Central Seattle
This area comprises a diverse patchwork of both affluent and middle-income neighborhoods northeast of downtown. Some, including Madison Park, Denny Blaine, and Leschi, offer frontage on Lake Washington; but Capitol Hill and Madison Valley are also included. There were $998 million in single-family home sales in Central Seattle in 2017, at a median selling price of $877,000−13.2 percent higher than the 2016 annual median price of $775,000.
The numbers of homes sold in the second and third quarters have subsided in the past two years from an outsized seasonal rush in 2015. In 2017 overall, single-family transactions in Central Seattle slightly declined by 1.2 percent, to 919 from 930 in 2016. Sales were brisk, with the median cumulative days on market bottoming at seven in the second quarter. As in other areas of Seattle, deviations from the listed price favored home sellers over buyers, although by slim margins at higher prices later in 2017.
Compensating for lackluster fourth-quarter sales in the previous two years, Central Seattle home prices at the 75th and 90th percentile saw big gains in 2017, rising by 35 percent and 26.7 percent, respectively. Quarterly prices at the lower of these two thresholds now regularly exceed one million dollars. However, "entry-level" home prices (as measured by the 25th percentile price) were also up by double digits in all four quarters of the year.
Bedroom counts in Central Seattle compare well with those in Queen Anne and Magnolia next door. Yet while two- and three-bedroom homes here tend to sell for a few percentage points less, four- and five --bedroom homes tend to draw higher selling prices than in Queen Anne and Magnolia.
2017 AT A GLANCE
Median Home Price:
$877,000
Home Sale Volume:
$998 Million