East Side Real Estate: Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond & Renton Compared

Quick trivia question. So out of every market that I tracked this month in the greater Seattle area, which included 15 cities and counties, which one do you think is taking the longest to sell a home right now? It's not Bellevue, but some sleepy corner of Snohomish County. It's Renton, the most affordable city along 405 perhaps. And things are moving slow, 25 days on market, while homes on the other side of the lake in Shoreline are selling in 12 days. We're going to talk about the east side today. What is going on over there with real estate, with jobs, and with your decision of whether it's a good time to buy or sell. My name is realtor Emily Cressy. I'm with HomeProAssociates.com. And this is my breakout video on what's going on in certain neighborhoods and clusters of markets here in the summer of 2026. So we're following what's happening in the Northwest MLS. We're looking at the MLS data. We're trying to map it onto headlines and the news and figure out what is going on and how is this going to impact you if you are trying to make a real estate decision in the next couple of months or years. If you want to talk through what any of this might mean for you, for your own move, for your investing, my booking link is right below this video in the description. So let's go through what you need to think about as you consider, you know, your plans for the future. Okay, let's start with price because on paper the east side looks split down the middle. Bellevue's median price is down 3.6% from a year ago. Kirkland's is down about 4%. Renton's is down 8%, which is the biggest one. But of course, you know, they're not the strongest market of our little crown jewels over there. And then there's Redmond, which is breaking the curve up 11.3% on median home prices, which is the strongest gain of anywhere that I'm tracking right now. And Redmond, I really had to think about it and kind of dig in because I wasn't quite sure what was going on there. So let's look at that together and see if we can figure it out together. If you have your own theory, I would love to hear it in the comments. So please tell me what you're seeing if you live on the east side in terms of buying and selling property. What I'm seeing in the Northwest MLS shares these statistics. I'm looking at July data, and it's showing that Redmond's median home price is up 11%, which sounds great, but closed sales in Redmond are down almost 29% over the same period. So my read is that Redmond maybe has more new construction hitting the market that is costing a premium, and it's just outpacing Bellevue and Kirkland for those types of projects. And new construction will always sell at a premium. They have rate buy downs on the financing and that type of thing. And that could be pulling the median home prices up, even while the actual pace of sales slows down right along with the rest of the market. So while the price might look strong, the activity underneath that tells a different story. Now, my personal hypothesis on this has a lot to do with millionaires tax, the softening luxury market. We've got the capital gains tax now, job loss and job uncertainty on the East side, the big luxury homes selling and people moving away. So I'm seeing a lot of that right now, which I do think is impacting the East side market. But again, I'd love to know your hypothesis. I talked a lot about it on my big market update video for the month. So feel free to click and view on that one. What I'm seeing here is that Bellevue and Kirkland are the more straightforward story. Both are down. Both are still moving at a reasonable clip with home selling in 14 to 16 days, which by any standard is still a fast moving market. And both are still sitting on close to double the normal months of inventory. The supply of inventory from a year ago has gone way up, which the market is cooling, no doubt, but it's not crashing. Homes are continuing to sell. We just have a lot of listings coming on board. Back in Renton, this is the number that surprised me the most in the whole data set. Renton's price is down almost 8%, which fits the East side cooling story. But 25 median days on the market is the slowest of anywhere that I track. I think people maybe were moving there for affordability purposes when the market was stronger, but now they don't have to move there. So they're choosing other markets. Renton is definitely the more affordable end of where you can buy along 405. And usually you'd expect the cheaper option to move faster when buyers are being careful with their money. And there's a strong, people want an affordable home, but instead it's the slowest. So my guess is that Renton's buyer pool is leaning more on financing. Interest rates are up right now. They're not using cash or stock compensation, windfalls like the rest of the East side. And again, when affordability is coming down off across the board, it's not people's first choice. Maybe those people can now afford a home in Shoreline or somewhere else that they'd prefer to be a little bit more. But if you have been eyeing Renton and you do think about living there because it's the kind of affordable version of the East side, then this data may be great news for you right now. You have a slower pace and softening pricing, which means you have more room to negotiate than you would get in Bellevue or Kirkland. This type of thing could be your window. You know, people are nervous to buy. You can get great deals. So let's recap. You've got Bellevue out. Median home price at 1.48 million down 3.6% selling in 16 days on market. Kirkland 1.34 million, which is down 3.9% selling at 14 days on market. Redmond a little higher 1.36 million up 11.3% but closed sales are down almost 29% beneath that. And then Renton by far the cheapest market $718,000 down 7.9% 25 days on market. The slowest, softest market of anything that I'm mentioning here in this video, just for a little contrast, right? So if you're buying on the East side, you know, going further away from town and especially going South, you're going to have more negotiating power, more buying power. Bellevue and Kirkland aren't far behind. Redmond is the exception, but don't let that price increase make you think that the market is completely different there. I think we're seeing some things that are throwing off the data a little bit. And as always, when you're selling price based on what's selling in your street, in your neighborhood, not what's selling last year, not what Zillow is telling you your home prices, we really have to go by recent comps to show us what's happening now. And when we got a price for now and not for last year. And if you're selling in a slower market plan, that is going to take, you know, a couple weeks or months to sell. Of course, you want to track your showings and your activity so that you're not, you know, having unrealistic expectations that it's going to sell for a crazy price. You should be getting showings. You should be getting offers within a month in any of these places. If you'd like to talk through your specific situation, again, my booking link is right below this video. Please feel free to schedule a call and otherwise subscribe because we're going to keep tracking these markets and we'll see how these trends continue to impact you and where you live. I'm Emily Cressey, and I'll see you on the next video.