Seattle is the land of Starbucks and evergreens. The Emerald City is a place of innovation, with the headquarters of some of America’s biggest corporations, but still a city that is nature-filled and walkable. In the past decade, Seattle has experienced a real-estate boom.
The city’s reputation as a hub of business and culture has grown, and with that, the desirability of a home in the city. While the mass urban exodus that has come from the pandemic was said to impact Seattle, there is no bearing in the numbers that this has occurred. Seattle’s market has been strong in 2020 and is likely to stay so in 2021.
“Seattle was America’s 3rd fastest growing city between 2014 and 2019.”
According to Seattle Pi, since 2010, Seattle has seen its median home price rise 83.2%. This is a massive rise that was just about double the national average decade-long increase of 42%. This was the 11th highest increase of any of America’s big cities over the same period, and the cities that had higher increases almost all started from a significantly lower median number in 2010.
Aside from the Bay Area, where home prices positively skyrocketed in the 2010s, Seattle had one of the most significant growths of any city where real estate was already expensive, ending the decade with a median home price of $749,417.
One of the reasons for this climb was the growth of Seattle’s population. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, Seattle was America’s 3rd fastest growing city between 2014 and 2019.
The population of Seattle surged 2.4% in this period, which was significantly higher than the national average for a city in America over that same period, which was 0.8% They were the fastest growing of any of the major U.S cities.
Many people moved to Seattle for corporate opportunities. With companies like Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon all have huge headquarters in Seattle, a large portion of the city’s economy runs through these massive companies.
This means that a lot of the people who move to Seattle are young, educated, and employed by some of the most desirable companies to work for in America, so there’s money in the market.
With this boom of population and money, comes a big strain on the supply of the real estate market. This is a significant reason for the rising prices in Seattle: a lack of inventory. According to a different report by Seattle Pi, there’s a 20-year low in Seattle of homes for sale.
There were 4,010 active listings in the King county area, which was a 27% drop off year over year. And yet, buyers remain extremely active, with 3,456 sales in the county in August, a 10% rise year over year. Low inventory and high demand are leading to buyers being more competitive and quicker to close deals, which is raising the prices.
Seattle is a city that has always been a key part of America, but whose importance has skyrocketed in recent years. The combination of massive corporate opportunities, an attractive local culture, and a walkable and desirable city, have led to a population surge. This surge has in turn led to the real estate market of Seattle growing at an astounding rate. With inventory low coming into 2021, prices could continue their decade-long rise.
