What the actual sales record says about pricing, speed, and condition in King and Pierce County.
Updated July 2026Per the NWMLS June 2026 monthly report, the King County median residential price was $889,000, down 2.7 percent year over year, with about three months of supply on the market. That is not a crash. It is a market where buyers have room to negotiate again, and where pricing and presentation decisions matter more than they did a few years ago.
Monthly headlines are useful, but we prefer the closing table. We analyzed 16,228 closed sales across King and Pierce County, roughly January through July 2026. Across both counties combined, the median home took 46 days from list to sale. Here is how each county looks on its own.
Source: our analysis of King and Pierce closings, roughly January through July 2026. Data from Redfin. These are estimates from past local sales, not an appraisal or a guarantee.
We compared each sold home's price per square foot against its same-ZIP neighbors, then grouped homes by how the listing described their condition. The gaps are real, and they point in the direction you would expect.
| Listing language | King County | Pierce County |
|---|---|---|
| Remodeled or renovated | +2.5% | +6.0% |
| Professionally landscaped | +4.9% | +5.5% |
| Fixer or as-is | -3.2% | -6.4% |
| Dated or original | -7.5% | -3.6% |
Figures are median price per square foot versus same-ZIP neighbors, by listing language. Speed followed the same pattern: renovated homes went under contract about 3 days faster than their ZIP peers, and professionally landscaped homes about a week faster.
Source: our analysis of King and Pierce closings, roughly January through July 2026. Data from Redfin. Estimates from past local sales, not an appraisal or a guarantee.
A softer market rewards preparation and honest pricing. Three questions worth sitting with before you list:
Is your price built from your ZIP, or from a headline?
County medians hide huge street-by-street differences. A home priced off its own ZIP's recent sold prices tends to avoid the price-cut cycle that caught roughly a quarter of King sellers and a third of Pierce sellers in our sample.
Which improvements would your ZIP actually pay for?
The condition table above suggests some work gets repaid and some does not. Landscaping and a clean, updated presentation carried a premium in both counties. That does not mean every project pencils out for every house. Run your own numbers first.
Is selling even the right move this year?
Sometimes the honest answer is keep the house. If the numbers say wait, we will tell you that.
Longer market times and price negotiation change the math on holding versus selling, but they do not decide it for you. Worth asking:
Do you know what each door would actually net today?
Not a wishful number, a same-ZIP sold-comps number, minus selling costs and taxes. Many owners have not run that math since rates moved.
Is your weakest property earning its place in the portfolio?
A market with about three months of supply still absorbs well-prepared homes. If one property lags the others on return, mid-2026 pricing is a fair moment to compare keep versus sell, calmly and on paper.
Every condition figure on this page is a within-ZIP comparison: we take each sold home's price per square foot and measure it against other homes that sold in the same ZIP code over the same period, so a remodeled home in Tacoma is compared with its Tacoma neighbors, not with Bellevue. We then group homes by the condition language in their listings and report the median gap. This controls for location, which is the biggest driver of price, and isolates what condition and presentation appear to add or subtract. These are patterns in past sales, not promises about any specific property, and they are not an appraisal or a guarantee.
Sales analysis: 16,228 King and Pierce closings, roughly January through July 2026. Data from Redfin. County headline figures: NWMLS June 2026 monthly report. Page updated July 2026.
We will pull your ZIP's recent sold prices and walk you through what they suggest, including when the answer is keep the house.