A Camas seller sits down at the escrow office with a signed offer and a rough idea of what they will walk away with. The purchase price is set. The mortgage payoff is known. Then the settlement statement lands in front of them with a line item they budgeted for at the wrong number, because the calculator they used online, or the flat percentage a friend quoted them from their own sale a few years back, no longer describes how Washington taxes a home sale in Camas.
The reason is simple and easy to miss. Camas's median home price has moved past the point where Washington's Real Estate Excise Tax stops being one flat rate and starts being two.
The math almost everyone assumes
Ask most people how much excise tax they will owe when they sell, and they will multiply their sale price by a single percentage. That instinct made sense for a long time, because a flat-rate mental model is close enough when your entire sale price sits inside one tax bracket. It stops being close enough the moment your price crosses a threshold, because everything above that line gets taxed at a different rate than everything below it.
Washington's Real Estate Excise Tax, known as REET, has worked this way since 2020. It is graduated, the same way federal income tax brackets are graduated. A single sale can be taxed at two, three, or even four different rates depending on price, with each slice of the sale price taxed at its own rate rather than the whole amount taxed at whatever bracket the top dollar lands in.
Camas crossed into that two-bracket territory sometime in the last couple of years, and the shift is easy to overlook because nobody sends a notice when it happens. There is no announcement. The only place it shows up is on the closing statement.
How the tax is actually built
The state portion of REET runs through four thresholds, current through the end of 2026 according to the Washington Department of Revenue:
| Portion of sale price | State REET rate |
|---|---|
| Up to $525,000 | 1.10% |
| $525,000.01 to $1,525,000 | 1.28% |
| $1,525,000.01 to $3,025,000 | 2.75% |
| Above $3,025,000 | 3.00% |
On top of the state rate, cities and counties can add their own local REET. Camas adds 0.50%, a rate confirmed on the city's own excise tax page and in the Department of Revenue's local rate schedule. That local money is not incidental. The city's own explanation of the tax notes that the first quarter percent must go toward capital projects listed in the city's comprehensive plan, and the second quarter percent is earmarked for infrastructure like streets, sidewalks, water and sewer systems, and parks. It is a transaction tax that quietly funds the roads and pipes a growing city needs, and Camas has been growing.
The state rate is graduated. The local rate is not. Camas applies its 0.50% to the full sale price, no matter which state bracket that price falls into. So the total REET bill on any Camas home is the graduated state amount plus a flat 0.50% of the entire price, and the seller almost always pays it, though the purchase contract can shift that responsibility to the buyer if both sides agree to it in writing.
What that looks like on a Camas closing statement
The most recent local multiple listing service data puts Camas's median home sale price at $629,900 as of June 2026. That number matters here for one reason: it sits $104,900 past the $525,000 threshold where the state rate steps up from 1.10% to 1.28%.
Run the actual math on a $629,900 sale. The first $525,000 is taxed at 1.10%, which comes to $5,775. The remaining $104,900 is taxed at 1.28%, adding $1,342.72. That brings the state total to $7,117.72. Add Camas's 0.50% local rate applied to the full price, another $3,149.50, and the total REET bill comes to roughly $10,267.
Compare that to what a flat-rate assumption would produce. If a seller assumed a single combined rate of 1.60%, the number most people would land on by adding the lowest state bracket to the local rate, applied across the whole price, they would estimate around $10,078. The actual bill runs about $189 higher. That gap is small at the median, easy to absorb, easy to miss.
It does not stay small.
The gap widens as the price climbs
The further a sale price moves past $525,000, the more of it gets taxed at the higher 1.28% bracket instead of the lower 1.10% one, and the wider the gap grows between what a flat-rate guess predicts and what the seller actually owes.
A home selling for $800,000, a price point that shows up regularly among Camas's larger or newer construction listings, produces a state REET of $9,295 and a local REET of $4,000, for a total of $13,295. A flat 1.60% guess on that same price would land at $12,800, a difference of $495.
Push the price to $1,000,000 and the same math produces a total REET of $16,855 against a flat-rate guess of $16,000, a gap of $855.
None of these are hypothetical numbers pulled from a different market. They come directly from applying Camas's actual local rate to Washington's actual current brackets. The pattern is the point: the higher the sale price, the more a flat-rate mental model underestimates the real bill, and Camas's price range means more sellers are now feeling that gap than would have a few years ago when the median sat comfortably under $525,000.
Who collects it, and when
REET is not something a seller mails in later. Washington law requires the tax to be paid before the county auditor will record the deed, which means it gets collected and filed as part of closing, not after. In practice, the title or escrow company handling the transaction calculates the combined state and local amount, withholds it from the seller's proceeds, files the REET affidavit, and remits payment to the county.
In Camas, that often means working with a local escrow office such as the Camas branch of Clark County Title, which handles escrow services for transactions closing in the city. Whoever handles your closing, the number on that affidavit is not negotiable after the fact. What is negotiable, if both parties agree to it in the purchase contract, is who pays it.
Building REET into your net sheet before you list
The fix for all of this is not complicated. It just has to happen early. Before you set a list price, ask whoever is preparing your net sheet to calculate REET using the actual graduated state brackets plus Camas's 0.50% local rate, not a rounded flat percentage. At a $629,900 sale, that precision is worth about $189. At $1,000,000, it is worth $855. Either way, it is money you want to know about before you accept an offer, not after.
If the property you are selling is timberland or classified agricultural land, this entire structure changes. Washington taxes those parcels at a flat 1.28% regardless of price, skipping the graduated brackets altogether. That distinction matters more the further you get from Camas's core residential streets and closer to the acreage parcels that show up on the edges of the city, a topic worth its own look if you are weighing a larger lot purchase.
A few questions Camas sellers ask
Does REET apply to new construction sales too? Yes. REET applies to nearly all arm's-length transfers of real property, including new construction. The exemptions are narrow and specific: gifts, inheritances, and transfers between spouses or registered domestic partners are the main categories that avoid the tax entirely.
Can the buyer pay REET instead of the seller? It can be negotiated. Washington law makes the seller the default taxpayer, but the purchase and sale agreement can assign some or all of the tax to the buyer if both parties put that in writing.
Does the local 0.50% rate ever change? Local REET rates are set by the city and can change over time, so it is worth confirming the current rate with your title company or the city's finance department close to your actual closing date rather than relying on a rate you saw months earlier.
If you are trying to figure out what your specific Camas property would net after REET and other closing costs, that is exactly the kind of number worth pinning down before you list rather than discovering at the closing table. Daniel Treacy works with sellers across Camas and the broader Clark County market to build an accurate net sheet from the start, and you can get a home valuation or reach out directly to talk through your numbers before you put a sign in the yard.
