Not just mansions anymore: Record number of Seattle-area homes fetching $1 million
Originally published November 4, 2016 at 5:00 am Updated November 4, 2016 at 10:18 am
King County has seen its share of million-dollar homes more than double compared to the average from the last decade, new data show. (Fred Nelson/The Seattle Times)
At the same time, there are barely any homes available on the opposite end of the market — those selling for under a quarter-million dollars.
Seattle Times business reporter
The blazing housing market is pushing a growing number of “normal” houses in middle-class neighborhoods into a price category once reserved for luxury estates: The Seattle area this year has already smashed its previous full-year record for sales of million-dollar homes.
Nearly 12 percent of all single-family houses sold in King County so far this year have fetched more than $1 million, easily double the average rate over the last decade, according to sales data crunched by Windermere Real Estate.
At the same time, the other end of the market has all but disappeared. Now, less than 5 percent of homes fit into the cheapest price bracket of less than $250,000, down from an average of nearly 15 percent over the last decade.
The rise in million-dollar home sales has been building for five years but has just recently accelerated: This year, by the time September rolled around, the county had already seen more seven-figure sales than in any other full year.
“It wasn’t that long ago, you start talking about seven figures, that was rarefied air. Now, it’s a more substantial market than we’ve ever seen before,” said Matthew Gardner, Windermere’s chief economist. “A million dollars, any way you look at it, is still an awful lot of money. However, it’s what it takes now to buy into some of these markets.”
Once mostly limited to waterfront estates largely on the Eastside, there are now plenty of seven-figure homes selling in places close to downtown like Capitol Hill and First Hill, and a decent amount in middle-class neighborhoods like Ballard, Fremont and West Seattle. Even some small town homes in pricier markets like Queen Anne, and condos downtown, have reached seven figures.
Still, the biggest concentration of million-dollar houses remains in ritzy areas like Mercer Island, West Bellevue and the Seattle waterfront. In those places, it’s almost impossible to find something under $1 million, said Windermere Realtor Anna Riley.
Those looking to stand out now have to buy multimillion-dollar homes. The county now sees 2 percent of homes sell for at least $2 million. Historically, those multimillion-dollar houses have been preserved for only the top 1 percent of homebuyers.
“What we used to consider luxury listings was anything over $2 million, and now that has scooted up to $3 million,” Riley said.
Riley said international buyers, tech executives and transplants from richer markets like California and Vancouver, B.C., make up a bulk of the buyers for today’s luxury homes. Many sellers, meanwhile, choose to “cash in” by pocketing a bulk of the profits and buying something in a cheaper area.
The demand for super-pricey homes has grown so much that Windermere, the region’s largest broker, launched a new line of “ultraluxury” services this week called the W Collection tailored for homes worth at least $3 million. More than a dozen agents will be targeting wealthy clients across Western Washington.
The share of million-dollar homes in Seattle is more than twice the national big-city average and rising faster than most other cities, according to an analysis in May by Trulia, which looked at the value of all homes, not just those recently sold.
But Seattle ranked behind the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California, Honolulu and New York on the list of the highest rate of million-dollar homes.
Mike Rosenberg: mrosenberg@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2266; on Twitter @ByRosenberg.
