J. Lennox Scott, chairman of John L. Scott, gave this month's citywide report a nickname: the "September Sprint," his term for the annual rush of late-summer listings hitting the market before fall settles in. This year the sprint carried Seattle somewhere it hasn't been in fourteen years. But if you're shopping the corridor of North Seattle that actually competes with Snohomish County suburbs for buyers, the sprint hasn't reached you yet.
That gap between the citywide headline and the neighborhood-level reality is the story worth understanding before you write an offer, price a listing, or decide which side of the county line makes more sense for your budget.
The Number Seattle Hasn't Seen Since 2012
Seattle's resale inventory closed August 2026 at 4.6 months of supply on the InfoSparks historical measure, the first time it has crossed above four months since January 2012. John L. Scott's own September update, which pairs September 1 active listings against August's pending sales, puts the figure at 4.3 months. Both readings land the city in buyer's market territory for the first time in over fourteen years.
The numbers behind that shift are real. Seattle had 3,178 homes for sale in August, up 30.0 percent from a year earlier. New listings rose 34.1 percent to 1,329, while pending sales fell 10.7 percent and closed sales dropped 19.5 percent. The average listing pulled 3.4 showings, down 20.9 percent from last year, and homes are sitting a median of 36 days before going under contract. New construction is looser still, running close to five months of supply, with 681 new homes on the market, up 14.1 percent, and an average price of $800,916, down 15.0 percent as builders compete on price rather than terms.
Read only that far and the conclusion writes itself: Seattle buyers finally have room to breathe. For a meaningful slice of the market, they do.
The Fine Print Under the Headline
What the citywide average hides is how unevenly that breathing room is distributed. Seattle's own reporting breaks resale supply out by price band, and the spread is wide enough to change how you should read every other number in this piece.
| Price Band | Months of Resale Supply |
|---|---|
| Under $350,000 | 8.1 |
| $1,000,000–$1,500,000 | 3.0 |
| $1,500,000–$2,000,000 | 4.0 |
The tightest stretch in the entire city sits between $750,000 and $1.5 million, exactly the band where most move-up buyers and North Seattle single-family shoppers are competing. A citywide average built from a loose entry-level tier and a loosening new-construction tier can still describe a market where the middle, the part most buyers in this price range actually experience, hasn't loosened at all.
Northgate Never Got the Email
Nowhere is that gap clearer than in Northgate, the North Seattle corridor that sits closest to the I-5 spine connecting Seattle to Snohomish County. The Northwest MLS put Northgate's median sale price at $738,000 as of the most recent July 2026 data pull, with a median of 12 days on market and 129 active listings in the zip code. Typical asking prices run $400,000 to $700,000 for condos, $600,000 to $900,000 for townhomes, and $850,000 to $1.3 million for single-family homes, a range that lands squarely inside the tightest supply band in the whole city. Recent NWMLS-based tracking of the neighborhood shows the same pattern holding through summer: homes still fielding multiple offers, some with waived contingencies, a description that reads closer to 2021 than to a fourteen-year buyer's market.
Part of the explanation is physical. Northgate Station opened in October 2021 as part of Sound Transit's 1 Line extension, and the mall that once anchored the neighborhood, a 1950 shopping center that claimed to be the first regional mall in the country, has been steadily replaced by a mixed-use district anchored by the Kraken Community Iceplex, three NHL-regulation rinks that serve as the Seattle Kraken's practice facility alongside public skating and youth hockey. That kind of redevelopment plus direct rail access to downtown in roughly 14 minutes keeps a specific type of buyer interested even while citywide demand cools: tech-sector professionals drawn by Washington's lack of a personal state income tax, for whom a five-figure swing in home price matters less than a short commute and transit that skips the freeway.
The Rate Behind the Curtain
None of this happened in a vacuum. Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 6.76 percent as of September 10, 2026, up from 6.71 percent the week before and a full four-tenths of a point higher than the 6.35 percent recorded at the same point last year. Earlier in 2026, several market outlooks had penciled in rates easing toward 5.5 to 6 percent by fall. Instead they climbed to a one-year high heading into September.
That climb is doing most of the work behind Seattle's inventory build. Buyers who are rate-sensitive, first-time purchasers stretching for a starter home, or families comparing a slightly larger payment against a slightly smaller one, are the ones pausing, which shows up as softer entry-level and new-construction segments. Buyers who are less rate-sensitive, whether because they're paying cash, carrying strong equity from a prior sale, or simply prioritizing a specific commute and school boundary, keep competing for the same narrow band of well-located, well-priced homes. Northgate's 12-day market time isn't an anomaly. It's what happens when the buyer pool for a specific price band and location barely notices what the rate environment is doing to everyone else.
What It Means If You're Comparing Northgate to Snohomish County
For anyone weighing a purchase between North Seattle and the Snohomish County suburbs the Erickson Group knows best, the comparison isn't as simple as "Seattle loosened, so it's the better deal now." Snohomish County's own August 2026 numbers show a median sales price of $760,000, down about 2.6 percent from $780,000 a year earlier, with days on market unchanged at 31 and sellers still collecting roughly 99 percent of their final list price. That's a market holding steady, not surging, and not collapsing into buyer leverage either.
Put the two side by side and the honest read is this: if your budget sits under $350,000 or you're shopping new construction anywhere in Seattle, the citywide loosening is genuinely yours to use in negotiation. If you're comparing a Northgate single-family home in the $850,000 to $1.3 million range against a comparable Mill Creek or Lake Stevens listing, you're choosing between two markets that are both still moving quickly, just for different reasons, transit access and no state income tax on one side of the county line, larger lots and a calmer pace on the other.
A couple of questions we're hearing this month:
Does the citywide buyer's market mean I can lowball any Seattle listing right now? Not evenly. The loosening is concentrated in new construction, homes under $350,000, and the $1.5 million to $2 million tier, where supply sits at 4.0 months. The $750,000 to $1.5 million band, which covers most North Seattle single-family homes, remains the tightest stretch in the city.
Why did new construction loosen more than resale? Builders are competing on price and incentives rather than holding firm, which is part of why the average new-construction price fell 15.0 percent year over year even as the number of new homes for sale rose. Resale sellers, particularly in tight submarkets like Northgate, have less reason to make the same concession.
If you're trying to figure out which side of that line your search actually falls on, whether that's a specific Northgate zip code, a Mill Creek cul-de-sac, or something in between, that's exactly the kind of comparison worth walking through before you write an offer. Reach out to The Erickson Group and we'll pull the current numbers for the specific streets you're considering, on either side of the county line.
