Seattle has the largest Case-Shiller decline of the 20 cities

Two reports landed this week.

Redfin’s weekly tracker came out August 27, covering the four weeks ending August 23. Two days earlier, S&P Dow Jones Indices released the June 2026 S&P Cotality Case-Shiller numbers. They are different thermometers, and they still point the same way. More people are listing, fewer people are signing, and Seattle sale prices on Redfin’s weekly board are off from last year. The Case-Shiller index, the one national headlines still use, has Seattle as the largest annual decline of the 20 cities. That is a market that will punish last summer’s list price, not a crash.

Redfin’s Seattle print is among the 50 most populous U.S. metros they rank, not a King County number, not a Snohomish number, and not the official July Northwest MLS snapshot. On that weekly list, Seattle pending sales were down 18.1% from a year earlier. Redfin puts Seattle first under “metros with biggest year-over-year decreases” for pending sales, with Houston next at 15.3%. Median sale price is the same story: Seattle first on the biggest-decreases list, down 4.6%. New listings in Seattle were up 8.9%, sitting on their biggest-increases list next to St. Louis at the same printed number. In those four weeks the shelf got longer and the contract pile got shorter.

Nationally, on Redfin’s wider 900-plus-metro set, seasonally adjusted new listings were 376,235, the highest since April, and seasonally adjusted pending sales were 307,830, the lowest since February. Those are national figures. Do not hang them on a Mill Creek bungalow.

Rates did not give anyone a gift this week. On the same Redfin page, Mortgage News Daily’s daily average 30-year is 6.75% as of August 26, MND’s daily survey on Redfin’s leading-indicators table, not a promise about next month.

Case-Shiller is the slower clock. It is built from matched price pairs of typical single-family homes, not Redfin’s weekly sale-price cut and not an MLS median. The month is June, not the four weeks ending August 23. In the prose, Seattle is down 2.0% year over year. In their table it is −1.95%. Both are on the page. They call Seattle the weakest, the largest annual decline, the lowest return, then Las Vegas at −1.9% and Denver at −1.2%. The U.S. national index was up 1.5%. Chicago was up 6.9%. New York was up 4.8%.

If someone forwards you a chart that says Seattle prices crashed, ask which chart. Seattle’s Case-Shiller June is a 2% annual decline on matched pairs. Redfin’s weekly Seattle median sale price is down 4.6% in a late-August window. Official July Northwest MLS medians, a different cut entirely, were King $879,500 and Snohomish $719,000, with 24,888 active listings across the service area, up 19.8% from a year earlier. Three sources, three clocks, same direction: more to look at, a little less heat in the price.

Redfin’s head of economics research, Chen Zhao, said on that weekly page: “Sellers should resist the urge to price based on what a neighbor got a year or two ago: Pricing a home correctly from the start can be the difference between attracting a serious buyer and lingering on the market.” I agree. A buyer who is actually writing, with a mid-6% payment and a job they still trust, has more to tour than last August. Do not shop it like 2021. Do not ghost a good house because Seattle’s Case-Shiller print was down 2% in June.

If you are listing in King or Snohomish this week, the first serious offer is worth more than it was when everyone had a pile. That does not mean take a bad one. It means do not wait for the old pile-on. If you are buying, the extra listings are real. The people sitting out for a Labor Day rate cut are why those listings are stacking. I cannot promise you the rate.

Price this week’s house against this week’s competition. Then look at the next one.

Information and statistics compiled and reported by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Sources

  1. Dana Anderson, Redfin News, weekly tracker, Aug. 27, 2026 (four weeks ending Aug. 23). https://www.redfin.com/news/housing-market-update-new-listings-rise-buyers-market/
  2. Same release, PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/redfin-reports-new-listings-hit-4-month-high-while-demand-slips-giving-serious-buyers-chance-to-get-a-deal-done-302861470.html
  3. S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P Cotality Case-Shiller, June 2026 results, released Aug. 25, 2026. https://press.spglobal.com/2026-08-25-S-P-Cotality-Case-Shiller-Index-Reports-Annual-Gain-in-June-2026
  4. Northwest MLS public Market Snapshot, July 2026 (slice contrast only). https://www.nwmls.com/market-snapshot-july-2026/