Central Seattle includes, among many others, the communities of Broadmoor, Capitol Hill, Denny Blaine, Madrona, and Washington Park. The Washington Park Arboretum is one of the world renown institutions in this area. Garfield High School, the state’s 12th ranked public high school is located here.29 There are over a dozen SEVP schools in this area, including the Northwest School just blocks from downtown, Seattle Preparatory School overlooking Portage Bay, Holy Names Academy in Stevens, and The Bush School on the north side of Harrison Ridge.30 Three of the nation’s leading hospitals are proximate—Virginia Mason, Harborview, and Swedish Medical Center—and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is at South Lake Union. Though not in this area, the Amazon campus is very close by.
Central Seattle has been a seller’s market since early 2013. In recent years, this market has established a pattern of loosening in January and late summer, then tightening through the fall and spring, respectively. Months in inventory have been gradually trending downward, averaging 1.2 in 2015, 1.6 in 2014, and 1.9 in 2013.
In 2015, the median price of a home in Central Seattle exceeded that of King County by 26.4 percent. This is one of the areas discussed in which high end sales of homes are concentrated. Price volatility this year meant that although prices in this area were already considerably higher than the county median, the indexed monthly change for Central Seattle might have ended this two-year run with a proportional price gain similar to that of the county (8.77 percent), had it not been for a $121,000 pop up in December. In 2015, sellers benefited from competition among buyers, as this is one of the areas seeing substantially higher-than-list prices paid.
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