04/30/2026
Everyone is wrong about North Idaho real estate right now.
Yes, 80% of Kootenai County is priced out.
Yes, families are leaving for the mid-west.
Yes, the affordability crisis is real.
And yes…at the exact same time…this is the most favorable luxury build window we have seen in years.
How can both be true?
That is the K-shaped economy. And if you understand it, you have the answer to a question most builders won't even ask:
Why is right now the time to build?
My new blog post breaks it down with sourced numbers, the legislative tailwind nobody is talking about, and the truth about what a luxury build in North Idaho actually costs.
Read it below. Read it before your neighbor does.
The K-shaped economy didn’t just split the country — it split North Idaho into two markets. One is in crisis. The other is the most favorable luxury build environment in years. Here’s what’s actually happening, and what it means for the buyer who can act.
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If you’ve spent any time around Coeur d’Alene lately, you’ve felt it. The land that was untouchable five years ago has new owners. The waterfront listings that used to sit for a season now move in weeks. The contractors with real reputations are booked into next year. Something is happening up here — and most of the headlines are getting it half-wrong.
Let me give you the part the headlines miss.
The Problem: Two Different Markets, One Region
North Idaho’s housing market isn’t one market. It’s two, and they’re moving in opposite directions.
The first market is the affordability crisis you’ve read about. The numbers from the official Kootenai County Housing Availability and Affordability Study are sobering: roughly 80% of Kootenai County households are now priced out of the housing market. The County’s median home price climbed from about $220,000 a decade ago to $545,000 by March 2026. The same study tied the crisis to 5,340 lost jobs, $535.6 million in lost regional output, $435.4 million in lost payroll, and $28 million in lost tax revenue.
This isn’t a Coeur d’Alene problem. Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum, Hauser, Athol — the entire region followed the same trajectory. Locals who could once buy a home on a teacher’s or a tradesman’s salary cannot anymore. The University of Idaho economist who co-authored the affordability study said it plainly: the price increases were widespread, and they hit the entire county, including the rural areas. Families who built North Idaho into what it is are now leaving for Montana, Utah, and the Carolinas, looking for the affordable Idaho they can no longer find here.
That’s the lower arm of the K. It’s the part of the story everyone agrees on.
The second market is the one nobody is talking about, and it’s the one that matters if you’re reading this.
The K-Shaped Economy, Translated for the Buyer Who Can Act
Economists call what’s happened to America since 2020 a *K-shaped economy*. The wealthy got dramatically wealthier; everyone else got squeezed. The numbers are not subtle:
- The top 10% of US households grew their spending by 62% from 2020 to 2025 — vastly outpacing every other income group.
- The top 10% now accounts for roughly half of all US consumer spending.
- US household net worth hit a record $176 trillion in Q2 2025, driven primarily by stock and home appreciation.
- Spending growth in the lower third of US households was essentially flat through the same period.
In North Idaho, the K-shape didn’t just describe the country. It described who moved here and who got moved out. The buyers who arrived during and after 2020 — many from California, Washington, and beyond — brought equity, cash, and purchasing power that local incomes simply cannot match. The luxury market here didn’t just survive that wave. It became the wave.
The numbers tell the rest of the story:
- Median luxury sales price in Coeur d’Alene reached $1.35 million as of late 2024, with steady year-over-year growth.
- New construction luxury condos in Coeur d’Alene sold for an average of $1,097 per square foot in November 2025 — and they sold for 99% of asking price.
- And here’s the freshest signal: in April 2026, Washington state passed a new tax on incomes over $1 million. Within the first week, North Idaho realtors were fielding multiple calls from Western Washington high earners looking to move across the state line. The migration of wealth into this region isn’t slowing. If anything, it’s accelerating.
Why Right Now Is the Window
If the luxury market is this strong, you might assume it’s a frenzy. It isn’t. And that’s exactly the point.
Here’s what’s true in the spring of 2026:
Production builders are pulling back. Nationally, single-family permits are down sharply, and 2026 is shaping up to be the slowest year for single-family starts since 2019. That’s good news for you — it means the volume builders chasing the rate-sensitive middle market are not competing for the trades, the lumber, or the sub-contractors you’ll need.
Inventory is building. Coeur d’Alene has roughly 521 active listings as of spring 2026, with luxury, waterfront, and acreage homes spending more time on market than the standard inventory. Sellers who overpriced are now negotiating. That gives buyers a comfortable position they didn’t have two or three years ago.
Idaho just streamlined permitting. The 2026 legislative session passed a sweeping six-bill housing package, including House Bill 585, which takes effect July 1, 2026. Among other things, HB 585 lets a permit holder hire a third-party inspector if a city inspector fails to complete a required inspection within 48 business hours — and forces the city to refund the inspection fee. In plain English: the friction that used to add weeks (and tens of thousands of dollars) to a build is now legally constrained. That’s a meaningful tailwind for any private builder operating outside the bottlenecked municipal queue.
Rates have stabilized. Mortgage rates are settled in the low-to-mid 6% range, and luxury buyers — many of whom finance against assets or pay cash — are not particularly rate-sensitive in any case. The buyers who are rate-sensitive are sitting on the sidelines, which means less competition for everything from the lot to the framing crew.
This is the window. Less competition for trades, more inventory of land, streamlined permitting, and a luxury market that continues to appreciate at its own pace independent of the affordability crisis around it. These conditions don’t tend to coexist for long.
The Solution: A Build Built on Trust, Not Markup
Here’s where I’ll be honest with you about the part of this business that frustrates buyers the most: most builders won’t tell you what your home actually costs.
The standard luxury build in this market gets sold on a fixed-bid contract that hides where the markup lives. The “premium” finish allowance is padded. The “structural contingency” is a line item with no defined endpoint. The change order conversation — the one nobody warned you about — arrives somewhere around the framing stage and never really stops. By the time you take possession, you’ve paid 15–25% more than the original number, and you couldn’t tell anyone exactly where it went.
That’s not how I build.
The Barndo Chick LLC operates on a cost-plus model with a transparent percentage-based contractor fee. Here’s what that means in practice for a luxury build:
- You see every receipt. Every invoice from every subcontractor, supplier, and material vendor passes through to you at actual cost. There is no “we marked up the lumber 22%.” The lumber costs what it costs.
- My general contractor fee is a defined percentage of project cost — agreed upon in writing before the build begins. That percentage is transparent, disclosed , and the only compensation I take for running your build. There are no hidden margins buried inside line items, no inflated allowances, no kickbacks from suppliers. The percentage is the percentage, and you know it on day one.
- Real-time cost tracking. You don’t find out about a budget shift at the end. You see it the day it happens. If we’re trending over on one line item, you decide — not me — whether to absorb it, swap it, or scale it.
- No surprise change orders. Every change comes with a written scope, a written cost, and your signature before the trades touch it.
For a luxury buyer, this isn’t a feature. It’s the entire point. The wealthier the buyer, the more sophisticated they tend to be about pricing — and the more they value transparency over the appearance of a tidy fixed bid that conceals where the money actually goes.
The honest pricing floor for a finished custom build in North Idaho right now is $299 per square foot, and that’s the floor for standard finishes. For waterfront-grade architecture, custom millwork, vaulted ceilings with exposed timber, premium glazing, and the kind of finish package that defines a real luxury build, the per-foot number climbs from there. A builder quoting you significantly less than that is either cutting materials, hiding markup, or planning the change-order conversation already.
I’d rather tell you the real number on day one than the comfortable number on day one and the real number on day three hundred.
The Bottom Line
North Idaho is not the affordable place it used to be. That ship sailed, and 80% of the people who used to live here can’t follow it back to shore. That part of the story is real, and pretending otherwise insults the families who left.
But the other part of the story — the part that matters if you’re reading this — is that the luxury build environment in this region is more favorable right now than it has been in years. Production builders are pulling back, inventory is improving, permitting just got streamlined by law, and the wealth migration into the region from Washington, California, and beyond shows no sign of slowing.
The buyers who acted three years ago are sitting in finished homes today. The buyers who waited are still waiting. The buyers who act now have the most favorable conditions of any cohort in recent memory — and a builder who will tell them, in writing, exactly what their home costs.
If you have land, equity, or both, and you’ve been waiting for the right time and the right builder, this is the conversation worth having.
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The Barndo Chick LLC is a private residential builder serving North Idaho on a cost-plus model. We build custom barndominiums, luxury residences, and waterfront-adjacent homes for buyers who value architecture, transparency, and craftsmanship in equal measure. Every build is documented in real time. Every dollar is accounted for. Every client is treated like family — because in North Idaho, the people you build for are the people you’ll see at the lake next summer.
Schedule a private consultation. Bring your questions. We’ll bring the receipts.
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Sources referenced in this article:
- Kootenai County Housing Availability and Affordability Study (“Next Steps” report) — Coeur d’Alene Area Economic Development Corporation, Panhandle Affordable Housing Alliance, University of Idaho
- Coeur d’Alene Regional Realtors, March 2026 Market Snapshot
- Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts, Q2 2025
- Moody’s Analytics consumer spending analysis (via Washington Post)
- KPMG Q2 2025 Household Net Worth Report
- Lifestyle North Realty Group, 2024 Coeur d’Alene Luxury Market Guide
- Idaho Real Homes, November 2025 Coeur d’Alene Market Report
- Sightline Institute, “Idaho’s Big Housing Breakthrough Year,” April 2026
- Idaho House Bill 585 (2026 Session), Idaho Legislature
- Spokesman-Review, “From a seller’s market to a buyer’s,” April 2026
