is cheaper to own than to try to find a rental. Some plan to live and work here, and some commute over the river. Prices in Astoria and Warrenton have gotten really high and inventory really low, and the Peninsula offers a great alternative.”

This spring, 29 percent of houses for sale in the county were priced under $160,000, compared to only 10.5 percent statewide. Sixty-one percent of county listings were below $250,000, compared to 25.4 percent statewide.

In 2016, there were 77 permits issued in Pacific County for new single-family houses, a 24.2 percent increase over 2015. The statewide increase was 13.5 percent.

Some of these houses currently under construction are major projects. For example, John Buell is building a 5,900 square-foot house on 115th, a vacation home for owners from Great Falls, Montana, and Ray Bonney just started on a 6,500 square-foot house in Discovery Heights in Ilwaco for owners currently residing in Richland who intend to relocate here full-time.

A low supply of existing homes listed for sale is likely a leading factor promoting rapid house price growth throughout the state, according to UW’s real estate center.

Breaking down trends by region reveals a high level of variance in house prices throughout the state. Somewhat expectedly, median prices were highest in King County at $650,800, with a year-on-year increase over 2016 of 14.9 percent. The lowest median prices were found in Lincoln County at $89,000 with a low number of house sales recorded.

House prices in many other state markets rose significantly, with Spokane up 7.4 percent to a median of $225,100 and Whatcom County (Bellingham) rising 14.6 percent to $343,500. House prices in Pierce County rose by 12.1 percent recording a record high of $313,200.

Housing affordability was lower in the second quarter of 2017. The affordability index — where 100 means a middle-income family can just qualify for a median-priced home, given a 20 percent down payment and a 30-year fixed mortgage rate at prevailing rates — was 123.7, down slightly from 124.3 in the first quarter of 2017. This metric suggests that, given the same down payment and mortgage, a middle-income family can afford a home selling for 23.7 percent above the median house price.

In Pacific County, this affordability rating was 181.5 this spring, a significant decline from the 211.3 rating in spring 2016.

Statewide, the first-time buyer index showed a decrease of 0.2 points, ending the quarter at 71.2. This index assumes a less expensive home than a typical family, lower down payment and lower income. Similar to the index above, this figure reveals that first-time buyers had 71.2 percent of the income required to purchase a typical starter home.

In Pacific County, the first-time buyer index stood at 89.1 this spring, down from 104.4 a year before.