Woodinville ranked most popular housing market in the country

Woodinville is the most popular housing market in the United States for the first quarter of 2022, according to a report published by real-estate marketplace website Zillow.

Woodinville home values have grown substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic.  In April 2020, the average value of a house in Woodinville was $895,000, according to the Zillow Home Value Index. Today, that number has jumped to $1.41 million–63% higher than just two years ago.

Troy Anderson, a managing broker for Tend Home Team, said he has felt the growth in Woodinville.

“For the past year and a half-two years, it's been fast and furious. The appreciation gross is just incredible,” Anderson said. For the first quarter of 2022, he said, about seven or eight houses would come up for sale in Woodinville each week. And they would all sell by that weekend.

Anderson said that most of the houses he sells in Woodinville are to young tech workers. “There's a lot of things that the city planners have done years ago that have brought development in,” Anderson said. “There's a lot of really nice developments going on right now in Woodinville that makes it attractive and walkable.”

The Zillow report ranks the website’s top 10 most popular housing markets in the country. Edmonds received the number five spot. The article notes that each of the top ten markets is a suburban area about 30 minutes by car from a city center.

“Remote work is a key reason suburban home values are now growing faster than those in urban areas as home buyers are prioritizing space and affordability over a short commute,” the article states.

Anderson said he doesn’t expect prices to continue to rise at the current rate. “We can't continue with the appreciation rates that we have over the past few years,” he said. “It's just not sustainable.”

“I don't see the indicators that we're going to have a market crash,” he continued. “More of a slow roll into a more steady market. Because you still have an inventory shortage of homes for people to buy.”

The shortage of homes as well as rising prices have driven many would-be homeowners out of the market. A recent Seattle Times article noted that monthly mortgage payments in Washington are among the highest in the country.

Since the 2008 financial crash, an increasing number of homes have been sold to investors who rent out the houses for profit, rather than to individuals. According to an analysis by Redfin, a record 18% of homes were bought by investors in the third quarter of 2021.

Racism and structural inequalities exacerbate housing costs for people of color in the U.S., the Seattle Times piece pointed out, who pay higher mortgage rates, property taxes and insurance premiums than White people.

A report released in March by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that homeowners were disproportionately White—about 82% self-identified as White/Caucasian. Meanwhile, Hispanic/Latino and Black/African-American homeowners were proportionately lower than in the American population as a whole.

So, the popularity of the Woodinville housing market is good news for the local economy and for the people who already live here. But it’s bad news for people who want to get in, excluding those who are already very wealthy.