Cost of Living & Housing in Seattle & the Eastside
Housing cost across Seattle and the Eastside spans one of the widest ranges in this entire dataset -- from roughly $620K-$757K on the region's more affordable northern and southern edges (Shoreline, Bothell) to $2.5M-$2.7M on Mercer Island -- and the driver is a genuinely different one than in most regions: proximity to the region's dominant tech employers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta) and their school districts, not proximity to water or downtown alone.
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Learn moreSeattle Proper vs. the Eastside: Two Different Expensive Markets
Seattle itself runs a genuinely, currently expensive and competitive market -- Zillow's home value index put the city at $865,273 as of May 2026, with Redfin's median sale price climbing from $865,000 to $893,000 across the same spring, homes averaging 3 offers and 10 days on market. But the Eastside runs even higher at its core: Bellevue's housing market was still appreciating, not correcting, as of 2026 (Zillow $1,296,767, Redfin's closed-transaction median $1,560,000, single-family homes specifically around $2,000,000), while Redmond ran a slightly lower but still Microsoft-adjacent $1,364,438 (down 4.1% YoY, a real, disclosed direction reversal from Bellevue's continued appreciation). Kirkland ($1,499,000 median as of June 2026) and Sammamish (recent-month median around $1.5M) sit in the same tier. This is a genuinely different pattern from most US metros, where the core city usually costs more than its suburbs -- here, several Eastside suburbs cost meaningfully MORE than Seattle proper.
Mercer Island: The Region's Price Ceiling
Mercer Island is the clear outlier even within this already-expensive region: a 3-month median of $2.5M climbing to $2.7M over a 30-day window (up 10.2% YoY), reflecting its unusual position -- a genuine island community sitting directly in Lake Washington between Seattle and Bellevue, connected to both by I-90's floating bridges, with its own small-town center layered on top of that dual-access convenience. Issaquah ($1.07M-$1.1M, easing modestly between March and June 2026) and Bothell ($1,041,433, down a real 13.2% YoY -- the sharpest cooling of any place in this region) round out the upper-middle tier, with Bothell's decline notable given its otherwise strong biotech-employment profile.
The Region's More Affordable Entry Points
Shoreline ($757,500 median as of May 2026) and Snoqualmie -- more removed from the immediate Eastside job centers but still within commuting range via I-90 -- offer meaningfully lower entry points into this region than Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, or Mercer Island, without leaving the broader Seattle-Eastside labor market. Shoreline specifically benefits from its own Link light rail stations (opened as part of the 2024 extension), giving it transit-connected affordability that some pricier Eastside suburbs still lack outside their own light rail stops.
What's Genuinely Tax-Driven, Not Just Location
Washington's lack of a state individual income tax applies identically across every place in this region, but the state's 2021-enacted capital gains excise tax (7% on long-term gains above an inflation-indexed threshold, 9.9% above $1 million as of the 2025 rate change) is disclosed consistently across the region's Tier A place records as especially relevant here specifically -- this region has the state's single heaviest concentration of equity-compensated tech workers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Nintendo all maintain major operations across these ten places), making the excise tax a real, recurring planning factor for movers relocating for a tech-sector role in a way it isn't for most of the rest of Washington.
Key takeaways
- The Eastside core (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Sammamish, Mercer Island) runs at or above Seattle's own home prices, a reversal of the usual city-vs-suburbs pattern -- Bellevue and Mercer Island are the region's most expensive markets, not Seattle proper.
- Mercer Island ($2.5M-$2.7M) is the region's clear price ceiling; Shoreline ($757,500) and Bothell (which cooled 13.2% YoY, the sharpest decline in the region) offer the more affordable entry points.
- Bellevue was still appreciating as of 2026 even as Redmond, Kirkland-area, and Bothell prices eased -- a real, disclosed divergence in direction across neighboring Eastside cities.
- Washington's capital gains excise tax (7%-9.9%) is a genuinely relevant planning factor specifically in this region given its unusually heavy concentration of equity-compensated tech employees.
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