A waterfront mansion at 1655 73rd Avenue NE in Medina has officially sold for $22.8 million, closing on August 12 as the city's largest real estate transaction of 2026. The sellers, Edward Scripps Jr. and Christy Scripps, are part of the family behind the E.W. Scripps Company, one of the nation's oldest and most widespread local television broadcasters. The nearly 7,000-square-foot home includes 144 feet of shoreline on the eastern edge of Lake Washington and a private dock, and it was built in 2020.
The sale closed well below the property's original ask. According to KIRO 7 News Seattle, the home sat on the market for more than a year before finding a buyer. As reported by MyNorthwest.com, the $22.8 million closing price marks an $11 million reduction — a 32.5% discount — from the home's original $33.8 million listing in April 2025.
The final number also landed below what King County had the home valued at for tax purposes. The same MyNorthwest.com report notes the county's assessed tax value on the property was approximately $24.2 million, meaning the sale closed roughly $1.4 million under the official appraisal — an unusual outcome for a Medina waterfront estate. The listing had been marketed by brokers Shawna Ader and Michael Doyle of Windermere Luxury Advisors and was featured in Mansion Global ahead of closing.
A Family Fortune Rooted in 19th-Century Newspapers
Edward Scripps Jr. is the great-grandson of Edward Willis Scripps, who founded the Penny Press in Cleveland in 1878. That paper became the foundation for the E.W. Scripps Company's broadcasting empire, which today operates roughly 60 local television stations, per the same account from MyNorthwest.com. In 2017, Scripps Networks Interactive sold the family's cable television holdings — including Food Network and HGTV — to Discovery for $14.6 billion.
The Scripps family currently ranks as the 49th-richest family in America, with an estimated net worth of $11.5 billion, according to the Forbes richest families list cited by KIRO 7 News Seattle. That legacy wealth stands in contrast to more recent turbulence at the family's media company: in August, the E.W. Scripps Company eliminated 268 positions across its broadcast television network as part of a shift toward automated newsrooms and 24-hour streaming channels, as Hoodline previously reported.
Why Medina Real Estate Rarely Comes Cheap
Medina, incorporated in 1955, is a secluded lakeside municipality long known for housing prominent tech figures, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to Washington Waterfront Real Estate. The city spans roughly 1.4 square miles with about 1,100 total single-family parcels, and strict residential zoning that prevents multi-family development caps the housing supply, per RexMont Real Estate. That scarcity helps explain why Medina's 98039 ZIP code was ranked the most expensive in Washington state in 2025, with a median list price around $4.4 million, as Hoodline found in its analysis of the enclave outpacing Mercer Island and Bellevue.
Selling at the $22.8 million price also triggers a substantial tax bill. Under Washington state and King County's graduated Real Estate Excise Tax rates, a residential sale at that level incurs seller transaction tax liability of more than $767,000 at closing, according to guidance published by EveryDoor Real Estate — Washington taxes residential sales above $3.025 million at 3%, plus King County's additional 0.50% local levy.
The Scripps sale adds to a string of high-dollar Medina transactions this year. Hoodline reported in June on the MOD Pizza founders' $11.6M sale of their own Medina mansion, and in February on a buffer property adjacent to Bill Gates's lakeside estate that sold within six days of hitting the market. Even so, RexMont Real Estate notes that ultra-luxury inventory in Medina often moves through off-market deals, making price discounts and longer market times standard for the properties that do show up on public listings.
