Seattle Rents Continue to Rise

Seattle median rent rose 3.4 percent during February.

Today, data wonks at Abodo.com announced that Seattle rents have continued growing over the past month. According to their new report, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment rose 3.4 percent during February, to $1,468. That’s the eighth biggest rent increase nation-wide—less than Phoenix, more than Columbus. (On the other hand, local two-bedroom median rent rose by only 0.6 percent.) This is in the context of slight a nation-wide decrease in median one-bedroom rents during the same time period, of about 0.03 percent.

What might actually surprise some actual Emerald City denizens is the fact that Seattle doesn’t even crack the list of ten U.S. cities with the highest rents. That’s topped by San Francisco ($3,465) (ed. note: !!!) and bottomed by Santa Ana ($1,618). Seattle has the twelfth highest rent nationwide, after San Diego ($1,601).

As the Seattle Times reported earlier this week, the costs of local housing are particularly punishing on millenials, about half of whom say they would have to move in order to “lead the kind of life I want,” according to a poll conducted by EMC Research. And as we reported in 2015, it’s not just millenials who are bolting. “A steady trickle of fed-up and stressed-out older, self-employed (for the most part) Seattleites are swimming…to Bellingham,” wrote our own Ellis Conklin. As a Bellingham real-estate told him, “We used to be the place for parents looking for an apartment to put their kids in for college. Now we’re seeing parents looking for a place to put themselves.”