SEATTLE — To comfortably afford rent in Seattle, the typical household needs to make $89,000 a year, according to a new Zillow report.
The tech real-estate company issued a November market report which showed that rents have risen 1.9% in the city of Seattle over the last year. The average rental costs around $2,186 per month.
That figure is slightly higher than what the average rental is going for nationally, which is $1,982 per month. Rents overall have risen by an average of 29.4% since the COVID-19 pandemic began. In a positive change, rents are relatively stable from one month to the next, which is what economists typically expect to see. There was a 0.2% difference in rents between October and November.
On average, Seattle residents are spending just under 25% of their income on rent, according to the report, which is lower than the national average. That figure has been relatively consistent over the past five years.
Zillow noted that there is a national trend of single-family rents rising more quickly than those for multi-family units. That same trend is reflected in Seattle in 2023, despite a brief period in 2022 where multifamily rents were rising at a more rapid pace. Single-family rents increased by 4.8% between 2022 and 2023, while multifamily rents increased by 2.5%. Zillow attributed this increase to new family units being priced out of the housing markets. The real-estate company dubbed a single-family rental to be "the new starter home."
