Every week we track the signals that actually matter for custom home buyers in the Pacific Northwest — wealth trends, construction costs, market conditions, and what’s happening on the ground in Snohomish County, Whidbey Island, and Camano Island. Here’s what we’re watching right now.

A Massive Wealth Event Just Hit the Redmond/Seattle Area

SpaceX went public on June 12 in the largest IPO in stock market history — raising $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation, opening at $150/share on Nasdaq. SpaceX’s Redmond campus, which builds and ships roughly 70 Starlink satellites per week, employs an estimated 800 to 2,000 people. Across the company, more than 4,400 current and former employees are expected to become millionaires from the event.

For anyone building a custom home in the greater Seattle area — or thinking about a retreat property on Whidbey Island or Camano Island — the relevant context is this: a large cohort of tech professionals in the Redmond area just became substantially wealthier. Standard lockup periods mean most will have freely tradeable shares starting in December. We’re already hearing from clients who are using this kind of liquidity moment as the catalyst to finally start the custom-build conversation they’ve been putting off.

The High-End Seattle Market Is Moving — and Shifting

King County’s $5M+ real estate market is unusually active right now. New listings are up 40%, pending sales are up 78%, and closed sales are up 66.7% compared to the same period last year. In Kirkland, listings have more than doubled. In Bellevue, Sammamish, and Redmond, listing volumes are up 70–77%.

Part of what’s driving this is outbound: wealthy Washington residents are deciding to sell ahead of the state’s capital gains tax and new high-income tax structures. But the buyers replacing them are increasingly coming from out of state — California, New York, and other high-cost metros. These inbound buyers tend to arrive with strong design instincts and clear ideas about what they want. Many are specifically looking for something that doesn’t exist in the existing inventory — which is exactly the conversation we have best.

Build Costs: Lumber Near 8-Month Highs

Framing lumber touched $630+ per thousand board feet on June 22 — the highest level since last October — before easing slightly to around $624. The driver is familiar: Canadian softwood lumber, which supplies 20–30% of U.S. demand, continues to face a combined U.S. tariff burden of roughly 25.9%. That’s down from about 35.9% last year, but it’s still a meaningful cost floor that keeps domestic lumber pricing elevated.

Combine that with an overall construction cost escalation of 4–6% projected for 2026, and the math is clear: the home you design today will cost more to build in six months than it would starting now. This isn’t a sales tactic — it’s a real dynamic in the current construction market. We tell clients this directly.

Jumbo Rates Are Holding — Don’t Expect Relief This Year

The 30-year fixed jumbo mortgage rate is sitting at 6.63% as of today. The Federal Reserve held rates steady at its June meeting, but signaled that a rate hike — not a cut — is more likely later in 2026. If you’ve been waiting for rates to drop before starting your project, we’d encourage you to stress-test that assumption. The window for lower rates in the near term has closed, at least for now.

For most of our clients, the financing rate is not the primary driver — the more important question is what the completed home is worth to them and to the eventual market. A well-designed custom home in a place you love, on land you chose, is a different kind of asset than anything you’d find on the MLS.

AI Design Tools Are Getting Serious — We’re Paying Attention

Autodesk launched a tech preview of “Building Design” inside their Forma platform in April 2026, extending their AI-assisted tools from site-scale analysis into schematic floor plans and facade design. We use Chief Architect as our design platform — not Autodesk’s Revit ecosystem — so this particular product doesn’t apply to our workflow directly. But we follow these developments closely, because they represent where the industry is heading: AI-assisted site analysis, constraint mapping, and generative layout tools are becoming part of the professional design process across the industry. Our approach to feasibility and design has always centered on the specific constraints of rural and island sites in the Pacific Northwest — septic, wells, shoreline setbacks, critical areas, WUI zones — and we’re watching how these tools evolve in that context.

What This Means for Prospective Clients

If you’ve been thinking about a custom home in Snohomish County, on Whidbey Island, or on Camano Island — whether as a primary residence or a retreat — the current environment has a few things worth knowing: build costs are rising, the design-build calendar fills up, and the best subcontractors are booking ahead. The best time to start the conversation is before you’re ready to break ground, not after.

We’re a small firm by design. We work with a limited number of clients each year, and we take the time to get the project right. If you’re curious about what custom design-build actually looks like — the process, the timeline, the decisions — we’re happy to talk.

Reach out here.