Seattle is still an admired city. However, it is an expensive city to live. In the post pandemic, workers, population growth, inflation, and cost of living are the three major areas to gage the city. Business closures were many but recovery has been slow for many. The monthly number of visitors to downtown bounced back however not, 2022.
The return to downtown is at record highs with 56,000 occupied housing units in the third quarter of 2022. The Downtown Seattle area is a high market area. Seattle’s average workplace occupancy rate for July was actually better than two of what the Downtown Seattle Association calls “peer” cities — Los Angeles and San Francisco — and was barely behind Portland.
A big shock was the loss of people during the pandemic period. That is such a huge turnaround from being one of the fastest trending population growths pre pandemic. July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, Seattle had a net loss of nearly 4,300 people, which represented a decline of 0.6%. In 2022, Seattle gained 20,100 people for a rate of growth of 2.7% – a pretty big increase. The current metro area population of Seattle in 2023 is 3,519,000, a 0.86% increase from 2022. The metro area population of Seattle in 2022 was 3,489,000, a 0.81% increase from 2021.
Prices in the Seattle area increased 1.0 percent for the two months ending in October 2022. The annual cost-of-living adjustments for most city labor contracts are based on changes in the consumer price index. The average rent in Seattle is $2,334. A one-bedroom median rental cost is $1,700. A two-bedroom apartment averages out to $2,055 per month. The housing market prices have increased by over 11.5% in the past 12 months alone.
Finally, housing sales data has the median home sales price at a whopping $800,000. This is higher than both Portland, Oregon, and New York City. The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metropolitan area ranked No. 5 in the cities in America experiencing the highest inflation.
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