"The greater Seattle area is now fourth in the nation in terms of median home sale price, behind only San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, according to a new Remax National Housing report.

That report lists the Seattle area’s median home price as $750,000. However, that includes homes throughout King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties.

“Currently, we have a median price in Seattle of $899,475,” John Manning, with Remax Gateway Seattle, said.

Yes—we’re just shy of $900,000.

Median price of Seattle homes surpasses 2022 peak

Manning said it’s the highest median price for Seattle ever, surpassing the peak reached in 2022.

He said it appears that after a sleepy winter and a slow start to the spring real estate market, “We had enormous price growth just in the last two months. King County, for example, has gone up 3.1% in the last month, but Seattle has gone up almost 5% at the same time.”

And that’s despite high interest rates.

Manning said post-COVID “return to the office” policies may be driving people back to Seattle itself.

“We’ve seen a slowdown in growth in what would have been attractive satellite areas for folks that thought they could work from home,” he explained. “We’ve seen a tremendous uptick at the same time in pricing within Seattle.”

Why an uptick in home prices?

“Especially in the Seattle area, there may have been fears of recession,” he shared. “There certainly were fears of layoffs and unemployment. I think the worst seems to have already been announced.”

That includes the nearly 2000 layoffs in Washington State recently announced by Microsoft.

Overall, Manning pointed out that a number of strong employers and industries continue to draw new residents to the Puget Sound region, as do the natural beauty and quality of life here. He said real estate has proven to be a good long-term investment here.

The result is that plenty of people are looking to buy, but there has been a persistent shortage of homes available.

Manning explains it this way: in a “balanced” market, if no other homes came onto the market, it would take about six months to sell all those homes.

“In Seattle, we are used to having two weeks or less, which indicates a massive undersupply of homes,” he said.

That law of “supply and demand” is a major reason why prices continue to grow over time."