Renton Home Sizes by Neighborhood: The County Record

Renton home sizes by neighborhood vary far more than most buyers expect from a few miles of map. A typical North Renton house is about half the size of a typical Talbot Hill house, and the Highlands holds both some of the smallest and some of the largest homes in the city. Listing portals show the size of one home at a time. The King County Assessor records the living area, bedrooms, bathrooms and stories of every home it values, so we read the whole record.

At The Rache Team we have guided Renton buyers and sellers for more than 26 years. For this guide we pulled the Assessor’s residential building file in October 2026 and measured 12,266 single-family homes in the six neighborhoods we cover. It completes a set: our guides to Renton lot sizes by neighborhood and Renton home ages by neighborhood covered the land and the year. This one covers the house.

How We Measured Renton Home Sizes by Neighborhood

The Assessor’s residential building file lists the main house on each parcel with its floor areas, bedroom count, bathroom counts and number of stories. We kept parcels with one single-family home and sorted them into neighborhoods with the Assessor’s own area codes, narrowed by street where an area crosses into a neighborhood we do not cover. Condos, townhome-style condos and apartments are not in these figures.

Three things to keep in mind as you read:

• Living area includes finished basement. In the county file, the total living area equals the above-ground floors plus finished basement space. That holds for 12,233 of the 12,266 homes we measured. A house with 1,300 square feet upstairs and 900 finished below is recorded as a 2,200 square foot home. Listings often count the same way, so where it matters we give both numbers.
• The county’s count can differ from a listing. Bedroom and bathroom counts are what the Assessor has on file. A room added without a permit, or a bedroom converted to an office, may not match.
• A correction to our earlier figures. The county leaves the zip code blank on many newer plats. Our lot-size and home-age guides filtered by zip code and missed 753 Highlands homes, almost all built since 2000, and 275 on Talbot Hill. This guide loads homes by parcel instead, so it counts 5,094 Highlands homes, not 4,341. With the newer homes included, the Highlands median year built is 1997, not 1980, and its median lot is 6,132 square feet, not 6,312. It is still the second-smallest lot of the six. We reported the Talbot Hill correction in our Talbot Hill vs Tiffany Park comparison.

Renton Home Sizes by Neighborhood: Largest to Smallest

Here are Renton home sizes by neighborhood in order of median living area. The middle half of homes in each area falls between the two figures in parentheses.

Talbot Hill: Median 2,230 Square Feet

Talbot Hill has the largest homes of the six and the most uniform ones. Of 1,545 single-family homes, the middle half runs from 1,790 to 2,760 square feet. Only 5% are under 1,200 square feet. Half the homes have four bedrooms or more, 89% have at least two full or three-quarter bathrooms, and 86% have an attached or basement garage, the highest share of the six neighborhoods.

The newer plats set the top of the range. Sunnybrook’s 116 homes, built from 2004 to 2009, have a median of 2,990 square feet, and The Reserve at Stonehaven’s 36 homes a median of 3,010. The older layer is smaller. S 15th St, where the median home dates from 1937, has a median of 1,620, and Shattuck Ave S, a 1960s street, 1,786. The Talbot Hill guide walks through each section.

Earlington and the West Hill: Median 2,050

The city’s West Hill streets have 725 single-family homes with a middle half from 1,520 to 2,570 square feet. The figure that sets them apart is below ground: 57% of homes have a finished basement, and the median above-ground area is 1,420 square feet. In one of its two county sub-areas the share is 65%. Basements are a large part of how West Hill homes reach their size.

Size swings by plat. Earlington Acre Tracts, with 66 homes from a median year of 1949, has a median of 1,515 square feet. Conners Lake View Park, a 1960s plat of 50 homes, has 2,565, and Earlington Ridge, built around 2006, 2,530. The Earlington neighborhood guide has more on the streets.

Renton Hill: Median 1,990, the Widest Range

Renton Hill is small, with 235 single-family homes, and its sizes are spread wider than anywhere else we measured. The middle half runs from 1,405 to 2,780 square feet. At the top, 9% of homes are 3,500 square feet or more. At the bottom, 16% are under 1,200.

Age explains most of it. The 98 homes built before 1940 have a median of 1,465 square feet. The 34 built from 1990 through 2009 have a median of 3,275, many of them on view lots. Half the homes on the hill have a finished basement, and fewer than half have an attached garage, which says a lot about how the older streets were built. Our Renton Hill neighborhood guide covers daily life up the hill.

Renton Highlands: Two Neighborhoods, Median 1,950

The Highlands median of 1,950 square feet describes almost nobody, because the neighborhood splits cleanly in two.

• Western and central Highlands: 3,018 homes, median 1,570 square feet, median year built 1959. 30% are under 1,200 square feet, 65% are one story, and 35% have a single bathroom.
• Eastern Highlands: 2,076 homes, median 2,420 square feet, median year built 2005. 45% are 2,500 square feet or more, 68% have four bedrooms or more, 83% are two stories and 95% have an attached garage.

The smallest homes in the Highlands are the wartime and early postwar plats. The 459 homes in Renton Highlands Addition, most dated 1942, have a median of 1,090 square feet. The three President Park plats, 294 homes from the early 1950s, have medians from 890 to 1,040. Dayton Ave NE and Camas Ave NE are near 1,070. At the other end, Wedgewood Lane’s 103 homes have a median of 3,030 square feet, and Claremont at Renton Phase II, built around 2015, 3,000. Highlands homes built since 2010 have a median of 2,760 square feet, two and a half times the 1940s median of 1,100. The Renton Highlands guide covers both halves.

Skyway-West Hill: Median 1,800, Much of It Downstairs

Skyway-West Hill’s 4,307 single-family homes have a middle half from 1,289 to 2,360 square feet. Two numbers matter more than the median. First, 73% of the homes are one story. Second, 53% have a finished basement, so the median above-ground floor area is just 1,330 square feet. A Skyway home listed at 2,000 square feet is often a one-story house with a finished lower level, not a two-story house.

The wartime streets hold the smallest homes in the file. Seelye Addition, 160 homes with a median year of 1943, has a median of 970 square feet, and so does S 126th St. Skyway homes from 1950 through 1969 have a median of 1,990 square feet, against 1,300 for the 1940s. The newest plats are larger still: Skyway Village, where the median home was built in 2024, has a median of 3,000 square feet across 56 homes. Barely half of Skyway homes, 53%, have an attached or basement garage. Our Skyway-West Hill neighborhood guide covers the area in full.

North Renton: Median 1,235

North Renton has the smallest homes of the six. Of 360 single-family homes, 46% are under 1,200 square feet and only seven are 2,500 or more. Two-bedroom homes are the most common type, at 40%, and two-thirds of the homes have a single bathroom. Just 11% have an attached garage. The other distinctive figure is the 1.5-story house: 37% of North Renton homes have a finished half story under the roof, by far the highest share we found.

These are the 1920s and 1930s homes of the Renton Farm Plats and the Car Works Addition, with medians between 1,090 and 1,250 square feet. Garden Ave N, on the eastern edge, runs larger at 1,630. Our North Renton neighborhood guide covers the grid.

What Renton Home Sizes by Neighborhood Mean for Buyers

Renton home sizes by neighborhood are a starting point for a search, not a ranking. A bigger home is not a better one for every household. What these figures do is tell you where the floor plan you need is common and where it is rare.

Where Four Bedrooms Are Common

If you need four bedrooms or more, the eastern Highlands is where that is the normal house, at 68% of homes. Talbot Hill follows at 51%. In North Renton, only 19% of homes have four bedrooms or more. Across all six neighborhoods, 44% of homes have four bedrooms or more. If you are weighing a home office as well, our guide to Renton homes for remote workers looks at layouts.

Where Single-Level Living Is Common

For buyers who want to stay on one floor, Skyway-West Hill and the western Highlands have the most one-story homes, at 73% and 65%. Many Skyway one-story homes have a finished basement, so check whether the main bedroom, kitchen and laundry are all on the entry level. Our guide for downsizing in Renton covers what else to look for.

Renton Home Sizes by Neighborhood Move the Median Price

This is where Renton home sizes by neighborhood matter to sellers as much as buyers. When the homes that sell in a quarter are larger than usual, a neighborhood’s median price rises even if no home gained value, and the reverse is true too. We saw it in Earlington: the 12-month median sale price fell from $757,500 to $653,025, but the median size of the homes that sold fell from 2,410 to 1,760 square feet, and the price per square foot in each size band barely moved. In a neighborhood split like the Highlands, a few more sales on one side or the other can swing the median by more than a year of real price change. Our guide to why Renton neighborhood price data is often wrong explains how to read past it.

Renton Home Sizes by Neighborhood Count the Basement

Because the county counts finished basement as living area, two homes listed at the same size can live very differently. In Skyway, Earlington and Renton Hill, more than half the homes have a finished basement. In the eastern Highlands, only 12% do. When you compare homes, ask for the above-ground and below-ground areas separately, and look at ceiling height and windows in the lower level.

How to Check a Home’s Size Before You Tour

1. Look up the parcel. The King County Assessor’s parcel lookup shows total living area, finished basement, bedrooms, bathrooms and stories.
2. Compare it with the listing. If the square footage or bedroom count differs, ask which is right and whether any space was added or converted, and with what permit.
3. Split the area. Subtract the finished basement from the total to see how much of the house is above ground.
4. Check the street. Compare the home with others in the same plat. A house much larger or smaller than its neighbors is harder to price.
5. Walk the floor plan. The record cannot tell you how the space is laid out. Only a tour can.