If shopping for a house around Seattle feels like playing the real-estate lottery, Medina is where the jackpot lives. The waterfront ZIP code 98039 topped Washington’s priciest ZIPs in 2025, with a median listing price around $4.4 million. Mercer Island’s 98040 and Bellevue’s 98004 followed at roughly $2.5 million and $1.2 million, respectively, putting King County’s wealthiest enclaves well ahead of the rest of the state. For buyers across the Seattle metro, the gap between those luxury listings and typical incomes just keeps widening.
What the data shows
In a statewide ranking of median list prices, Medina’s 98039 comes in at about $4.425 million for 2025, with Mercer Island’s 98040 and Bellevue’s 98004 right behind it, according to RealtyHop. Axios Seattle notes that all three of those high-flying ZIP codes sit inside King County, concentrating serious housing wealth in a relatively small slice of the region.
Affordability gap
All of this plays out on top of a metro that has grown markedly less affordable for ordinary buyers. A Redfin analysis estimates that a household needed roughly $227,000 a year in 2024 to keep monthly housing payments at or below 30% of income for a typical Seattle-area home. That calculation, based on median sale prices and standard mortgage assumptions, underscores how far luxury markets have drifted from everyday affordability, according to Redfin. For many would-be homeowners, those numbers help explain why the search has shifted from “which neighborhood” to “is buying even realistic.”
How Washington stacks up nationally
Even with those eye-watering figures, Washington’s priciest ZIPs still trail the country’s ultra-luxury heavyweights. In a handful of coastal enclaves, median prices top $5 million, according to PropertyShark. That national list features places like Fisher Island and Atherton at the top, highlighting a tier of coastal wealth that even Washington’s most exclusive neighborhoods have yet to reach.
Why Medina looks the way it does
Medina’s market did not just happen by accident. The town’s small footprint, extensive waterfront parcels and concentration of very wealthy residents all help push its median values into the stratosphere. Reporting that catalogs the area’s tucked-away mansions and private docks shows just how much high-end property is packed into the ZIP code. Business Insider and other profiles point out that long-time tech wealth has shaped Medina’s housing market for decades, turning it into one of the most rarefied corners of the state.
Bottom line for King County buyers
For buyers and policymakers, the big takeaway is that a small cluster of ultra-expensive ZIP codes can pull up statewide metrics while most households remain priced out. Analysts tie that pattern to limited housing supply and concentrated demand, according to Redfin. That dynamic keeps housing affordability near the top of local agendas as officials debate how to boost supply, open up more neighborhoods and give more residents a shot at staying in the region they work and live in.
