Wealthy out-of-town apartment seekers could add to Seattle housing crunch
Alec Regimbal,
July 23, 2021Updated July 23, 2021 2:06 p.m.
“Wealthier tenants are rearranging themselves across the country and putting additional pressure on the already competitive rental markets.”
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
According to a new study, wealthy apartment hunters moving to Seattle could fuel competition in the city’s already breakneck real estate market.
The study, authored by Apartment List, found that users are willing to spend an average of $ 1,335 per month on a new apartment, which is the highest amount they have ever been willing to spend.
“Wealthier tenants are rearranging themselves across the country and putting additional pressure on the already competitive rental markets,” the study says. “The pandemic has given workers at the highest end of the income distribution new geographical flexibility, largely thanks to the widespread adoption of remote working.”
Researchers say it’s common for budgets to go up at this time of year, but they report an unusually sharp increase in users’ willingness to spend – 6.5% more than last quarter. Typically, researchers see increases of around 2% during this time.
In addition, more Americans are moving. The researchers examined 100 subways to find out who is moving where and where they are moving from. They also compared the average budgets of these moving companies to the average budgets of moving companies already living in the subway.
This graphic shows where people use the apartment listing to search for available units in Seattle.
Apartment list
Of all those who used the Seattle apartment list to search for apartments, the majority were from Portland (4.1%). The second and third most popular searches came from people in San Francisco (3.8%) and Los Angeles (3.6%). On average, people looking to move to Seattle have a housing budget of $ 1,831, while people looking to move to Seattle have an average housing budget of $ 1,582.
This graph shows the relationship between year-over-year rental growth and out-of-town budgets in the 15 cities with the largest year-over-year increases in rental rates.
Apartment list
The speed at which affluent apartment hunters roam the subways plays a large role in rising rental prices, the study said. In the top 15 metros with the highest year-on-year rental growth, budgets outside the city significantly exceed local budgets, according to the study.
“Typically, tenant migration (and rental growth) cools off each year in late autumn and winter,” wrote researchers. High-budget tenants will exacerbate the affordability scarcity in smaller rental markets. “