Rents in Seattle continued their upward march in April 2015, according to the recently-released Zillow Rent Index. In March, we saw Seattle's median rent hit the $1,850 mark and there appears to be no change in it's upward creep a month later and now up 6.2 percent over April 2014. The median rent in Seattle, according to the index, now sits at an ever-climbing $1,858/month.
That growth remains mostly on par with Seattle's home value growth as well. According to Zillow, median home value now stands at $348,700, up 6.9 percent from April 2014. Zillow doesn't think that trend is changing anytime soon and has an expected year-over-year percentage rise of 6.8 percent for Seattle's home values in 2016.
The Zillow Rent Index assesses the rental value of all housing stock, not just what happens to be on the market at any given time, in order to take out fluctuations that may occur by looking just at available inventory at a certain point. It's very difficult to pin down the exact rental median in the city, but Zumper, another rental website that tracks Seattle rents, showed a 2.5 percent increase in April in the median asking rent for a one-bedroom. (Zumper doesn't calculate an overall median.) No matter what the exact figure is, the one thing that we know for sure is that Seattle might not be San Francisco, but, rent's still pretty damn high.
· Rents Gallop Past Home Values in April [Zillow]
· Q1 Market Reports [Zillow]
· Seattle Still 10th Most Expensive City to Rent in America [CS]
· San Francisco's Median Rent Climbs to a Whopping $4,225 [CSF]