The median US luxury home sale price climbed 3.6% year over year to $1.39 million in the three months ending 30 April, more than double the 1.4% gain recorded in the non-luxury segment, according to a new report from Redfin. But while the national luxury market shows strength, Seattle’s high-end housing data tells a more complicated story.
Nationally, pending sales of luxury homes jumped 4.3% year over year, the largest gain since January 2025, driven by an improving job market and a decline in mortgage rates last month. New listings of luxury homes also climbed 2% compared to 0.6% for non-luxury properties, suggesting that rising prices are encouraging more high-end homeowners to put their properties on the market.
Redfin Premier real estate agent Stacey Bryant, based in Boston, noted that luxury buyers are typically insulated from the mortgage rate sensitivity that shapes decisions in lower price tiers. “When I have a buyer looking at a home above $1 million, interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty don’t matter as much,” Bryant said. “They want to buy a home and have the means to do it, so a 6.3% mortgage rate versus a 6.1% mortgage rate doesn’t really make a difference.”
San Francisco led all metros with a 48.4% year-over-year surge in luxury pending sales in April, the largest increase since June 2021, fuelled by the AI industry’s impact on worker compensation in the Bay Area. Tampa and West Palm Beach also posted strong gains.
Seattle’s numbers move in the opposite direction. The city recorded a 14.4% year-over-year decline in luxury pending sales, among the steepest drops of any metro analysed. Closed luxury home sales fell 20.8%, the second largest decline nationally behind Cincinnati. The city did see a 16.1% increase in luxury active listings, the second highest nationally, which may reflect a growing inventory of high-end homes that are taking longer to find buyers.
The divergence between Seattle’s luxury market and the national trend comes as the city navigates a broader set of economic pressures, including corporate layoffs across the technology sector, a record office vacancy rate downtown, and uncertainty around the regional economic outlook heading into the second half of 2026.
Nationally, luxury prices rose most sharply in Tampa at 17.1%, Las Vegas at 16.1%, and Kansas City at 15.2%. Prices declined in only four metros: Detroit, Cincinnati, New York, and Denver. Redfin defines luxury homes as those estimated to be in the top 5% of their metro area’s price range.
