SEATTLE - When Brooks Hall started looking for a condo in Seattle's Belltown and Queen Anne neighborhoods, she figured out quickly that "no parking spot" was a deal-breaker.
"I have a free parking space at work and I kind of tested out how it would work if I just used that parking space," Hall said. "It didn't work. It was not convenient. It was not fun walking 2 miles after work."
Hall, who purchased a condo about a month ago after moving from California kept her Ford. She bought a place that included a parking spot.
"I love living here and just being able to get in my car and take a drive to the Cascades knowing I have a parking space to come back to," she said. "To me it's worth it."
Demand for housing isn't the only thing homebuyers have been paying attention to in Seattle. For people like Hall, parking has become a premium as well.
"It's purely a function of convenience so people pay for that," said Edward Krigsman, an agent with Windermere Real Estate, who's been selling in-city homes in Seattle for nearly two decades now.
"In Seattle ... there were 6 or 7 sells of deeded parking spaces in the last 12 months and they've sold anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 depending on the location."
Krigsman said higher-end condominiums downtown in the urban core can fetch $50,000 for a parking spot. In Queen Anne or Capitol Hill, that can be in the $30,000 range. In addition, the numbers range depending on if the spot is in a garage, is covered or is unsecured.
However, as Seattle changes, buyers are too.
"What we're seeing is definitely people prefer to have a condo if they're going to live in city ... with parking ... but it's less of a factor than it has been," Krigsman said. "We're getting a lot of new arrivals from San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong ... other cities where [cars have] historically been seen as a liability rather than an asset."
For that reason, agents and appraisers are taking that into consideration.
"What we're seeing is the discount applied to condominiums that lack parking is less now than it was 5 or 10 years ago," Krigsman said, noting the use of car-sharing and ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft, and Car2Go has changed habits.
He also said there are other trends including how more in-city townhomes are constructed. Those can often range from $600,000 to $900,000 and traditionally had base-level garages incorporated into the design.
"A lot of townhouses are built with uncovered parking off the alley. What we're seeing is buyers are increasingly wanting that square footage as an extra room as livable space," Krigsman said. "The car is seen, maybe, less as a status symbol and more as merely transportation. I think things are pivoting toward having parking spaces uncovered where space is at a premium for in-city townhouses."
Another aspect to the market is buying a space and leasing it out.
"We've seen that people will justify paying a premium for more than one parking space then leasing out the additional one," Krigsman said. "But increasingly with prices going up 10 percent a year - $10,000 to $50,000 is a luxury so oftentimes people will forego that second space or even the initial space."
