THE SEATTLE TIMES (OCTOBER 12, 2018) -Yes, the rental market has cooled way down recently as more apartments open. But only after rents here soared 155 percent over the last two decades, making Seattle and its suburbs one of the most expensive places in the country to rent an apartment.
There’s been nothing but good news this year for Seattle-area renters, who have seen rent prices freeze while they get more and more open apartments to choose from and various perks like a free month’s rent offered by landlords.
But that doesn’t mean Seattle is suddenly a utopia for apartment hunters.
Just the opposite: Seattle remains one of the priciest places in the country to rent. The lack of rent increases in 2018 comes only after seven straight years of large rent hikes that have made Seattle unaffordable to anyone not making decent money. Rents have grown even faster than home prices locally.
And the reality is that rents are never going to plummet back to the days when you could get a sweet spot on Capitol Hill for a thousand bucks a month. It might be wishful thinking to hope for rents to drop more than a little, since that virtually never happens.
Read more at: THE SEATTLE TIMES.