Open five tabs and search for the Kenmore housing market this week and you will get five different answers to what looks like a simple question. One site says the typical home sold for $850,000. Another says $853,500. A third puts the number at $1,024,151. A fourth says $1,145,000. A fifth claims $1,288,000. All five are describing the same small city on the north shore of Lake Washington, in roughly the same stretch of 2026.
That is not a data error, and it is not five companies disagreeing about the same fact. It is what happens when a housing market small enough to count its monthly sales on two hands gets measured by five different rulers.
The Numbers, Side by Side
Here is what the major trackers reported for Kenmore in 2026, along with what each one is actually counting.
| Source | What it measures | Reported figure | Time window |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redfin | Median sold price | $850,000 | March 2026 |
| Beyond Real Estate (NWMLS data) | Median sold price | $853,500 | April 2026 |
| Movoto | Median list price | $844,000 | August 2026 |
| Zillow | Average estimated value (ZHVI) across all homes, listed or not | $1,024,151 | June 2026 |
| Pajor Scott Realty | Median sold price, single-family homes only | $1,145,000 | May 2026 |
| Orchard | Median sold price | $1,288,000 | 30-day window, summer 2026 |
For comparison, King County as a whole, a market that closes over two thousand sales a month, reported a median of $879,500 in July 2026 through the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. That county-wide number barely moved from the year before. Kenmore's number, depending on which day and which site you checked, could have moved by more than $400,000.
Two Separate Reasons the Numbers Split
The first reason is definitional, and it is the easier one to spot once you know to look for it. Redfin and Beyond Real Estate are both reporting the median price of homes that actually closed. Movoto is reporting what sellers are asking, not what buyers are paying. Zillow's figure is not a sale price at all. It is an estimated value across every home in the city, occupied or not, listed or not, which is a different question entirely from what buyers are handing over at closing. Pajor Scott's number strips out condos and townhomes and looks only at detached single-family houses, which pulls the figure up before a single home has changed hands differently than it would elsewhere.
The second reason is harder to see and more useful to understand. Kenmore is a small city. Orchard counted 22 homes sold in its most recent 30-day window, down from 28 the year before. Beyond Real Estate counted 91 active listings citywide. Compare that to King County's 2,022 closed sales in July 2026 alone. When a market that size closes a Lake Washington-facing home on a large lot in the same month as three smaller inland sales, the median swings hard in one direction. When the reverse happens the next month, it swings back. Neither swing tells you anything about the market getting hotter or colder. It tells you which pocket of Kenmore happened to trade that month.
This is the part a single headline number can never show you: Kenmore is not one market wearing one price tag. It is several small markets that happen to share a city limit.
Six Pockets Under One ZIP Code
Drive from one side of Kenmore to the other and the pricing logic changes every few blocks.
Along the water, Moorlands sits on the Sammamish River with rolling-hill lots that run from a third of an acre up past two acres, some with private boat docks, most within reach of Moorlands Elementary. Homes there averaged $1,264,233 over the trailing twelve months, up 13% from the year before. A few miles closer to the lake proper, Uplake and Arrowhead Point carry mid-century and newer homes perched above Lake Washington, and near-water inventory in that stretch turns over slowly because owners tend to stay put once they get in.
Inland and closer to the highway, the story flips. Inglewood sits near the Sammamish River and the Inglewood Golf Club, with a mix of classic and updated homes at lower entry points. Westhill trades hillside views and quick Burke-Gilman Trail access for a more modest price band. Around the Town Center, the newest inventory is townhomes and condos built for walkability to The Hangar and the shops and cafés that have grown up around Kenmore's rebuilt downtown, and that inventory sells at a different price per square foot than anything with a yard.
Layer the Northshore School District boundary on top of this, plus proximity to Saint Edward State Park's 300-plus forested acres, Log Boom Park where the waterfront meets the Burke-Gilman Trail, and Squire's Landing Park's paddleboard launch on the Sammamish River, and you get a city where two homes a mile apart can post sale prices that look like they belong to different towns. Because in the way that matters to a buyer's budget, they do.
The Wild Card Nobody's Pricing In Yet
There is one piece of Kenmore that could reshape several of these pockets at once, and it has been stuck in slow motion for over three decades.
Lakepointe is a 50-acre former industrial site and landfill sitting exactly where the Sammamish River meets Lake Washington, at the heart of downtown Kenmore. The city has been trying to redevelop it since 1989. A $1.5 billion mixed-use proposal collapsed in 2018 when its developer backed out. In April 2025, Kenmore agreed to accept roughly $7.5 million from King County to acquire a 13.29-acre slice of the site for a public waterfront park with trails and restored shoreline habitat, a deal the city has been funding in part through a dedicated Lakepointe Fund it opened in its 2025-2026 budget. As of the most recent update posted by the city, Kenmore's city manager and mayor were still in early negotiations with the site's newest ownership group, with no purchase agreement finalized.
Nothing about Lakepointe is settled, and that is exactly the point for anyone comparing pockets of Kenmore today. A finished waterfront park and village at the confluence of the two waterways would sit closest to the Town Center and Inglewood pricing bands, the two areas currently trading at the lower end of the city's range. Nobody's median price yet reflects a park that does not exist. If it gets built, the pockets nearest it are the ones most likely to reprice.
What This Means If You're Comparing Kenmore to Somewhere Else
If you are cross-shopping Kenmore against Bothell, Kirkland, or Lake Forest Park using a single median from each city, you are comparing numbers that were never built to be compared. The more useful question is not "what does Kenmore cost" but "what does the pocket of Kenmore I actually want cost, and against what comparable pocket somewhere else."
A buyer set on lake access should be pricing Moorlands and Uplake against Kirkland's waterfront streets, not against Kenmore's citywide median. A buyer prioritizing walkability and a shorter commute should be pricing the Town Center's newer townhomes against Bothell's downtown inventory, where a similar dynamic plays out. Treat the citywide number as a starting orientation, not a budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Zillow's estimate stay nearly flat while Redfin showed a double-digit drop? They are not measuring the same thing. Zillow's figure is an estimated value across the entire housing stock, including homes that never sold in that period. Redfin's figure only reflects homes that actually closed, so a heavier mix of lower-priced closings in a given month will drag its median down even while broader estimated values hold steady.
Should I ignore the median altogether when researching Kenmore? Use it as a rough gauge of scale, not a price you should expect to pay. Given how few homes trade here each month, the median is far more sensitive to which specific homes closed than in a larger market like King County overall.
Does the Lakepointe project affect home values right now? Not directly, since no agreement or construction timeline has been finalized as of the most recent city update. It is a factor worth watching if you are buying in the Town Center or Inglewood pockets closest to the site, since redevelopment there would be the kind of change that reprices a specific pocket rather than the whole city.
If you are trying to figure out which pocket of Kenmore actually fits your budget and your priorities, or how a Kenmore comparison stacks up against Bothell, Kirkland, or the rest of the Eastside, the team at Sound Real Estate Services can walk through the pocket-by-pocket numbers with you. Schedule a consultation and we'll bring the comparisons that actually apply to your search, not just the headline that shows up first.
