More available apartments for rent in Seattle than surrounding cities

Rents may be on the rise in Seattle, but at least there are more options in the Emerald City than its neighbors.

According to a recent report from Dupre and Scott apartment advisors, the rate of available apartments to renters has mostly flat-lined in areas surrounding Seattle.

Both the market and gross vacancy rates increased a little in Seattle. The market vacancy rate in Seattle rose from 3.3 percent last fall to 3.5 percent currently. In fact, vacancies have been increasing slowly but steadily in Seattle since the fall of 2014 when the market vacancy rate bottomed out at 3 percent.

The apartment advising group notes that while the change might not sound like much of an increase, it is the highest market vacancy rate in Seattle since 2010.

Rising vacancies in Seattle are to be expected, given that over 60 percent of the new construction in the region is happening there.

At the same time, Dupre and Scott looked at rents throughout the region and found that since September 2015, rents went up by 3.3 percent. They are 9.1 percent higher than rent was just one year ago. The advisors expect the area’s rent hikes to slow down in the future, however, mostly due to considerable numbers of new construction and units becoming available. They note that developers in the Puget Sound area will open the most number of apartment units in 2016 since 1990.

To put that into a little context, the Puget Sound Business Journal reports that rent is rising faster in outlying areas away from Seattle, mainly because of supply &#8212 of the 58,000 new rental units expects to come in the next four years, 36,000 of those are in Seattle.