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How much more will Seattle-area renters need to make to keep up with housing costs?

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A new Zillow study says area renters need a $1200-per-year raise

Three rows of floor to ceiling windows on the outside of a beige building with intermittent balconies. Thomas Hawk/Flickr

It’s no secret to anyone who’s rented in Seattle recently that housing costs have gone up. But as rent goes up, exactly how much more will renters have to make to keep up with demand?

A new report by housing-listing site Zillow calculated just how much renters in major metropolitan areas would have to add to their yearly income to keep their existing disposable income.

Seattle needed a bigger raise than any other metropolitan area: $1,248 per year, or an extra $104 per month. For someone making median income, per Zillow’s calculations, that’s just under a 2 percent raise.

According to Zillow’s calculations, median rent in the Seattle area in February 2017 was $2,100, and they project it’ll jump about 5 percent to $2,204 by February 2018. Nationwide, Zillow only expects rents to jump 1 percent.

This calculation is for rent alone, and doesn’t take into account taxes, food, healthcare, or anything else that could conceivably go up in the next year.

Seattle, along with Los Angeles ($1,152) and Boston ($1,140), was one of just three cities calling for a four-figure raise. Nationwide, the yearly income increase required to keep up with rent was just $168.

It’s a little grim, but Zillow put together a raise calculator to go along with the study calculating how much of a raise you need to maintain the rest of your income. We’ve embedded it below.

Here’s hoping a couple of rent decreases some listing sites found in Seattle aren’t total flukes.