Every indicator we track points the same direction, which is rare. Yet the drop in home values is overwhelmingly concentrated in condo-heavy urban neighborhoods while premium single-family Seattle holds flat or rises. This is a condo correction wearing a citywide costume.
The Seattle area is a buyer's market as of September 2026. Metro for-sale inventory is up 15.4% year over year and now sits at the highest level in its entire recorded history. Median days to pending has risen 30.8%. Nearly a third of active listings — 31.7% — have cut their price. Typical home values are down 1.6%.
All six measured indicators agree, which is unusual and makes this a high-confidence call rather than a judgment call.
But the important nuance: 80 of 92 Seattle neighborhoods show falling values, and the steepest declines are all dense, condo-dominant neighborhoods that are also among the city's cheapest. Expensive single-family enclaves are flat to positive. If you read "Seattle prices are falling" and pictured a broad correction, the data says otherwise.
On geography: metro figures below cover the Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue metro area. Neighborhood figures cover the City of Seattle. These are different areas and carry very different price levels — see why sources disagree on Seattle's median price.
Inventory sits at the 100th percentile of its recorded range since 2018 — an outright record. Price cuts sit at the 96th percentile. Days to pending has climbed 88.9% in three months.
Most market commentary asserts a conclusion. Here is the actual tally, so you can disagree with it. We weight price outcomes double, because what happened to values matters more than what inventory is hinting at next.
A unanimous reading is uncommon. In most months, inventory and pricing disagree — Austin right now is a good example, where home values are down 5.2% while inventory has tightened 6.2%. Seattle has no such ambiguity this month.
Of 92 Seattle neighborhoods with value data, 80 are down year over year — 87%. That headline invites a story about a broad citywide decline. The neighborhood detail tells a sharper story.
| Neighborhood | Typical value | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| First Hill | $396,672 | −7.3% |
| Belltown | $470,851 | −6.8% |
| Northgate | $549,595 | −5.4% |
| International District | $384,183 | −5.4% |
| Lower Queen Anne | $514,359 | −5.2% |
| South Lake Union | $494,860 | −4.9% |
| Neighborhood | Typical value | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Waterfront | $739,779 | +5.3% |
| Denny-Blaine | $2,379,339 | +2.4% |
| Phinney Ridge | $1,091,918 | +1.7% |
| Seaview | $1,004,298 | +1.4% |
| Broadmoor | $3,091,432 | +1.1% |
Every one of Seattle's six steepest decliners is a high-density, condo-heavy neighborhood — and five of the six are among the cheapest places to buy in the city. Every neighborhood holding its value is single-family in character, and most are expensive. Seattle's price weakness is segment-specific, not geographic. The entry-level condo market is absorbing essentially the entire correction.
The leverage is in condos, and it is real leverage: falling values, record inventory, and a third of sellers already cutting price. If a downtown or First Hill condo works for you, this is the strongest negotiating position buyers have had in years.
If you need single-family in Phinney Ridge or Magnolia, the citywide "buyer's market" headline largely does not apply to you. Inventory is better than it was, but values in those neighborhoods are flat to rising and you are not shopping a correction.
Condo sellers are competing against record inventory in a falling segment. Pricing ahead of the market — not at it — is the difference between selling and joining the 31.7% who cut. Single-family sellers in the neighborhoods above are in a materially stronger position than the headlines suggest, though the 88.9% three-month jump in days-to-pending says you should still expect a slower sale than last year.
One number deserves emphasis because it cuts against the narrative: median days to pending is still only 17 days. That is up sharply — 30.8% year over year, 88.9% over three months — and the direction is unambiguous. But in absolute terms, 17 days is fast.
| Metro | Days to pending |
|---|---|
| Seattle, WA | 17 |
| Boise City, ID | 12 |
| Tampa, FL | 36 |
| Austin, TX | 48 |
Seattle is decelerating quickly, but a home that goes pending in 17 days is not a distressed market. Anyone describing this as a crash is not looking at the absorption data. The honest framing is a fast-cooling market that started from an extremely competitive position and still has further to fall before it looks like Austin.
If you have read that Seattle's median home price is around $1 million and then see $729,208 here, neither number is wrong. They measure different places, and almost nobody says so.
| Measure | Geography | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Metro median sale price | Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue metro, incl. Tacoma, Everett, outlying King/Pierce/Snohomish | $729,208 |
| Median of City of Seattle neighborhood values | 92 Seattle neighborhoods only | $819,007 |
| City-of-Seattle median sale price, as reported by local brokerages from MLS data | City of Seattle closed sales | ≈$1,000,000 |
Three things drive the gap. Geography is the largest: the metro area includes Tacoma and Everett, which are materially cheaper than Seattle proper. What gets counted is second: a median of closed sales reflects whichever homes happened to sell that month, while an index of typical values reflects the whole housing stock — and in a market where cheap condos are the ones trading, those diverge. Source is third: MLS-derived figures and index-derived figures are built differently and will never match exactly.
We report metro figures for the flow indicators because that is the geography the underlying series covers, and City of Seattle figures for neighborhood values. Both are labeled everywhere they appear on this page. If a market report does not tell you which geography it is describing, you cannot compare it to anything — including this one.
Typical asking rent in the Seattle metro is $2,282, up 1.4% year over year and sitting at the 100th percentile of its recorded range since 2015 — an all-time high, even as for-sale values decline.
That divergence is the most interesting thing on this page for investors. Condo values are falling hardest in exactly the dense neighborhoods where rental demand is strongest. Falling acquisition prices against record rents is, mechanically, expanding yield. We will track whether investor activity follows.
A buyer's market, as of September 2026. All six indicators we track point toward cooling: inventory up 15.4% to a record high, days to pending up 30.8%, price cuts at 31.7% of listings, and typical values down 1.6%. Unanimity across indicators is unusual and makes this a high-confidence read.
Yes, modestly at the metro level and very unevenly by neighborhood. The typical home value is $740,579, down 1.6% year over year. Of 92 Seattle neighborhoods, 80 are down. But the declines are concentrated: condo-heavy urban neighborhoods are falling 5–7% while single-family neighborhoods are flat to positive.
First Hill (−7.3%), Belltown (−6.8%), Northgate (−5.4%), the International District (−5.4%), Lower Queen Anne (−5.2%), and South Lake Union (−4.9%). All are dense and condo-dominant, and five of the six are among the least expensive neighborhoods in Seattle.
It depends which Seattle you mean. The metro median sale price was $729,208 as of June 2026, down 1.0% year over year. The median of City of Seattle neighborhood values is $819,007. City-of-Seattle median sale prices reported by local brokerages from MLS data run near $1,000,000.
The metro figure includes Tacoma and Everett, which are considerably cheaper than Seattle proper. Full explanation of the gap.
Geography, mostly. Metro-area figures include Tacoma, Everett and outlying county areas that are cheaper than the city, so a metro median lands well below a city median.
Two smaller factors compound it. A median of closed sales reflects whichever homes happened to sell that month, while a value index reflects the whole housing stock — and those diverge sharply when one segment dominates transactions, as condos do right now. And MLS-derived figures are built differently from index-derived figures, so they will never match exactly.
Median 17 days to pending as of July 2026. That is up 30.8% year over year and 88.9% over three months, so the trend is clearly slowing — but 17 days is still fast in absolute terms, well ahead of Tampa (36 days) or Austin (48 days).
For a buyer who wants a condo and plans to hold, the negotiating position is the strongest in years: falling values, record inventory, and nearly a third of sellers already cutting price. The counterweight is that the segment is still declining, so near-term paper losses are plausible. Buyers needing to sell within two years face real risk; buyers holding five-plus years are shopping a discount.
This slot is where a named, licensed Seattle agent's market commentary and credentials appear. It is intentionally empty rather than filled with an unattributed voice — a market report should say who is behind its judgment calls.
All figures are drawn from Zillow Research's public datasets. Metro indicators cover the Seattle, WA metropolitan area; neighborhood values use the Zillow Home Value Index at neighborhood granularity, which reports the typical value for homes in the 35th–65th percentile band. Metro history begins in 2000 for home values and 2018 for inventory and flow metrics. Neighborhood series begin in January 2000.
The market-condition reading weights price outcomes (typical home value, median sale price) at double the weight of flow indicators (inventory, days to pending, price cuts), because realized values matter more than leading signals. Thresholds differ by metric: 1% for prices, 5% for flow metrics, reflecting their different natural volatility. Signals below threshold are recorded as flat.
"Condo-dominant" neighborhood characterizations reflect the built form of the named neighborhoods and are not derived from a property-type breakdown of the underlying index. Zillow's neighborhood ZHVI covers single-family homes and condos combined.
Data: Zillow Research, zillow.com/research/data, retrieved September 5, 2026.