Devon Hill was a downtown Seattle renter when he first took tentative steps to buy a home. Initially, he was discouraged.
With a budget of around $350,000, single-family homes and town homes were well out of his price range. There was only one type of home that he could afford: a traditional, apartment-style condo.
But the tiny units available near downtown didn’t meet his needs. It took him two years to find a place that checked enough boxes to make an offer. Ultimately, he settled for more square footage outside the city, landing a two-bedroom condo in Tukwila last year.
“There was just a lot of trade-offs, and it is a high-cost area,” said Hill, 37. “But, overall, I got really lucky with what I have.”
Hill, a single professional with modest savings and a tight budget, fits the profile of a certain type of condo buyer. But he stands out in that he took the leap into homeownership when many would-be buyers in the Seattle area were sitting on the sidelines.
Despite their relative affordability compared to other home types, apartment-style condos have not been in great demand, according to Seattle-based real estate agents. High interest rates, spikes in association fees and sticky high asking prices have made condos less appealing to buyers.
There are reasons to believe that interest in traditional condos will rebound, however.
One major advantage of a traditional condo over other property types, like single-family homes, townhomes or a detached dwelling unit built on a single-family lot, is price.
You can still find listings on Zillow or Redfin, for example, for entry-level, one-bedroom apartment-style condos at around $300,000-$350,000 in the Seattle area, whereas town homes start at about $400,000-$450,000. The median cost for a single-family home now exceeds $1 million in Seattle, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.
“Not everyone can afford a $900,000 house,” said Jeff Sackett, a real estate agent at Seattle-based Re/Max Metro Realty.
“Even the newer town houses and whatnot, those are more in the house-price range, so you can get a decent condo for about half.”
Breaking the slump
The relative affordability of traditional condos is one reason “empty nester” Lora Hammersmith has been watching the market. Living in the city is another.
Hammersmith, 56, is about 10 years from retirement from her job as a King County Metro employee. She plans to sell her four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot home in Beacon Hill and downsize to a condo. Admittedly, she’s cautious.
She doesn’t want to sell while the economy is shaky, but since her two sons moved out, the house is “way too big for me now,” she said.
“Over the years I’ve always browsed around the condo market in Seattle because, at heart, I am an urbanist, and if I’m going to live in a city, I want to live in the city and to grow old being car-free and using public transit,” Hammersmith said.
Similarly, Dale Knudsen and his husband, Ashton Campbell, recently bought a condo in Seattle’s West Edge neighborhood. The place was affordable and in their desired location: on the waterfront and a short walk to Pike Place Market.
Knudsen, 36, previously a longtime renter in Capitol Hill, said he’s dreamed of living near the Market since he was a boy, but never thought he could afford it.
“I actually thought I would live on Capitol Hill forever; it was pretty much my home,” Knudsen said.
Knudsen works for a tech consulting company and Campbell owns the wedding-planning business that he runs out of the second bedroom in the home.
Like most buyers of traditional condos right now, they had no competition. The 1,100-square-foot condo was within their budget of $650,000, and they got a $30,000 discount off the asking price.
Knudsen said there are hassles in buying into an older building. They pay $1,200 per month in homeowner association fees. The historical, turn-of-the-20th century brick building also needs work, he said, which will likely leave the individual owners with a hefty bill.
But, he said, it is worth it.
“Every morning, we wake up and watch the ferries come in, and it’s like a dream,” he said.
“It was crickets.” And now?
Real estate agents who specialize in condos expect an eventual breakout in pent-up demand for condos. It hasn’t happened yet.
One reason is rising association fees, which often cover most utilities, property maintenance, insurance and fund reserves for future repairs. These costs have been driven up by increases in insurance and general inflation. The median association fees at condos in the Seattle metro area were $565 per month for the April-June period, according to Redfin. That’s up nearly 46% from $388 for the same months in 2019 before COVID hit.
According to NWMLS, 203 condos sold in Seattle in June, up slightly from 191 sales in June 2024. Seattle condo sales fell to a low of 123 closings in September and hit a high of 216 sales in March. For all King County, there were 405 condo sales in June, up from 388 a year earlier.
These numbers exclude town houses, but sales of some new ADU/DDUs might be reflected in these numbers, an NWMLS spokeswoman said.
The median price of Seattle condos declined 1.8% year over year to $540,000 in June, according to NWMLS. The price was up 1.3% over the previous year to $512,000 in King County.
Olga Dyckman, a Windermere broker and CEO of The Seattle Condo Group who specializes in luxury condos downtown and Seattle’s core neighborhoods, said the typical luxury condo buyer is paying more than $1 per square foot in association fees. These fees, combined with higher mortgage rates, make condos less attractive than many rental units, especially rentals in newer buildings with amenities.
Higher fees are also likely pushing at least some would-be apartment-style condo buyers into the market for single-family homes and nontraditional condo types, like ADUs and town homes, which typically have lower homeowner association fees.
Dyckman said July has been a better month for apartment-style condo sales downtown, and she received three full-priced offers. The uptick is likely related to recent gains in the stock market.
“Prior to that, I would say it was crickets,” she said.
Economic trends are also affecting condo sales, said Jeff Reynolds, a Compass broker. Mortgage rates, now hovering just below 7% for a 30-year fixed mortgage, may need to come down nearly a full percentage point to spur more interest.
“People are kind of just generally thinking about if it’s the right time to be buying or not,” Reynolds said.
“They know that rates are going down, but it could be another six to 12 months until it gets to that particular interest rate,” Reynolds said. “I would say sub-6 is where they feel like they’re ready to make a move.”
Condo buyers have been taking more time, he said.
Hill was a cautious buyer. A defense analyst with a Los Angeles think tank, he’s nervous about the status of his job, which is tied to the federal budget.
But he also knew he didn’t want to remain a renter forever.
After moving to Seattle from Pittsburgh in 2021, he waited a year before looking at condos but couldn’t find anything in the city core that met his needs and was affordable.
In 2023, Hill began looking outside Seattle. His Tukwila condo, which he bought last year, is 1,200 square feet and has an extra room for his home office. Aside from rush hour, he said he can get downtown within 20 minutes and meet up with friends.
“I’m very happy with it, and it hasn’t had any effect on my social life, and my finances are basically the same,” Hill said. “I just have much more space, and I can call this mine.”’
Buyer beware
Condos carry extra risk for buyers. The building, which includes shared areas and the structure, could have hidden and expensive problems with the roof, electrical systems and plumbing.
Buyers should consider hiring an agent who has done numerous condo sales.
“Condos are complicated; you want somebody that knows the buildings,” Windermere’s Dyckman said.
Re/Max agent Sackett said he advises buyers to pay close attention to a building’s condition and the association’s financial standing. For example, if the building needs a new roof but has significant cash reserves, a buyer has less to worry about. Key information about an association’s financials and the building can be found in the condo’s resale certificate.
“If the financials are in bad shape and the building needs work, that is a red flag,” Sackett said.
In 2014, Deborah Bauder and her husband missed some red flags and paid for it. They bought a three-bedroom condo in a 19-unit complex in Edmonds. Initially, it seemed an affordable choice, enabling them to move with their then 16-year-old daughter into a neighborhood that would otherwise have been out of their price range.
The savings proved to be an illusion. The association fees increased each year. They paid thousands to have the building painted and were facing another major bill to repair the elevator when they decided to sell the unit just four years after buying it. Ultimately, it was a lack of control and friction with a group of owners that tried to get the association to drop earthquake coverage that made them want to sell.
After that bad experience and selling their condo in 2018, they bought a two-bedroom rambler, a fixer-upper, north of Edmonds.
“I put $70,000 into that little house but now I have control over things, like who I get to do repairs, who I hire for plumbers,” she said.
For Ada Ebling, a software engineer, and her wife, AnnMarie Chin, the risk of owning a unit in a shared building is worth it. Seattle’s high prices meant either buying a condo or becoming renters when they moved from Salt Lake City last winter.
The pair, in their late 20s, managed quickly to close on a condo within their budget of $300,000 to $400,000. Seattle’s prices did force them to go smaller than they had planned. They bought a one-bedroom condo in Haller Lake about nine miles north of downtown, downsizing from a three-bedroom condo in Utah that they have since sold.
The association fees for their one-bedroom unit are roughly $400 a month, about $100 more than they once paid for the much larger place in Salt Lake.
“Not only is the cost of housing here higher, but the cost of living here is higher,” Ebling said. “That’s one thing we wanted to account for when we were looking for houses.”
But she said their unit is an excellent fit. She works from home and has enough space for her home office. The condo is also near the express E Line bus route and the light rail Northgate Station, which was appealing because Chin doesn’t drive.
They were looking for a place with a secure garage. Ebling owns an electric car and can charge the car overnight.
“It’s a pretty quiet neighborhood and it’s easy enough to get to places when we have to,” Ebling said. “And I don’t know … I feel like we lucked out on the place we got.”
