Seattle Home Sellers See Some of the Highest ROI in the Nation

As the housing boom continued to roar across the country and home prices soared in 2019, median home sales profits and returns-on-investment (ROI) achieved record highs, according to an annual year-end report from ATTOM Data Solutions.

Western states and metropolitan areas, especially those on the coast, continue to reap the highest returns on home sales. (In the report, returns are expressed both as a dollar amount and as a percentage and are factored by analyzing the difference between the median sales price of homes and the median sales price of the previous sale of those same homes.) Seattle is comfortably situated in the top five of 220 metro areas surveyed nationwide with an average of 65.6% return on investment. Seattle sellers’ ROI is nearly double the new nationwide average.

The other metros with the highest home seller ROIs are: San Jose, CA (82.8%), San Francisco, CA (72.8%), Merced, CA (63.2%) and Salem, OR (62.1%).

Nationally, raw profits and ROI have improved for eight straight years. In 2019, the average home price gain and percent return on investment also reached a 13-year high. The average seller saw a home price gain of $65,500 on a typical sale, which represents a 34% return in investment compared to the original purchase price.

This rise in ROI may remain a trend locally as home prices continue to rise and the Puget Sound region is squeezed for inventory and the Seattle area remains a sellers’ market.

Read more from ATTOM on 2019 market trends here.