It's certainly not breaking news to learn that Seattle rents have been skyrocketing over the last year. According to a new survey from personal finance site SmartAsset, there is one group of people who aren't feeling the rental sting...people making a lot of money.
Using the 30 percent metric (the rule of thumb that says that no more than 30 percent of income should go toward housing, including utilities and rent, and that any more makes rent unaffordable and burdensome), SmartAsset calculated what a household would need to make to meet that requirement, spending 28 percent of their income on rent alone (with 2 percent left over for other for utilities and related expenses).
SmartAsset looked at the average cost for a new, market-rate, two-bedroom rental in Seattle. What they found was that the average rental in that category cost $2,293 a month. In order to afford that, the average household would have to bring in $98,271.
And as you've probably guessed, that number is up 7.3 percent from last year ($91,586). SmartAsset notes that unemployment for the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro area is 5.1 percent, which is 12.8 percent lower than the state unemployment rate.
· The Income Needed to Pay Rent in the Largest U.S. Cities [SA]
· Seattle is the Fourth Fastest Growing Rental Market in Nation [CS]