Seattle’s median home price hits record: $700,000

SEATTLE — King, Snohomish and Pierce counties all set records for home prices last month, ushering in the spring season with one of the biggest monthly price hikes in years for the nation’s hottest housing market.

King County’s median single-family home hit a new high of nearly $600,000 in March — about double the prices seen at the bottom of the housing bust five years ago, according to monthly figures released Thursday.

Prices jumped more than 7 percent from just a month before, the second-biggest increase in the last three years.

In Seattle, the median price for a house hit $700,000 for the first time. Prices in the city have also doubled in the last five years, and have climbed $60,000 in the last year.

Even the escape to Tacoma isn’t offering the same savings it used to. Pierce County, which had been slower to recover from the recession, has for the first time broken its home-price record set 10 years ago, before the housing bubble popped, according to data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

With the busiest homebuying stretch of the year about to kick off and the supply of available homes at historic lows, real-estate agents say there won’t be any relief for buyers any time soon.