Overlake is where Redmond agents point first-time buyers and relocating Microsoft employees who want to own something, anything, within walking distance of campus. It's the garden condo layer. The place you start before trading up the hill toward Education Hill or North Redmond. That's the reputation.
Here's what the data actually shows. Over the three months ending April 2026, Overlake's median sale price across all home types hit $1,611,345, up 15.1 percent year over year. A few months earlier, in December 2025, the same neighborhood had posted an even higher figure, $1.8 million, up 23.4 percent from the year before. That's not an entry point. That's the top of Redmond's market wearing an entry point's reputation, and understanding why tells you more about how to read Redmond neighborhood data than any single stat could on its own.
"Overlake" Is Two Cities' Prices in One Number
Redmond's citywide median sale price sat at $1,342,562 over the three months ending August 2026, up 3.3 percent year over year. That's the number most buyers see first when they start comparing towns. But Overlake's reported median runs $270,000 to $450,000 above that citywide figure, and the gap isn't a story about condo prices spiking. It's a story about where the line is drawn.
Overlake, the place, straddles the Redmond-Bellevue border. Pull up listings tagged under the Overlake neighborhood and you'll find properties described as being in Bellevue sitting right alongside Redmond addresses, all folded into the same reported median. A home a few blocks from the Overlake Transit Center might carry a Bellevue mailing address and a price point that reflects Bellevue's single-family market, not the compact flats and older garden condos that define the Redmond side of the neighborhood.
That blending problem gets amplified by something else: Overlake simply doesn't sell many homes in a given month. Twelve closed in December 2025, down from thirteen the year before. When your entire sample size for a month is a dozen transactions, one or two higher-priced Bellevue-side sales can swing the reported median by hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the Redmond-side condo layer that buyers actually associate with "entry-level Overlake" barely registers in the count.
The practical result is that a buyer using Overlake's reported neighborhood median to size up a $650,000 condo near the transit center is comparing it to a number that has little to do with what they're touring. The median describes whatever mix of properties happened to close that quarter, and in a market this thin, that mix can look nothing like the inventory on the ground.
The Cheapest Homes in the City Are Also Sitting the Longest
Downtown Redmond tells the opposite story. Over the three months ending June 2026, the neighborhood's median sale price was $584,000, up a modest 2.2 percent year over year. That's genuinely the accessible layer of Redmond's market, the attached condos and row homes clustered around the pedestrian core.
What's changed is how long it takes to sell one. Homes in Downtown Redmond averaged 60 days on market as of that same window, compared to just 5 days a year earlier. Only six homes sold there in June 2026, down from thirteen the year before.
That shift lines up with a piece of infrastructure history worth noting. The Downtown Redmond Link Extension opened its station in May 2025, giving the neighborhood direct light rail access for the first time. If proximity to a new transit stop reliably compressed selling time the way it's often assumed to, Downtown Redmond's days on market should have moved in the other direction over the following year. Instead it went from 5 days to 60. The station opening and the market cooling happened in the same stretch of calendar, and whatever is driving the slowdown, it isn't a lack of transit access.
The Neighborhood Without a Station Is Moving the Fastest of the Three
Education Hill sits inland, uphill from downtown, with no light rail stop of its own. Over the three months ending August 2026, its median sale price was $1.2 million, down 0.88 percent year over year, essentially flat. Homes there averaged 23 days on market, up from 7 days the year before, but still far faster than Downtown Redmond's 60 days and roughly in line with Overlake's 20 days as of December 2025.
Put the three neighborhoods side by side and the pattern breaks the story most buyers arrive with, that transit adjacency is what makes a Redmond listing move fast or price high.
| Submarket | Median sale price | Window | YoY change | Days on market (recent vs. year prior) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redmond citywide | $1,342,562 | 3 months ending Aug 2026 | +3.3% | not tracked at city level in this comparison |
| Overlake | $1,611,345 | 3 months ending Apr 2026 | +15.1% | 20 days vs. 6 days (Dec 2025) |
| Downtown Redmond | $584,000 | 3 months ending Jun 2026 | +2.2% | 60 days vs. 5 days |
| Education Hill | $1,200,000 | 3 months ending Aug 2026 | -0.88% | 23 days vs. 7 days |
Overlake has a station and the highest reported median. Downtown Redmond has a station and the slowest velocity. Education Hill has no station and moves faster than either. The 2 Line's Crosslake Connection opened March 28, 2026, cutting the ride from Downtown Redmond to downtown Seattle to roughly 40 minutes and finally linking the Eastside to the rest of the regional rail network. It changed the commute math for every Redmond neighborhood at once. It didn't equalize how any of them price or sell.
Reading a Redmond Listing Without Getting Misled by the Neighborhood Number
If you're comparing neighborhoods in Redmond right now, the citywide median tells you almost nothing about what a specific listing should cost, and the neighborhood-level median can mislead you in a different way depending on which neighborhood it is.
In Overlake, treat the reported median as a poor comparable for anything under $900,000. Ask directly whether a listing sits on the Redmond or Bellevue side of the boundary, and compare condo-to-condo rather than against the blended all-home-types figure. New supply is also coming to that submarket. Bellwether Housing, working with Sound Transit and the City of Redmond, is building Prisma, a six-story mixed-use development next to Overlake Village Station, with homes expected in early 2028. That project adds units to the Redmond-side rental and condo layer without touching the higher-priced single-family stock that's currently pulling the neighborhood's median upward, which is worth factoring in if you're timing a purchase in that specific pocket over the next two years.
In Downtown Redmond, a 60-day market time isn't necessarily a signal about a specific unit. It's a citywide shift in how patient condo buyers have become, and a well-priced listing there can still move quickly against that backdrop. Ask for the specific building's absorption history rather than leaning on the neighborhood average.
In Education Hill, the absence of a station hasn't slowed demand for established single-family homes, so don't discount a listing there for lacking transit proximity if the comparable sales don't support that discount.
Does living near a 2 Line station guarantee a faster sale in Redmond? No. Downtown Redmond has direct light rail access and posted the slowest days-on-market figure of the three neighborhoods compared here, at 60 days as of the three months ending June 2026, while Education Hill, which has no station, moved in 23 days over the same general window.
Why does Overlake look more expensive than neighborhoods with newer single-family construction, if it's supposed to be Redmond's entry point? Because Overlake's reported median blends properties on both the Redmond and Bellevue sides of the neighborhood, and its low monthly sales volume, around 12 to 13 closings a month, means a small number of higher-priced sales can swing the whole figure. The condo layer that gives Overlake its entry-point reputation is real, but it isn't what the median is measuring in a given month.
If you're weighing an Overlake condo against an Education Hill rambler or trying to figure out what a Downtown Redmond listing's 60 days on market actually means for your offer, the neighborhood-level number only gets you so far. The Ginn Group tracks these submarkets block by block across the Eastside. Schedule a consultation and we'll walk through the comparables that actually apply to the property you're looking at.
