End of decade sees Seattle apartments getting smaller, more expensive
Dec 27, 2019, 7:45 AM | Updated: 8:59 am
The interior of a Seattle apartment. (Joe Wolf, Flickr Creative Commons)
In 2018, Seattle boasted the smallest apartments in the United States. Now, as rents continue to rise, a new study indicates the Emerald City has won that title both at the beginning and end of the decade.
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The study comes courtesy of RentCafe, showing Seattle as the city with the smallest apartments in average square feet in both 2010 and 2019 (in addition to 2018).
The city kicked the decade off averaging 690 square feet for its apartments, and ended even smaller at 682 square feet. In 2018, Seattle averaged 711 square feet.
In addition to Seattle apartments getting smaller over the course of the decade, they also got more expensive. The city’s average rent prices shot up 77 percent between 2010 and 2019, the second highest increase out of all major metropolitan areas in the U.S. Median home prices in Seattle also increased 95 percent over that same period, the eighth highest increase in the nation.
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Cities that moved up the rankings for smallest apartments between 2010 and 2019 include San Francisco (5th to 3rd), Queens, New York (8th to 4th), and Manhattan (7th to 5th). Entries in the top 10 didn’t change at all between the beginning and end of the decade, with the exception of Portland, which came in at 7th in 2019 after not cracking the list in 2010.
The largest apartments in the country in 2010 and 2019 were found in Marietta, Georgia, maintaining a 1,021 square foot average in both years.
