Is Seattle's Affordability Crisis Driving Out Low-Income Residents?

Is Seattle losing its lowest earning residents?

Seattle Property management is much more than simply looking after a rental property on behalf of the property owner. Of course, the simple things like routine maintenance, repairing damage and organising other essential services are part of our property managers working day; as is vetting tenants and organising all of the paperwork and legal.

We also give advice to Seattle rental property owners regarding a whole host of variables, and to be able to do that in a professional and knowledgeable manner, we spend time looking for news and trends that may affect a rental property owner’s options and their decisions.

The fact that Seattle, in one year from 2014 to 2015, recorded the number of households earning less than $35,000 dropped by 10,000 is quite a statistic. In fact, it makes Seattle the largest net loser of low earning residents compared to the 50 biggest U.S. cities.

Households in Seattle that have an income of more than $150,000 grew by 13.2% in the same timeframe; the percentage figure is almost exactly the same as the drop in low-income homes.

Does this mean that we should advise our clients to consider buying high-end property? Is Seattle becoming a city that only the rich can afford? Before we can answer that question we have to look at why Seattle shed so many low-income families; did they all simply move away or are there other reasons.

Seattle has a strong economy and it is likely that some people didn’t move away; they moved up.

Robert Plotnick, of the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, agrees that it is a mix of people moving away and moving up. His intuition tells him that more people moved up than out.

Making decisions based on information like the above can be difficult. We have been working in Seattle, Bellevue, Everett and the Puget Sound area since 1991. We know the area well and a combination of our local knowledge and expertise makes us ideally placed to help you decide on the best way forward.