Two numbers came out of Camas real estate reporting this summer, both about the same city, both covering the same weeks, and they don't agree. A July 2026 market update from a Southwest Washington brokerage put the average time a Camas listing spends on the market at 133 days. The same report, same month, put the median at 63 days. A single market is not supposed to produce two answers 70 days apart to the question "how long does it take to sell a house here." This one does, and the reason tells you more about buying or selling in Camas right now than either number alone.
The short version: Camas isn't one housing market. It's two, split at roughly $1.3 million, and which side of that line your price sits on matters more than the citywide average ever will.
Where the average and the median stop agreeing
An average gets dragged around by outliers. A median doesn't. When a city's average days-on-market runs more than double its median, that's not statistical noise, it's a signal that a small number of listings are sitting for a very long time while everything else moves at a normal pace and drops out of the pool.
That July report said as much directly, tying the gap to a segment split: homes priced below approximately $1.3 million were outperforming luxury properties, while pricier listings needed more patience and more deliberate marketing to find their buyer. Put plainly, most of Camas is moving on a normal clock. A smaller slice at the top is moving on a much slower one, and that slower slice is heavy enough to bend the average.
You can see the same pattern from a completely different angle if you look at list prices instead of sale prices. One market-data feed tracking active Camas listings in early July 2026 showed a median list price of $1,075,000. That's not a typo relative to the sale-side numbers. Redfin's data for the three months ending July 2026 showed Camas homes actually closing at a median of $825,000, down 3.4 percent year over year, with average time on market climbing to 37 days from 23 the year before. Beyond Real Estate's report for Camas, current as of September 2026, put the median closed sale price at $762,450 to $799,900, with homes selling in a median of 24 days and a 97.7 percent sale-to-list ratio.
Run those side by side and the gap makes sense. Active listings accumulate the homes that haven't sold yet, and if the homes that haven't sold yet skew expensive, the pool of "what's for sale" will always look pricier than the pool of "what just sold." The list-price median is inflated by exactly the same slow-moving segment that's inflating the average days-on-market. It's the same story told twice, once in price and once in time.
The luxury segment isn't a rumor, it has its own days-on-market number
It's easy to wave at "luxury homes take longer" as a vague truism. Camas has an actual figure for it. A Camas-focused luxury listings feed, tracking 313 properties as of early June 2026, showed an average of 122 days on market for that segment, against a median list price of $808,400. A separate national portal's Camas luxury page listed the typical time on market at 50 days for luxury inventory. Those two numbers don't match each other exactly, which is normal when different tools draw the luxury line at different price points, but both sit well above the 24 to 37 day range showing up in the citywide sold-home data over the same stretch of 2026. However you slice "luxury" in Camas right now, it's taking somewhere between twice and five times as long to sell as the rest of the market.
Geographically, that slower segment clusters in specific places. Prune Hill carries some of the city's most distinctive inventory, custom homes with Columbia River and Portland skyline views perched above downtown. Lacamas Shores and the newer Lacamas Hills community sit on the north side of the lake, trading on water access and trail proximity rather than skyline views. These aren't obscure pockets. They're the addresses that show up repeatedly on Camas's luxury listing pages, and they're exactly where the 100-plus day average lives.
New supply is landing right on the fault line
Here's where it gets interesting for anyone watching Camas over the next few years rather than the next few months. The city's North Shore, roughly 990 acres of mostly undeveloped land north of Lacamas Lake, is where nearly all of the near-term new housing supply is aimed. Toll Brothers' Lacamas Hills community is already selling homes priced from the mid-$800s to over $1.3 million, with direct trail access to Lacamas Lake Park across the street. Read that price range again. It starts below the fault line and ends right at it.
That makes Lacamas Hills a genuine test case rather than a settled answer. Will homes at the low end of that range behave like the fast-moving mainstream market, closing in three to four weeks? Will homes at the top end behave like the slower luxury segment that's currently averaging months? Nobody has enough closed sales in that specific community yet to say for certain, and anyone who tells you they do is guessing.
Behind Lacamas Hills, more North Shore supply is in the pipeline. Camas Woods, a project of nearly 300 housing units near Camas High School, was one of the first major developments approved for the area, mixing townhomes and apartments under the city's North Shore zoning standards. Further out, a California-based developer called SunCal proposed a much larger master-planned community in early 2026, covering roughly 300 acres of North Shore land with a town center, a mix of housing types, and an extension of North Shore Boulevard, according to reporting from The Columbian and the Camas Post-Record. That project, if approved, is planned to build out over 15 years, so it's a factor for Camas's long-term supply story, not something that changes next spring's inventory. The city has also permanently protected 165 acres of North Shore lakeside land as parks and open space, details laid out in the city's own North Shore Subarea Plan.
None of this changes today's numbers. It does mean the price band where Camas's market currently splits in two is precisely where the next wave of new construction is concentrated, which is worth watching if you're timing a purchase or a sale over the next few years rather than the next few months.
What this means depending on where your number falls
If you're selling or shopping under roughly $1.3 million, treat the citywide 133-day average as noise that doesn't apply to you. The relevant number is closer to the 24-day median Beyond Real Estate reported for August 2026 closings, in a market running a 97.7 percent sale-to-list ratio and 3.5 months of inventory. That's still a seller's market by any conventional measure, and homes priced accurately from day one are the ones capturing it.
If you're on the other side of that line, in Prune Hill, Lacamas Shores, or comparable inventory, plan for a longer runway. A 100-plus day marketing window isn't a sign something is wrong with a listing. It's the current norm for that segment, and pricing or presentation missteps just stretch it further. Buyers in this range should also recognize they're negotiating with more leverage and more time than the headline "seller's market" framing suggests.
Camas's overall numbers, a Market Action Index of 33 as of July 2026 and rising inventory, still favor sellers on paper. But "on paper" is exactly the problem with a single citywide figure. Know which Camas you're actually transacting in before you price, offer, or wait.
Frequently asked questions
Is Camas a buyer's market or a seller's market right now? By the Market Action Index and sale-to-list ratio, it's still a seller's market as of mid to late summer 2026, though a cooler one than the past several years. That framing holds most clearly for the sub-$1.3 million segment, where inventory stays tight and homes close near asking.
Does the North Shore's new construction already show up in these numbers? Only partly. Toll Brothers' Lacamas Hills is actively selling, so some of those closings are already in the citywide data. Camas Woods and the much larger SunCal proposal are earlier-stage or not yet built, so their effect on Camas's market split is still ahead, not behind.
Why do different sources show such different median prices for Camas? Because they're often measuring different things. List-price medians reflect what's currently sitting on the market, which skews toward slower-moving, pricier inventory. Sale-price medians reflect what actually closed, which skews toward the faster-moving segment below the luxury line. Both are accurate. They're just answering different questions.
If you're trying to figure out which side of Camas's market your home, or your budget, actually falls on, that's a conversation worth having before you list or write an offer. Brian Jones works this market street by street. Get your instant home valuation and find out exactly where your number lands.