The residential real estate market in Spokane and Kootenai counties last year saw the biggest upswings in home sales by total numbers and median price since the Great Recession.

According to the Spokane Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service, 6,863 homes were sold in Spokane County in 2015, up nearly 18 percent compared with 5,829 homes sold in the prior year.

The median sales price for homes sold through the Spokane MLS last year was $179,900, up more than 7 percent compared with the 2014 median sales price of $168,000.

“That’s the biggest price jump in years, and it’s the highest median price since 2008,” says Rob Higgins, executive vice president of the Spokane Association of Realtors.

The 2015 median sales price was within a few percentage points of the record median sale price of $185,400 in 2008, just before the effects of the recession slammed the housing market.

“I could see us getting close to that number,” Higgins says. “The pressure is going to be there for prices to go up because of tight inventory.”

Last year marked the fourth consecutive year of increases in the median sales price, which bottomed at $154,300 in 2011. It also marked the fourth consecutive year of unit sales increases since sales dived to 4,030 homes in Spokane County that same year.

While the total number of homes sold in 2015 was still well off the 2005 peak of 8,373 homes sold through the Spokane MLS, Higgins says the market can handle steady annual sales of somewhere in excess of 7,000 homes.

“I think it would be sustainable,” he says, noting that more than 7,000 homes had been sold through the MLS each year from 2003 through 2006.

The number of newly constructed homes sold through the MLS in 2015 totaled 714, up from 651 homes in 2014.

Higgins says that new home sales haven’t recovered as quickly as existing home sales. Continued growth in new home sales will depend on available land for new construction, he says.

“I think we’ve fallen behind on the number of new plats being developed, and that may be constricting available land for new construction,” Higgins says.

Ken Lewis, owner and broker at Berkshire Hathaway Home Services First Look Real Estate, in Spokane Valley, says recent snowstorms only briefly slowed activity in the residential real estate sector.

Lewis says unusually strong sales activity in December likely was due to the first shift in federal interest rates.

“The small increase in the short-term rate basically is pushing everyone off the fence,” he says.

Lewis says inventory is low, but he expects it to increase in the spring.

The MLS had 1,421 active listings as of Jan. 6, down from 1,876 listings a year earlier.

That’s roughly two and a half months of inventory in a market in which four months of inventory is considered normal historically.

“Inventory has been dropping for the last couple of months,” Lewis says. “Sometimes people take their houses off the market during the holidays and the worst part of the winter.”

Home prices likely will continue to rise this year, he says.

“They’re still pretty good prices,” he says. “Demand is there and interest rates are still historically low. Even if they go to 5 or 6 percent, that’s still a good rate.”

In Kootenai County, 2,911 homes were sold in 2015 through the Coeur d’Alene Multiple Listing Service, up 19 percent compared with sales in 2014.

The median price last year was $203,165, up 8 percent compared with the median sales price the prior year.

Kim Cooper, spokesman for the Coeur d’Alene Association of Realtors, says sales growth was strongest in north and east Kootenai County.

“Rathdrum has been on fire,” Cooper says.

New home construction and sales also are strong in parts of Kootenai County, says Cooper, who also is a broker at Select Brokers LLC, of Coeur d’Alene.

“Double-digit increases in the Post Falls and Rathdrum areas are due in part to the USDA Rural Development loans in those areas,” he says.

Several subdivisions that had stalled during the recession are now active, Cooper says.

“There is still affordable land that is relatively easy to build on,” he says of the Post Falls-Rathdrum area.