Seattle, Washington.
Typical home $822,572 (-1.8% in a year), asking rent $2,227 (+0.5%). Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,778 (+70%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $14,825 -2%
- $837,398$822,572 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $21,830 +3%
- $800,742$822,572 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Seattle$4,317
- Washington$3,084
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Seattle, WA fell 1.8% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Seattle, WA rose 0.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Seattle runs $3,539/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $4,004 in Jan 2025.
That is $5,765 a month against $2,227 rent: a $4,317 mortgage payment, plus $567 property tax and $881 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Seattle
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$5,765
- Renting$2,227
- Mortgage only$4,317
Property tax · $567/mo 0.83% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for King County, WA
Insurance & upkeep · $881/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Seattle, King County, Washington
Seattle is a city of 737,015 people in King County. Half its households earn more than $123,860 a year and half less, against $124,746 across King County; 10% of its people live below the poverty line. 44% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 56% are rented. Unemployment in Seattle was 4.5% in August 2026, and King County had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in professional services, then schools and health care.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Seattle is a large city whose residents skew younger than much of the country, and where most adults hold a four-year degree. Incomes sit just below the county's, while homes and rents are costly, and more households rent than own their homes. Winters are cool and wet rather than harsh, with snow only now and then, and summers are mild, with August the warmest month.
Work. Residents work mostly in professional and business services, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in Seattle are the University of Washington's Seattle campus, Seattle Children's Hospital and Zillow Group. Unemployment is a little higher than a year ago, and a good share of residents work from home.
Things to do. The Space Needle is the city's best known tourist attraction, and it sits in or beside town along with Seattle Center, a garden and gathering place. The Museum of Pop Culture is also in or beside town, a short way from the Space Needle. Lake Washington is a short drive away for time by the water.
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- 363,466households
- 68%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 26 mintypical commute
- 35%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. King County had 1,436,484 jobs in 2025, 0.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 46° and lows near 37°; warmest in August, with highs near 77° and lows near 57°. About 4 inches of snow and 38 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Seattle Sand Pt Wsfo weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Seattle
- University of Washington-Seattle CampusUniversity or college22,819
- Seattle Children's HospitalChildren's hospital9,898FTE
- Zillow GroupSoftware publishers6,919
- University of Washington MED CTRGeneral hospital6,903FTE
- Seattle School District No. 1School district6,303FTE
- Fred HutchBiotechnology research and development laboratories or services in genetics6,215
- Harborview Medical CenterGeneral hospital4,504FTE
- Virginia Mason Medical CenterGeneral hospital4,090FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 564 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 133,219 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- EarthquakesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Seattle’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on King County and the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA metro.
Seattle home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Seattle$822,572
- Washington$587,533
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Seattle listings, and the typical home goes pending in 18 days — the market is cooling.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Seattle29.78%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Seattle18
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Seattle2,830
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Seattle826
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Seattle$834,222
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Seattle99.79%
Zip codes with a Seattle address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Seattle — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Seattle
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 98115 | Seattle | 54,349 | $2,255 | $1,007,739 |
| 98103 | Seattle | 52,671 | $2,291 | $875,835 |
| 98118 | Seattle | 50,500 | $1,983 | $706,726 |
| 98105 | Seattle | 49,767 | $1,970 | $1,121,900 |
| 98125 | Seattle | 44,520 | $1,914 | $778,253 |
| 98122 | Seattle | 43,234 | $2,032 | $794,534 |
| 98117 | Seattle | 35,711 | $2,443 | $944,564 |
| 98109 | Seattle | 34,328 | $2,564 | $747,178 |
| 98144 | Seattle | 33,787 | $1,946 | $750,104 |
| 98107 | Seattle | 28,776 | $2,332 | $817,554 |
| 98116 | Seattle | 28,711 | $2,301 | $973,130 |
| 98106 | Seattle | 28,690 | $2,403 | $642,178 |
| 98102 | Seattle | 27,333 | $1,958 | $736,729 |
| 98119 | Seattle | 26,879 | $2,026 | $1,018,013 |
| 98108 | Seattle | 25,529 | $2,226 | $664,850 |
| 98112 | Seattle | 23,921 | $2,320 | $1,321,874 |
| 98126 | Seattle | 22,975 | $2,045 | $732,462 |
| 98199 | Seattle | 22,468 | $2,719 | $1,205,254 |
| 98121 | Seattle | 21,166 | $2,757 | $521,052 |
| 98136 | Seattle | 17,252 | $2,423 | $909,734 |
| 98101 | Seattle | 17,153 | $2,647 | $546,852 |
| 98104 | Seattle | 16,542 | $2,041 | $529,302 |
| 98134 | Seattle | 645 | — | $424,988 |