On August 20, the Port of Bellingham held a ribbon cutting for The Boardwalk Residences, the second completed tower in Harcourt Development's Bellingham Waterfront District. The headline number in the coverage was simple: pricing starts at $582,000. For anyone who has spent the summer watching Bellingham list prices, that figure looks almost restrained. It sits close to, and in some readings below, the city's own median sale price.
That is the number worth pausing on, because it is doing a lot of quiet work. A starting price that reads like a bargain against the citywide median is only half the sentence. The other half is square footage, and once you put the two together, the story flips.
The Number That Sounds Like a Deal
Bellingham's median sale price has moved around depending on which window you look at. Over the three months ending May 2026, the median sale price citywide was $630,000. A separate read of March 2026 closings put the citywide median at $697,000, with single-family homes averaging $779,140 and condos averaging $365,312.
Either way you cut it, $582,000 for a brand new, elevator-served, concrete-and-glass unit steps from Waypoint Park does not look like a luxury premium. It looks like a reasonable entry point into a market that has been tight for years. That is exactly how it is being marketed, and it is not wrong on its face. It is just incomplete.
What 755 Square Feet Actually Costs
The Boardwalk Residences' floorplans run from 755 to 2,155 square feet, with one to three bedrooms, and pricing extends past $2.5 million at the top end. The entry unit, the one carrying that $582,000 headline, is the 755 square foot layout. Do the division and you get roughly $771 per square foot.
Next door, The Waypoint Residences, the tower that opened first and is now nearing sellout, sold a 763 square foot one-bedroom unit for $555,000, which works out to about $727 per square foot.
Compare that to the rest of the city. Over the three months ending May 2026, Bellingham's median sale price per square foot was $414. Even against the citywide condo average of $365,312, which almost certainly includes a mix of smaller and older buildings, the new waterfront towers are pricing at close to double the going rate for space.
Here is the same math laid out side by side:
| Property | Price | Square Feet | Price per Sq Ft |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boardwalk Residences, entry unit | $582,000 | 755 | ~$771 |
| Waypoint Residences, 1-bed unit | $555,000 | 763 | ~$727 |
| Bellingham citywide median (3 mo. ending May 2026) | $630,000 | — | $414 |
| Bellingham citywide condo average (March 2026) | $365,312 | — | — |
A buyer scanning listing prices alone would conclude the waterfront towers are the affordable option. A buyer who runs the per-square-foot math sees the opposite. The entry price at Boardwalk is not a discount into Bellingham's market. It is a full premium, just packaged in a smaller box.
What the Premium Is Actually Buying
None of this means the towers are overpriced for what they are. It means the product is different from what the headline number implies, and the marketing is honest about that once you read past the price line. Realogics Sotheby's International Realty, which is handling sales exclusively, has framed the moment in terms of the waterfront itself rather than square footage. RSIR advisor Chris Erdman described it as the point where a city starts to reclaim its working waterfront.
"Every great waterfront city reaches a defining moment when people begin reclaiming the working waterfront"
That framing is the actual product. Concrete construction, secured elevator access, underground parking, and a location that puts you at the Granary Building's ground floor retail, a short walk from Gruff Brewing and Kulshan Trackside Brewing, with Waypoint Park and the Whatcom Waterway at your door. It is a lock-and-leave unit in a district still being built out over what the Port of Bellingham describes as a 40 to 50 year redevelopment timeline. You are not buying square footage at a discount. You are buying a specific, low-maintenance way of living in a location that did not exist as a residential address a decade ago.
The Sellout Next Door, and the Homes That Sit for Nearly a Year
There is a second number in this story that deserves more attention than it usually gets. The Boardwalk Residences is the second completed phase of the Waterfront Collection. The Waypoint Residences, the first phase, is reported as nearing sellout. A third tower, The Horizon Residences, is set to break ground later this year. On paper, that reads like unambiguous heat: three towers, one nearly gone, another already under construction.
But zoom out to the broader area that includes this stretch of shoreline, and the picture gets more complicated. Listings in Bellingham's Waterfront submarket, which includes both the new towers and older resale product in the same general area, have shown a median of 349 days on market. That is not a typo, and it is a striking contrast against a citywide market where homes have been selling in roughly 9 to 12 days.
Read the two numbers together and you get a market with two very different clocks running side by side. Presale and newly completed units inside a hyped development can move fast, sometimes selling before the ribbon is even cut. Meanwhile, a resale listing that happens to sit in the same geographic pocket, competing against fresh inventory with warranties, new appliances, and a marketing budget behind it, can sit for the better part of a year. If you are selling an older property near the waterfront, that gap is the single most important number in your pricing conversation, more than the district's overall momentum.
Who the Math Actually Works For
This is not an argument that the new towers are a bad buy. It is an argument that the math serves different buyers differently.
- A downsizer or a buyer prioritizing a lock-and-leave lifestyle, with no yard or exterior maintenance to manage, gets real value from the tradeoff even at $771 per square foot, especially if they are relocating from a metro where that price per foot is already the norm.
- A second-home buyer or someone drawn specifically to waterfront proximity, walkability, and the district's retail build-out is paying for location and lifestyle, not raw space, and should evaluate the purchase on those terms rather than comparing it to a single-family listing across town.
- A move-up family or a buyer who needs more square footage for the money will generally do better shopping the wider Bellingham market, where the citywide median of $414 per square foot buys meaningfully more house, even accounting for a longer commute to the waterfront district's amenities.
None of these are the wrong buyer. They are different buyers, and the $582,000 headline number does not tell you which one you are until you divide it by the square footage.
A Few Straight Answers
Is the waterfront district's price per square foot likely to come down as more units come online? Nothing in the current pipeline points that way. Horizon Residences is described as breaking ground later this year, not delivering units, and the two completed towers so far have priced within a similar range of each other on a per square foot basis.
Does the 349-day figure mean waterfront property is a hard sell? Not necessarily. It likely reflects a mix of older resale inventory competing against brand new construction with financing incentives and modern finishes. If you own a resale property in that area, it is a reason to price and market carefully rather than assume the district's overall buzz will carry your listing.
Is $582,000 still a reasonable way into Bellingham's market? It depends entirely on what you are optimizing for. If the answer is space per dollar, no. If the answer is a specific address, a specific lifestyle, and a willingness to pay for it, the number holds up fine. It just was never the deal it looked like at first glance.
If you are trying to figure out where your own numbers land, whether you are comparing a waterfront condo against a resale home elsewhere in Bellingham or trying to price a listing that sits near this submarket, Donita Dickinson can walk through the actual math with you. Get a Free Home Valuation and see what your specific property or budget looks like once you run the numbers past the headline price.
