Pasco-Richland-Kennewick, WA

The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.

The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.

At this scale the significant owner is rarely a trust or a fund: it is one or two local holding companies, a family in its second or third generation, and often the land around the town rather than the buildings in it.

In Kennewick and Richland the largest landholders are public: the two cities, the Port of Benton and Port of Kennewick, both school districts, Benton County, the irrigation district and the PUD. Federal holdings come from Hanford. Inside Richland's city tax areas the roll names the United States of America, Battelle (operator of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Energy Northwest and Washington State University Tri-Cities. Most of the Hanford Site lies outside the city tax areas, and much of it appears under the bare owner label 'GOVERNMENT' (296 parcels, 37,517 acres countywide). Counts are by Benton County tax code area (K* = Kennewick, R* = Richland). Pasco, in Franklin County, is not counted because its owner file is released only on request.

New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.

New homes in the Tri-Cities are built mainly by regional builders — Pahlisch, Hayden Homes and New Tradition Homes — alongside D.R. Horton, the only national public builder holding lots in Richland. No league table exists for the metro. The figure is the count of parcels each builder held on the Benton County roll in Oct 2026, mostly lots without a house (year built 0) or with one built in 2025–26: a snapshot of inventory, not annual starts. Pasco's builders are not counted because Franklin County's owner file is released only on request.

The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.

Commercial ownership in the Tri-Cities splits between one national REIT, which owns the regional mall, and a handful of industrial owner-occupiers whose food-processing and nuclear-fuel plants dwarf any office building. No downtown office tower appears among the top appraised parcels. The figures below are Benton County appraised values (Oct 2026 layer), not prices.

Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.

1. Benton County — 'Parcels_and_Assess' feature service (owner_name, situs_address, tax_code_area, appraised_val, imprv_val, legal_acres, primary_use, year_blt, exemption code); 80,217 parcels; item licence text — Benton County (Assessor / GIS) · openA
2. Benton County — 'SalesHistory' feature service (prop_id, sale_dt, sale_price, grantor, deed); 360,381 rows — Benton County (Assessor / GIS) · openA
3. Franklin County — Parcels map service (TAXPAYER_NAME field present) and its licence: available 'only by specific request under the Washington Public Records Act' — Franklin County Assessor and GIS (hosted by City of Pasco) · registrationA
4. Benton County Auditor — Recording: 'You can view documents recorded from January, 1971 to present online at any time' — Benton County Auditor · openA
5. Benton County Auditor — Document Recording: fee schedule effective 27 July 2025; non-standard clause 'additional fee of $50' — Benton County Auditor · openA
6. Real estate excise tax — graduated state rates; thresholds from 1 Jan 2027 ($551,000 / $1,551,000 / $3,051,000); controlling-interest transfers (50% or more) reported to DOR; deeds reported to the county — Washington State Department of Revenue · openA
7. Benton County Assessor home page — offices (620 Market St, Prosser; 7122 W Okanogan Pl, Kennewick), links to Property Search (Spatialest) and the GIS hub — Benton County Assessor · openA
8. Simon Property Group 10-K for 2025 — Item 2 property table ('Columbia Center WA Kennewick Fee 100.0% Acquired 1987 99.0% 733,924') and Schedule III (land $17,441K; buildings $117,909K gross; total $135,350K; accumulated depreciation $81,369K) — Simon Property Group, Inc. via SEC EDGAR · openA
9. Columbia Center (Kennewick, Washington) — infobox: opened 1969, developer Allied Stores, owner Simon Property Group, 795,305 sq ft — Wikipedia · openA
10. Toyota Center (Kennewick) — infobox: owner City of Kennewick, operator VenuWorks, opened 19 Nov 1988 as Tri-Cities Coliseum, cost $10 million; Three Rivers Convention Center built next door in 2004 — Wikipedia · openA
11. Tri-Cities Airport (Washington) — infobox: owner Port of Pasco; Franklin County; 2,235 acres, three runways; third-largest commercial airport in the state — Wikipedia · openA
12. Vista Field — 'Tri-Cities' Urban Town Center': led by the Port of Kennewick; near Columbia Center and adjacent to the Vista Entertainment District (Three Rivers Convention Center and Toyota Center) — Port of Kennewick (vistafield.com, redirected by hand from portofkennewick.org/projects/vista-field/) · openA
13. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory — infobox: main campus 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland; operating agency Battelle Memorial Institute; affiliation US Department of Energy — Wikipedia · openA