Market Pulse — September 9, 2026

Every couple of weeks, we share what we’re seeing across the Puget Sound custom-home market — the trends, costs, and shifts that actually affect a build in Snohomish County and across the greater Puget Sound. This week we’re starting with a correction to our last post.

The New Energy Code Doesn’t Take Effect Until May 2027

In our August 26 post we told you Washington’s updated energy code would reach final adoption by November 20. That was wrong, and it’s worth saying plainly rather than fixing quietly. The State Building Code Council does vote on September 25 — but the adoption vote and the effective date are two different things, and the rule as filed with the state puts the effective date at May 3, 2027. The form setting the September date even carries a note that it is not the effective date. The commercial energy code and the 2024 residential building code land on the same day, so the whole code cycle arrives together.

If you read our last post and started thinking about beating a fall deadline, you have considerably more room than we gave you. This cycle has already slipped more than once and the final rule hasn’t been filed yet, so May 3, 2027 is the date on the paperwork today. We’ll tell you if it moves again.

What Actually Changes — and the One Item That Changes a Floor Plan

Most coverage stops at “the energy code is getting stricter,” which helps nobody. Per the Council’s own cost-benefit analysis, the residential changes include a tighter window requirement, with maximum U-factor dropping from 0.28 to 0.27; a tighter envelope, with maximum air leakage falling from 4.0 to 3.0 air changes per hour; mandatory heat- or energy-recovery ventilation in our climate zone; cool-roof requirements on most low-slope roofs; electric-readiness wiring anywhere gas equipment is installed; and a requirement that ducts run inside conditioned space or be deeply buried.

Most of that list is a specification change. You buy a different window, you seal more carefully, you add a ventilation unit. Those cost something, but they don’t change what your house looks like.

Ducts inside conditioned space is different. It’s a floor plan decision. The mechanical system has to live inside the thermal envelope, and on a single-story or slab-on-grade home that usually means a mechanical closet or a dropped chase that has to exist on the plan from the beginning. Caught in schematic design, it costs a conversation about where a closet goes. Caught after a drawing set is finished, it costs a redesign. If your home will be permitted in 2027 — which is most homes now entering design — this belongs in the first floor plan you look at, not the last.

That’s the real value of the extra eight months: not time to rush a permit in under the old code, but time to design under the new one on purpose.

August Gave Buyers the Most Room in Years

The August numbers from Northwest MLS show Snohomish County at a median sale price of $724,500, with active listings up 39.3% from a year ago and homes going pending in about 20 days. King County came in at $845,000, down 3.4%, with inventory at 4.3 months against 2.9 months a year ago. Across the full service area the median slipped 2.3% and closed sales fell 7.6%.

The obvious read is that it’s a good time to buy an existing home. The more useful read, if you’ve been weighing buying against building, is that the gap between the two narrowed from both directions at once: land is easier to acquire and less contested, and the discount on someone else’s house now competes against a build where you set the brief.

There’s a data point at the top of the market worth sitting with. A Medina waterfront home — 7,000 square feet, built in 2020, with a private dock — closed in August at $22.8 million after listing at $33.8 million sixteen months earlier, finishing below the county’s assessed value. We’ll be straight about what that cuts both ways on. It says a recently built, superbly located house designed for someone else is a hard thing to sell at this level, which is an argument for building. It also says highly personal design carries real resale friction, which matters if you expect to sell in ten years rather than live there for thirty. Both are true, and you should hear both.

Materials Still Split in Two Directions, and Rates Drifted Up

Not much has changed here and we won’t stretch it. Framing lumber has fallen four weeks running, reaching $518 per thousand board feet in early September — down about 3% on the month, though still up 9% from a year ago. The 50% tariffs on Canadian cabinetry, millwork and plywood remain in place with no exemption, and Canada’s retaliatory tariffs took effect September 8 as scheduled; none of the newest measures on either side touch building materials. Your structural package keeps getting cheaper while your finish package does not. On financing, the 30-year fixed rate sat at 6.71% in early September, up from 6.50% a year ago. Rates have drifted up, not down.

What This Means for Prospective Clients

In August we told you a stack of deadlines was making “we’ll decide later” the expensive option. With the energy code moving to May 2027, that’s less true than we said, and we’d rather tell you so than let a good line stand on a wrong date. Very little between now and spring forces a decision.

What is true is that the decisions determining what a 2027 permit costs you — the envelope, the mechanical layout, where the ducts go — get made in schematic design, months before anyone files anything. The time didn’t disappear. It moved to the front of the process, which is where it’s worth more anyway.

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.