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Homebuyers Flock to Issaquah Despite Sizzling Prices | The Seattle Times
Home is where… This story is part of a limited weekly series about homebuying in key places within the Seattle metro area.Coming next: Ballard.
Issaquah — green, pricey, with a small-town feel — continues to lure homebuyers, especially tech worker families with children.
Top rated schools, easy access to downtown Seattle via I-90 and the surrounding mountains known as the “Issaquah Alps” are big selling points.
“It’s a lot of families,” said Steve Sanelli, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Bain, who grew up in Issaquah and has an office there.
A bridge over Issaquah Creek takes you into Olde Town Issaquah from the north along its main drag, Front Street North. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Issaquah is just under 20 miles east of downtown Seattle and about the same distance to Bellevue, but seems far away from the big city. With a population of roughly 40,000, it is small enough that you tend to bump into a person you know.
“It’s got that small town feel,” Sanelli said. “There’s something to be said for that.”
Issaquah hasn’t been immune to the slowdown in home sales in the Puget Sound, however. Last year, sales were below average and down significantly from recent peaks in 2020 and 2021 but interest from buyers, particularly buyers with kids, hasn’t let up much, real estate agents say.
“Even though the broader market has been a little up and down, Issaquah is still one of the most competitive markets,” said Ashley Minnie, an associate for Re/Max Eastside Brokers. “It feels like it is a sweet spot for maybe tech industry workers, people at Amazon, the big corporations in our area that have families.”
Historic rail tracks, no longer used, have been left in place in Issaquah’s Olde Town neighborhood. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
A pedestrian park filled with tulips in Olde Town. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Issaquah had its strongest March for single-family sales in years, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. Some 42 homes sold in March, equaling sales in March 2022, and the highest number for the start of spring in the post-COVID era. Condo sales, which have slumped throughout the Puget Sound, also perked up, with 30 sales in March and 20 in February after starting the year with just eight sales in January.
Issaquah schools, which routinely rank among the best in the state, are one big draw.
Tim Askerov and his wife deliberately looked for a home in the district. They also wanted to move from a busy Renton suburb to a quieter place with less traffic where their two kids could play outside and ride their bikes safely.
In January, they closed on a home in May Valley, which is “kind of in the woods,” between the city of Issaquah and the East Renton Highlands, said Askerov, who works as a criminal defense attorney.
“The hope was to move by the time that our son got into middle school, and we were close,” Askerov said. “Honestly, we’ve been looking for years, and I think that the market conditions were just right.”
Issaquah boasts Confluence Park, with hiking trails and views of the “Issaquah Alps.” (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
This is a good time to look at homes in and around Issaquah, agents say. More properties have come on the market this spring, and homes for sale aren’t typically drawing multiple offers.
“Buyers, they have the leg up right now, so they have a tendency to be more picky,” Sanelli said.
Home prices have not come down, however. Single-family homes within city limits rarely cost under $1 million and town homes start at around $800,000, according to recent listings on Redfin and Zillow. The median sales price on single-family homes has been above $1 million since February 2021, and was $1.4 million in March, according to NWMLS.
Issaquah home sales down despite softening prices
After a bump during the pandemic, sales of single-family homes and condos in Issaquah have declined, but prices remain among the highest in the region.
Source: Northwest Multiple Listing Service (reporting by Victor Whitman, graphic by Chris Kaeser /The Seattle Times)
Condos are more affordable, starting at around $300,000, with the median sales price in March at $467,500.
New town homes are going up on the northeast edge of Olde Town Issaquah on April 19, 2026. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Issaquah Mayor Mark Mullet said the city needs a wider mix of housing types to make home prices and rents (which start in Issaquah at around $2,000 per month) more affordable for people at lower and moderate incomes. A former state senator who was sworn in as mayor in January, Mullet said most of the homes under construction now are town homes. As of April, the city had 274 town homes and 63 single-family homes in various stages of development.
Mullet also said two large developments in and near the Highlands could add around 2,500 housing units of various types in the coming years, including a project led by Shelter Holdings in the Highlands and the Lakeside Development project on property previously mined for gravel and sand.
The “Issaquah Alps,” minutes from the Olde Town neighborhood, are part of the city’s attractions. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Much of the growth has been in the Highlands, where more than 4,000 homes have been built since the late 1990s. Mullet said he would like to see more housing developed in the valley on both sides of I-90 and in central Issaquah, which is the planned end to the Kirkland-Issaquah light rail link extension scheduled to open around 2044.
“We’re trying to figure out how to get more housing built in that area where it’s more like a walkable retail village, you know, where people are basically living there,” Mullet said.
One example is the Trailhead project in central Issaquah led by the King County Housing Authority. The project offers 155 below-market-rate apartment rentals for lower income residents, and an additional 209 market-rate units. The project is still under review, city officials say.
While homes continued to attract buyers despite the stagnant housing market in recent years, office space has struggled.
Several companies, including Microsoft, have moved out of office buildings along the I-90 corridor in and near the city within the past five years. But Costco, which has had its headquarters in Issaquah since 1994, demonstrated its commitment to stay by expanding its corporate headquarters on Lake Drive in 2023.
Mullet said the struggles of the office market haven’t affected demand for homes in the city, noting “when homes get built in Issaquah, they’re selling.”
Growth brings change, however.
Ancient logging machinery is on display outside the historic Issaquah Depot, now a history museum. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
Gary Kretzschmar, a retired manager for a tech company, bought a home a decade ago near Route 900 in Talus, a development on Cougar Mountain within city limits. He loved that he could hear the croaking of frogs and hoots of owls, and nothing else, outside his bedroom window. But with growth around the city, traffic has increased on his road, and the denser parts of the city remind him of the Bellevue Eastgate suburb he left.
“Now pretty regularly almost every day, you hear sirens, whether it be police or fire,” he said. “In the morning, you can hear loud vehicles or motorcycles speeding down 900.”
But, he said, the hills and forest still make Issaquah a charming place to live.
Albert Wang, a social worker, has really come to like the city. He bought a below-rate condo in the Highlands through an affordable housing program three years ago, moving from a rented apartment in Seattle. Wang, who is in his 30s and unmarried, says most of the people in his building have kids.
“I definitely feel like I’m kind of bucking the trend of being out here,” he said. But he said Issaquah has a vibrant arts scene and restaurants that he enjoys. And when he wants a night out in the big city, he sometimes takes the Sound Transit bus that stops near his building.
“My job is still in Seattle, so I still commute into Seattle occasionally, and I certainly go into the city for a nice dinner or a show or something like that,” Wang said. “It’s far enough from the city that I feel like I’m not in Seattle, but it’s also accessible enough.”
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