Ask someone why homes in Camas cost more than almost anywhere else in Clark County, and they'll usually point toward Lacamas Lake or the brick storefronts along the historic downtown corridor. Neither one signs the paycheck that qualifies a buyer for a mortgage in the high $700,000s. A cluster of employers that most residents drive past without a second look does that, and it explains why this market keeps behaving differently from its neighbors even as the broader Southwest Washington region cools.
That distinction is worth sorting out before anyone compares Camas to Vancouver or Ridgefield on price alone, because the number everyone quotes turns out to depend entirely on where you look.
Four Sources, One City, Four Different Stories
Pull up Camas on four major real estate data platforms in the same week and you'll walk away with four different pictures of the same market. Zillow's algorithm, tracking through September 2026, priced the typical Camas home at $717,897, up a bare 0.1 percent over the year. Redfin's three-month window ending in July 2026 put the median sale price at $825,000, down 3.4 percent from the same stretch a year earlier, with homes averaging 37 days on market compared with 23 days the year before. A local brokerage's NWMLS-sourced report for August 2026 showed a median of $762,450, a median time on market of just 24 days, only 29 active listings citywide, and sellers still collecting 97.7 percent of asking price on average. Movoto's own snapshot for June 2026 showed a median of $839,900, but with homes sitting for a median of 121 days, five times longer than the 24-day figure reported for nearly the same summer.
That's a spread of more than $120,000 in the reported median and a five-fold gap in how long homes supposedly sit before selling, all describing the identical city in the identical season. The gap isn't a data error. It reflects different sample sizes, different definitions of "sold" versus "listed," and different windows of time layered on top of each other. For a buyer trying to figure out what a Camas home actually costs right now, the lesson isn't which number to trust. It's that none of them substitute for pulling the actual comparable sales for the specific street and price band you're competing in, because the citywide median is being generated from a market too small and too unevenly distributed to summarize in one figure.
Where the Paychecks Actually Come From
What that thin, unevenly distributed inventory is competing for becomes clearer once you look at who's paying Camas mortgages. Tucked into the Grass Valley area on the city's north side sits a cluster of employers that locals sometimes call the Silicon Forest, and it has nothing to do with lumber. WaferTech, the semiconductor foundry that opened its Camas fab in 1996, now operates as TSMC Washington, part of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's global network. The facility sits on 260 acres and includes roughly 130,000 square feet of cleanroom space inside a million-square-foot complex, a scale that's easy to miss from the road but hard to overstate in terms of local payroll.
WaferTech didn't arrive alone. Analog Devices, known locally for decades as Linear Technology, opened its Camas operation the same year. Sharp Laboratories of America has run a circuit design and microelectronics research center in the city since 1995. Fisher Investments, one of the largest independent fee-only investment advisers in the world with more than $197 billion under management, has a significant Camas presence generating high-paying financial services jobs. Underwriters Laboratories, now operating as UL Solutions, runs product testing and certification work from the city. Hewlett-Packard maintains a footprint here as well.
None of that is news to anyone who's worked in Clark County for a while, but it rarely makes it into the conversation about why a house on Prune Hill costs what it costs. A cluster of engineering, semiconductor, and financial-services salaries sitting inside city limits does more to set a price floor than a lake view does, because it determines how many buyers can actually clear a jumbo-adjacent price point without stretching. It's also a big part of why the city has grown by more than 110 percent since 2000, a run that carried Camas from a 2020 census count of 26,065 to estimates closer to 27,300 to 30,000 residents today, even as the physical footprint of the city stayed largely the same.
Why the Slowdown Doesn't Look Like a Normal Slowdown
That income base explains something odd sitting in the data above. Prices are flat to slightly down year over year across most of the reporting sources, and days on market have stretched compared with 2025. That reads, at first glance, like a market losing steam. But the local brokerage report for August 2026 still shows only 29 active listings and 3.5 months of supply, technically a seller's market by the standard definition, and sellers are still collecting nearly full asking price on average. A market with a genuinely eroding buyer pool usually shows softening prices and rising inventory at the same time. Camas is showing softening prices with inventory that's barely moved.
The more coherent explanation is that the buyer pool tied to Grass Valley's employers isn't as rate-sensitive as a typical suburban market. A semiconductor engineer, a Fisher Investments analyst, or a UL Solutions compliance specialist isn't making a purchase decision the same way a buyer stretching to the edge of their approval would. That keeps a floor under pricing even while the pace of sales cools, which is a different story than "the market is slowing down" and a more useful one for anyone trying to time an offer.
The One New Piece of Land Camas Hasn't Had in 140 Years
The other half of this story is about supply, and it involves the single largest parcel of undeveloped potential the city has had access to in over a century. The Georgia-Pacific paper mill at the west end of downtown has operated continuously since 1883, when Henry Pittock, the publisher who also ran The Oregonian, bought the land and founded what became the Columbia River Paper Company. That mill is the reason Camas High School's teams are still called the Papermakers. It has also, for 140 years, occupied the one stretch of riverfront land in the city's most walkable core that never turned into housing, retail, or public space.
That's changing. Demolition plans have proceeded through 2026, with completion targeted for 2027, and the site is expected to become a waterfront district on the Camas Slough that expands the existing downtown area rather than competing with it. For a market where the local brokerage report counted just 29 active listings across the entire city in a single month, a new waterfront parcel opening up inside walking distance of downtown is not a small variable. It's the first meaningful new-construction opportunity the city's core has had in longer than most current residents have been alive, and it's worth watching on our developments page as plans firm up, because whatever gets built there will shape how the rest of downtown Camas prices for years afterward.
What This Means If You're Comparing Camas to Its Neighbors
Buyers cross-shopping Camas against Vancouver or Ridgefield are usually comparing square footage and commute time. The more useful comparison is what's actually anchoring each market. Vancouver's draw includes Washington's absence of a state income tax alongside its own employment base and proximity to Portland. Ridgefield has room to grow outward, with land still available for new subdivisions in a way that Camas, hemmed in by the Columbia River, the Washougal city line, and its own topography, doesn't have.
Camas is different because its price floor isn't primarily a story about available land or lifestyle amenities, even though both exist here in real quantities. It's a story about a small, well-paid, historically stable employer base occupying a fixed footprint, which is also why the city's inventory numbers look tight even in a cooling year. Buyers comparing the higher end of that market, including custom homes near Grass Valley, can see what that segment currently offers on our Camas luxury listings page.
None of this means Camas is immune to broader rate cycles or regional cooling. It means the mechanism behind its prices is more specific, and more durable, than the lake-town story most people reach for first.
If you're weighing Camas against another Clark County city and want to talk through what your specific budget and timeline actually look like there, David Merrick Real Estate is glad to walk through it with you. Let's connect.