Buying a Seattle Condo: Why a Healthy HOA Is the Whole Deal

Seattle condos are the cheapest they have been in six years. The median condo closed at $515,825 in October, down 11% from a year earlier and below every October reading since 2020. Supply sits at 7.2 months, which has been above the four-month buyer's-market line since April. Only 3% of condo sales closed above asking.

Here is the part most buyers miss. Because condo prices fell far enough to swallow the rate increase whole, the monthly payment on a median Seattle condo is now essentially what it was a year ago, while the payment on a median Seattle house went up $287. Condos are the one corner of this market where waiting actually paid.

So why is nobody buying them? Because the discount is not evenly earned. Some of these buildings are cheap for excellent reasons, and the gap between a well-run association and a troubled one is worth more than the gap between any two units. The good news is that Washington makes the association hand you the evidence. Almost nobody reads it properly.

How Far Condo Prices Have Actually Fallen

The decline has been steady rather than sudden. Seattle's monthly condo median ran $557,000 in January, peaked at $603,000 in March, and has fallen in most months since: $525,000 in July, $535,000 in August, $530,000 in September, $515,825 in October. That is about 14% off the March figure.

Volume fell harder than price. Just 138 condos closed in Seattle in October against 192 a year earlier, down 28%, with pendings down the same. Across the first ten months of the year, closings are down 14%. Buyers did not negotiate condo prices down so much as they stopped showing up, and sellers followed them.

The payment comparison is the part that makes this interesting rather than merely sad. These are the year-over-year changes in monthly principal and interest on the median home of each type, October against October.

Mortgage rates averaged 7.33% in October against 6.25% a year ago. That increase pushed house payments up across the region. Condo prices fell by enough to cancel it out entirely, and on the Eastside and countywide they more than cancelled it. For the full picture by area, see my October market update.

Why the Discount Exists

I am not going to pretend this is free money. Condo buyers pulled back for reasons, and the reasons are worth naming before I argue the other side.

Dues have risen fast, led by insurance. Associations across the region have absorbed large premium increases and passed them through. Special assessments for building envelope, roof and deck work are common in a city with this much mid-rise wood-frame stock from the 1990s and 2000s. Litigation over construction defects is a real feature of some buildings. And financing is harder: a condo in a building that fails lender warrantability rules limits your buyer pool when you sell, which is a resale problem you inherit at purchase.

Every one of those is a building-level fact, not a market-level one. That is the whole argument. In a market where the average condo is priced as though it carries all of those risks, a building that carries none of them is mispriced in your favor.

The Document That Tells You Which Building You Are In

Washington requires the association to produce a resale certificate, and the seller to give it to you before you sign or otherwise before closing. It is signed by an officer or authorized agent of the association and based on the association's own books and records. The association has 10 days to produce it once the owner asks, and may charge no more than $275, plus up to $100 to update one within six months of a previous request.

Which statute applies depends on when the community was created, and the difference matters more than you would expect.

Communities created on or after July 1, 2018 fall under the Washington Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, and their certificates follow RCW 64.90.640, which lists 26 categories of required disclosure. Most of Seattle's condo stock is older than that, and those buildings still use RCW 64.34.425, which requires 20.

The older list leaves out things you would want. It does not require the association to disclose restrictions on leasing or renting your unit, and it does not require 12 months of board and association meeting minutes. The newer list requires both. The minutes are often the single most revealing document in the package, because that is where a board argues about a roof two years before it assesses anyone for one.

Two things to know about the timeline. The annual reserve study requirement in RCW 64.90.545 does reach back and apply to communities created before July 1, 2018, so even an older building should have a current study. And the older chapters are repealed effective January 1, 2028, when everything converges on the newer act.

The Six Things I Read First

A full package runs to hundreds of pages. These are the items I go to before anything else, and five of the six are required disclosures, so if they are missing that is itself the finding.

The second row is the one almost nobody knows to ask for, and it is the most useful number in the entire package. Washington reserve studies must state the current deficit or surplus in reserve funding expressed on a dollars per unit basis. That converts an abstraction into your share of the shortfall, in dollars, before you own it. A building that is 45% funded with a $900 per unit gap is in a different world from one that is 45% funded with a $26,000 per unit gap, and the percentage alone will not tell you which you are looking at.

On the reserve study itself, check two things about the document rather than its contents. Studies come in three levels: a full analysis, an update with a visual site inspection, and an update with no site inspection. An association that has filed desk updates for years without anyone walking the property is reporting on a building nobody has looked at. The study must also disclose whether a reserve study professional prepared it and whether that professional was independent.

One more line to find in the certificate: any expenditure or anticipated repair reasonably expected to exceed 5% of the association's annual budget. Associations must disclose it whether or not owners get to vote on it. That is the early warning for an assessment that has not been levied yet.

If there is no current reserve study at all, the statute makes the association say so in specific language warning that insufficient reserves may require you to pay your share as a special assessment on demand. Treat that paragraph as the headline it is.

Your Cancellation Window, and How Easily It Disappears

This is the part I most often see handled badly, and the two statutes work differently.

Under the newer act, if you receive the resale certificate more than five business days before you sign the purchase contract, you have no cancellation right under that section at all. If you receive it five business days or less before signing, you may cancel by delivering notice to the seller no later than the fifth business day after you first received it, as long as you do so before conveyance. And if it arrives less than five business days before your closing date, you may push closing out to no more than five business days after you got it.

Read that first sentence again, because it is counterintuitive. Getting the certificate early is good for your decision and costs you the statutory right to cancel on account of it. That is not a reason to demand it late. It is a reason to actually read it when it arrives, and to make sure your purchase agreement carries its own contingency rather than relying on the statute to rescue you.

Older buildings are more forgiving. Under the prior act the contract stays voidable until the certificate has been provided and for five days after that, or until conveyance, whichever comes first. Note that those are five days, not five business days.

Both acts also protect you on the numbers. You are not liable for unpaid assessments beyond what the certificate disclosed, and under the newer act you are additionally not liable for governing-document violations created by alterations the association should reasonably have known about but failed to identify.

What a Healthy Association Actually Looks Like

Put the positives together and the profile is fairly consistent. Reserves funded at a level the study calls adequate, with contributions at or near the recommended full funding rate. A reserve study updated within the year by an independent professional who has physically inspected the building. Dues that have risen gradually and for stated reasons, rather than held artificially flat for a decade. Very few delinquent owners. No litigation, or litigation that the board explains in the minutes without drama. And minutes that read like maintenance planning rather than crisis management.

A building like that often carries higher monthly dues than the troubled one down the street, and that is the point. Dues that fund the reserve are the cheapest way to pay for a roof. The alternative is a special assessment you cannot finance and cannot postpone.

Where the Value Is Right Now

Two groups should be paying attention.

First-time buyers, because this is where the entry-level math works. The payment on a median Seattle condo has not moved in a year while house payments climbed, and condos remain the only widely available product under $600,000 in most of the city. My first-time buyer guide covers the Washington down payment programs that pair with this.

Buyers who plan to stay seven years or more. The risk in a condo purchase is concentrated in resale and in assessment timing, and both of those compress with a longer hold. If you are likely to move in three years, the softness that makes today's price attractive is the same softness you will be selling into.

If you are still deciding between formats rather than buildings, my condo, townhouse and house comparison sets out what each costs to own month to month.

What This Means for You

• 01If you're buying a condo: ask for the resale certificate early and read the reserve study first, starting with percent funded and the deficit per unit. Then read 12 months of minutes. Those two documents will tell you more than every showing you attend.
• 02If you're worried about assessments: that worry is correct and it is also priced in. The question is not whether condos carry assessment risk but whether this building does, and the certificate answers it in writing.
• 03If you're a first-time buyer: this is the friendliest entry point the Seattle market has offered in several years, on payment terms that houses cannot currently match.
• 04If you're selling a condo: order the certificate before you list rather than after you have an offer. A clean package shortens your market time, and in a 7.2 month market that is worth real money.
• 05If you own in a building with thin reserves: the discount buyers are applying to your unit is larger than the assessment would have been. Underfunding does not avoid the cost, it just moves it to your sale price.

The Bottom Line

Condos are the softest segment in this region and the only one where a year of falling prices fully offset a year of rising rates. That combination does not come along often, and it exists because buyers are applying a blanket discount to a risk that is specific to individual buildings.

Washington hands you the tools to sort them. The resale certificate, the reserve study and a year of board minutes will tell you whether the building in front of you deserves the discount it is being given. In a market this quiet you have the time to read all three, which buyers competing in 2021 did not. That is the actual opportunity here, and it has a deadline attached only in the sense that quiet markets do not stay quiet forever.

Thinking about a condo and want a second read on the paperwork? Send me the resale certificate and I will tell you what I see in it. If you're selling, I'll help you get the package in order before the first showing rather than after the first offer.