Earlington Home Prices: A Renton West Hill Snapshot

Earlington home prices are harder to read than any other pocket in Renton, and the reason is not that the hill is unusual. It is that the published figure almost nobody checks the date on is currently five months old. The number you will find quoted for this neighborhood is a $650,000 median, and it describes a window that closed in March 2026.

Seven homes have actually closed here since then. They ran from $318,500 to $720,000, and their median was $613,000. That is a $37,000 gap between the number on the internet and the number the county recorded, and it moves in the direction that costs a seller money.

The Rache Team has spent more than 26 years guiding families toward wealth and homeownership across Renton and the west hill. This is our working read on Earlington home prices right now: what the reported data says, exactly where it breaks, what the recorded closings prove instead, and how to use both without getting fooled by either.

Earlington Home Prices Right Now: What the Reported Data Says

Start with the headline, because it is what a buyer or a neighbor will quote at you. According to Redfin’s Earlington Hill market data, the median sale price here is $650,000, up 0.8 percent from the same period a year earlier. Five homes sold in the reported month, down from eight. The median price per square foot reads $354, and it is marked up 101.1 percent year over year.

That last figure should stop you. A neighborhood’s price per square foot does not double in a year. Nothing in Renton doubled in a year. What happened is that five sales is far too small a sample to produce a stable statistic, and when the mix of what sold changes, the per-foot figure swings wildly and the percentage attached to it becomes meaningless.

The competitiveness panel tells a calmer story. Earlington scores 72 out of 100, which the source labels very competitive, with the note that the average home sells about 1 percent below list and goes pending in around 18 days. Hold on to that 18-day figure, because the same page’s headline says the median days on market is 5. Those two numbers come from the same source, describe the same neighborhood, and disagree by a factor of more than three.

This is the pattern we keep finding. The reported view of Earlington home prices is not fabricated, but it is thin, it is old, and in several places it contradicts itself. It is a starting point, not an answer.

Why the Reported Earlington Home Prices Are Five Months Stale

Here is the part that matters most and that no listing site puts in front of you. The Earlington figures above cover the three months ending March 2026. We pulled them on August 27, 2026. The window they describe closed five months ago.

Now look at what the same source publishes for the city. Renton citywide reports a $669,636 median for the three months ending June 2026. Same site, same day, same methodology, three months of difference in what is actually being measured.

That means the most common comparison a homeowner makes, checking their neighborhood against their city, is not a comparison at all. It is spring on the hill against early summer in the valley. Any conclusion drawn from putting $650,000 next to $669,636 is built on two different quarters of a market that moved in between.

This is the sixth consecutive Renton neighborhood where we have documented the same problem. We found it in North Renton, where a reported median came from three sales in a window that had already ended five months earlier while the actual closings ran two hundred thousand dollars higher. We found it on Renton Hill, where the source contradicted itself on the same page. We found it in South Renton and twice on the west hill above us.

The reason it keeps happening is structural, not accidental. Small neighborhoods close few enough homes that a three-month rolling window sometimes cannot be filled with recent data, so the window quietly slides backward until it can be. Nothing on the page announces this. You have to read the date, and almost nobody does.

So the first rule for reading Earlington home prices is simple. Find the window. If it does not end within the last month or two, treat the median as history rather than as a price.

What Seven Recent Closings Say About Earlington Home Prices

Recorded sale prices do not get revised next month. So instead of leaning on the rolling median, we pulled every reported closing in the Earlington Hill area since the reported window ended. There are seven, all from June and July 2026:

• 217 NW 6th St, a 2,030 square foot four-bedroom, closed July 6 at $720,000 against a $695,000 list, about 4 percent over, after 25 days
• 423 Lind Ave SW, a 1,780 square foot two-bedroom, closed June 18 at $650,500 against a $630,000 list, about 3 percent over, after 28 days
• 98 Hardie Ave SW, a 1,660 square foot four-bedroom, closed July 13 at $628,050 against a $599,000 list, about 5 percent over, after 27 days
• 1100 SW 3rd Pl, a 1,520 square foot three-bedroom, closed June 23 at $613,000 against a $625,000 list, about 2 percent under, after 40 days
• 264 Taylor Ave NW, a 760 square foot two-bedroom, closed June 29 at $440,000, exactly at list, after 53 days
• 308 Taylor Ave NW, a 1,760 square foot three-bedroom, closed June 18 at $440,000 against a $400,000 list, about 10 percent over, after 22 days
• 833 SW Sunset Blvd Unit J-51, a 1,123 square foot attached three-bedroom, closed July 24 at $318,500 against a $325,000 list, about 2 percent under, after 90 days

Three things fall out of that list, and each one corrects something the reported data told you.

The median is lower than advertised. These seven closings have a median of $613,000, not $650,000. The spread runs from $318,500 to $720,000, which is a factor of more than two between the cheapest and the priciest home in a single small neighborhood over six weeks.

Market time is far longer than advertised. The reported median days on market is 5. The real median across these seven is 28, and the range runs from 22 days to 90. Not one of the seven sold in five days. If you are planning a move around a five-day sale, you are planning around a number that has not described this neighborhood in months.

Sellers are doing better than the ratio suggests. The reported sale-to-list ratio is 92.3 percent and the reported share selling above list is 20 percent. But five of these seven closed at or above their asking price, and two of them beat it by 5 and 10 percent. Only two came in under, and one of those was the attached unit that sat for 90 days. The pessimistic reported ratio is being dragged down by an old, thin sample.

Put together, the reported view understates how long a sale takes here and understates how often sellers get their number. Those errors point in opposite directions, which is exactly why using only the summary figure produces bad decisions in both directions.

The Per-Square-Foot Trap on the West Hill

The most common shortcut in real estate is to take the neighborhood price per square foot, multiply by your square footage, and call that your value. In Earlington that shortcut fails, and it fails in a specific and predictable way.

Here is what the seven closings actually paid per square foot, smallest home to largest:

• 760 square feet at $579 per square foot
• 1,123 square feet, attached, at $284 per square foot
• 1,520 square feet at $403 per square foot
• 1,660 square feet at $378 per square foot
• 1,760 square feet at $250 per square foot
• 1,780 square feet at $365 per square foot
• 2,030 square feet at $355 per square foot

Set aside the attached unit and the 1,760 square foot outlier, and the remaining five detached homes form a clean descending ladder: $579, then $403, then $378, then $365, then $355 as the homes get bigger. Smaller houses here command dramatically more per foot than larger ones. This is a size inversion, and it is the same shape we found in the Renton Highlands and on Skyway West Hill, and the opposite of what we found on Talbot Hill, where size and per-foot rate had no relationship at all.

Now apply the reported $354 flat rate and watch where it breaks. On the 2,030 square foot house it produces $718,620 against an actual sale of $720,000, which is within about fourteen hundred dollars. The shortcut works almost perfectly at the top of the size range. On the 760 square foot house it produces $269,040 against an actual sale of $440,000. It is short by roughly $171,000.

That asymmetry is the practical lesson. In this neighborhood the flat per-foot rate is roughly right for a large house and badly wrong for a small one, and the error grows the smaller you go. An owner of a compact Earlington cottage who prices off the published rate is not shaving a few thousand dollars off their number. They are potentially giving away a third of their equity.

The 1,760 square foot home that sold at $250 per foot is worth naming rather than hiding. It closed 10 percent over its asking price in 22 days, which tells you it was priced well below what the market would bear, most likely reflecting condition. It is a real sale and it belongs in the record, but it is not a comparable for a maintained house of the same size.

How Earlington Home Prices Compare to Renton Citywide

With the window mismatch flagged, the comparison is still worth making as long as you treat it as approximate rather than precise.

Renton citywide reports a $669,636 median, down 7.6 percent year over year, at $417 per square foot with no year-over-year change. There were 221 sales, median days on market of 15, and a Compete Score of 81. Earlington reports $650,000, up 0.8 percent, at $354 per square foot, on 5 sales, with a Compete Score of 72.

Two differences hold up even allowing for the different windows. First, Earlington trades below the city on price per square foot by a meaningful margin, roughly $354 against $417, and the recorded closings support that direction rather than contradicting it. This remains a relative value pocket inside Renton, which has been true of the west hill for a long time.

Second, and more usefully, Earlington is the least competitive of the Renton neighborhoods we track. A Compete Score of 72 sits below Renton’s 81, below Kennydale’s 80, and well below the 87 we recorded on Skyway West Hill. For a buyer, that is the whole argument for looking here. Less competition means more room to negotiate terms, more room to keep an inspection contingency, and a better chance that a considered offer wins rather than an aggressive one.

The 90-day sale of the attached unit points the same way. Attached homes here are not moving quickly, and a buyer willing to consider one has real leverage in a market where detached houses are still going at or over list in under a month.

Earlington Is Not Skyway West Hill, and the Prices Show It

Buyers mix these two up constantly, and the confusion has a price attached to it. Earlington is a neighborhood inside Renton city limits, with Renton services, Renton addresses, and the Renton School District. Skyway West Hill, to the south, is unincorporated King County. They sit on the same ridge and they are not the same market.

The numbers have now separated decisively. Skyway West Hill reports a $692,123 median, up 15.4 percent year over year, with a Compete Score of 87. Earlington reports $650,000, up 0.8 percent, with a Compete Score of 72. Skyway is running hotter, pricier, and faster than the hill immediately north of it, and as we documented in our Skyway West Hill seller guide, that area has now passed Renton citywide outright.

Earlington has not. It is still trading below the city on a per-foot basis and still carrying the least competitive pressure of anywhere we cover. If you have been told the west hill is expensive now, that is true of Skyway and it is not yet true of Earlington. For the full picture of the neighborhood itself, our Earlington neighborhood guide covers the housing stock, the parks, and daily life on the hill.

One more practical note. Earlington sits west of the Renton Municipal Airport with a Walk Score of 58, a Transit Score of 50, and a Bike Score of 36. Flood risk is minor, with under 1 percent of properties facing severe flooding over the next 30 years, though that risk is rising faster than the national average. Fire risk is minimal.

How to Use Earlington Home Prices When You Buy or Sell

Here is how we translate all of the above into a working number.

If you are selling. Throw out the flat per-foot rate entirely unless your house is near 2,000 square feet. Price off the three or four recorded closings closest to your size, not off the neighborhood median, and expect roughly four weeks on market rather than five days. Five of the last seven sales here closed at or above list, so a well-prepared house priced against real comparables has a genuine shot at beating its asking price.

If you are buying. The Compete Score of 72 is your opening. This is the softest competitive environment in our coverage area, and it is the one Renton neighborhood where a contingent offer still has a reasonable path. Look hard at the compact houses, understanding you will pay a premium per foot for them, and look harder still at attached homes, where 90 days on market means the leverage is yours.

For either side. Check the date on every figure you are handed. If it does not end within the last month or two, it is a historical note, not a price. That single habit is worth more in this neighborhood than any other piece of analysis we can offer.

Frequently Asked Questions About Earlington Home Prices

Find a Home in Earlington With The Rache Team

Earlington rewards people who read past the headline. The published median is stale, the per-foot rate works at one end of the size range and not the other, and the reported market time is off by a factor of five. Underneath all of that sits a west hill neighborhood inside Renton city limits, priced below the city, with the least buyer competition of anywhere we cover.

We track Earlington home prices closing by closing, and we bring the same approach to every Renton neighborhood, from the Highlands to Talbot Hill to North Renton. Guiding families toward wealth and homeownership is what The Rache Team has done here for more than 26 years, and it starts with telling you what the data actually says.

Reach us at (425) 652-6473, email racheb@johnlscott.com, or get in touch through our contact page.