Madison Park's Median Price Moved $890,000 in Three Months. Here's What It's Actually Measuring.

In February 2026, the median home sale in Madison Park was $1.6 million, down 11.4 percent from the year before. By May, the same data provider was reporting a median of roughly $2.49 million, up 40.1 percent year over year. Same neighborhood. Same source. Three months apart.

If you're comparing Madison Park to Bellevue or Kirkland right now because you're weighing a move across Lake Washington, that swing should stop you before you get much further. A number that can move nearly $900,000 in a single quarter isn't telling you what homes in Madison Park cost. It's telling you which eight or nine houses happened to close that month. The median isn't broken. It's just being asked to do a job it can't do in a market this thin, and that has real consequences for anyone using it to decide between a Seattle lake neighborhood and an Eastside address.

Why the Same Neighborhood Produces Four Different Numbers

Pull four sources on Madison Park pricing right now and you'll get four different stories, and they're not really disagreeing with each other. They're measuring different things.

The listed-price figure sits at less than a third of the single-family sold figure because it's blending studio and one-bedroom condo listings along Lake Washington's shoreline with detached houses on quarter-acre lots. The two "sold" medians from the same source disagree with each other by 40 percent because Madison Park typically sees somewhere around five home and condo closings in a given month. A median needs enough transactions behind it to let outliers cancel each other out. Madison Park almost never has that many.

There's a structural reason the volume stays this thin. Madison Park is fully built out. New single-family construction happens at a pace of roughly two to three homes a year, built on the rare vacant lot or after an older house comes down. There's no meaningful way for supply to expand to meet demand here the way it can in a newer Eastside development. That scarcity is part of what makes the neighborhood desirable, and it's also exactly why its pricing data behaves so erratically. A market that can't add inventory can't smooth out its own statistics either.

What Actually Tells You Something

None of this means Madison Park's pricing is unknowable. It means the neighborhood-wide median is the wrong tool for the comparison you're trying to make. A few things that hold up better:

Price per square foot on a matched comparable set. One broker's rolling count of single-family sales over the past six months put the typical home at about 3,290 square feet selling near $934 per square foot. That figure survives the thin-volume problem better than a raw median because it controls for the fact that a 1,800-square-foot cottage and a 5,800-square-foot new build shouldn't be averaged together in the first place.

Property type, separated cleanly. Condo comps and single-family comps need to stay in separate columns. Combining them is exactly what produces headline numbers like the $969,000 listed median, which understates what a detached house on the water actually costs and overstates what a studio near the shops costs.

The actual comp set behind whatever number you're shown. If someone tells you Madison Park's median is $2.49 million, the follow-up question is how many sales that's built on. If the answer is single digits, treat the number as a data point, not a conclusion.

None of this is unique to Madison Park. Any hyper-local, low-inventory pocket on the Eastside, from a specific street in Medina to a small condo building in downtown Kirkland, will show the same volatility once you look at monthly sale counts instead of the year-over-year headline. Madison Park is just an unusually clean example because the swings have been this large this year.

The Toll You're Not Pricing In

Here's the part of the comparison that almost never makes it into a median-price conversation at all. Madison Park sits just south of the SR-520 floating bridge, the most direct link between this stretch of Seattle and Bellevue, Redmond, and the rest of the Eastside job corridor. That convenience is one of the neighborhood's selling points. It's also tolled, in both directions, on a variable schedule that's been in place since August 2024: $4.90 during the morning and evening peak, $3.95 through the midday, and $1.35 to $2.95 on weekends. Drivers without a Good To Go account pay an additional $2 per trip billed by mail.

Run the math on a five-day peak commuter making the crossing both ways: $4.90 each direction comes to $9.80 a day, or roughly $2,450 a year across about 250 workdays. That's a real, recurring carrying cost tied to the location, and it exists whether you're comparing Madison Park to a home in Bellevue that doesn't require the crossing at all, or comparing it to a Kirkland listing where the commute runs the other direction across the same bridge.

There is no carpool discount on SR-520. Motorcycles ride free, and King County Metro and Sound Transit run more than 700 weekday bus trips across the bridge, which is worth knowing if your schedule has any flexibility to shift off the toll's peak windows or off the road entirely. But for most drivers commuting on a fixed schedule, the toll is a fixed cost, and it belongs in the same conversation as square footage and price per square foot, not left out of it.

Before You Compare Two Homes Across the Lake

A few habits make this kind of comparison actually useful instead of misleading:

1. Ask how many sales sit behind any median you're shown, especially in a neighborhood where monthly closings are in the single digits.
2. Keep condo and single-family comps in separate buckets rather than letting a blended median average them together.
3. Price the commute alongside the mortgage. If your work is on the Eastside and your home search includes Madison Park, a Good To Go account and an honest look at your actual crossing pattern belongs in the budget conversation.
4. Weigh the transit alternative if your schedule allows it. Hundreds of weekday bus trips already cross SR-520, and that changes the math for anyone not tied to a car for the commute.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Madison Park more expensive than Bellevue? It depends entirely on which homes you're comparing and when you're looking. Given how few sales close in Madison Park each month, a single luxury sale or a single condo sale can shift the neighborhood median dramatically in either direction. A property-type-matched, per-square-foot comparison will tell you more than a headline median from either neighborhood.

Does the SR-520 toll ever have an HOV or carpool discount? No. Unlike some Puget Sound toll facilities, SR-520 charges the same per-vehicle rate regardless of occupancy. Motorcycles are the only vehicle type that crosses free.

How many single-family homes get built in Madison Park in a typical year? Around two to three, built on remaining vacant lots or after an older home is torn down. The neighborhood is essentially fully developed, which keeps both new construction and overall sales volume low year after year.

Is there a way to avoid the SR-520 toll on a regular commute? The I-90 bridge crosses the lake toll-free but typically adds meaningful drive time. King County Metro and Sound Transit run more than 700 weekday bus trips across SR-520, which is the most direct way to make the crossing without paying the toll at all.

If you're weighing a move between Seattle and the Eastside and want a comparison built on actual comparable sales rather than a headline median, Craig Northwest Homes can walk you through what a specific property is really worth on both sides of the lake. Get a free home consultation and start with numbers you can trust.