Seattle area has biggest growth in home prices in U.S.

SEATTLE – The Seattle area has the hottest housing market in the country – the first time in nine years that Seattle has led the United States in home-price growth.

The Seattle Times reported the typical single-family home across King, Snohomish and Pierce counties cost 11 percent more in September than a year prior, according to the monthly Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday. That marked the biggest increase among the 20 major metro areas covered.

Seattle narrowly topped Portland, where home values gained 10.9 percent. For the prior eight months, Seattle had seen its home-price growth sit second in the country behind Portland.

Overall, Seattle prices are rising twice as fast as the rest of the country, as they have for most of this year.

The Seattle area had already broken its old record earlier this year after seeing prices rise for more than four straight years. The region has seen home values jump nearly 60 percent since early 2012.

Seattle-area home values are the fifth-priciest among the 50 biggest metro areas in the country, behind San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, according to a Zillow analysis. In the past year, Greater Seattle surpassed the Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., metro areas on the list of most expensive regions to buy a house.

The Zillow data shows that home values across the Seattle metro area – King, Pierce and Snohomish counties – topped $400,000 for the first time a few months ago, up from $300,000 just three years prior.

The latest figures from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service showed the median single-family house in October cost $550,000 in King County, $387,000 in Snohomish County and $280,000 in Pierce County.