California’s Bay Area, which extends from the city of San Francisco to Santa Clara and San Jose, has notoriously earned the title as America’s most expensive region in terms real estate affordability. Thanks to the recent, yet tremendous growth in tech companies in and around San Francisco, the median cost of owning real estate in the city has nestled at a whopping $1.15 million (median rent is just under $4,700/mo.).
However, it appears as though the Bay Area’s “hot” market is finally beginning to cool. Housing prices and cost of rent are beginning to slow their climb. This means many different things for many different people, however, as an investor in real estate, the slowing market might make investment decisions more volatile. This is where real estate investors look toward other housing markets that show signs of strong growth. One such market is Seattle.
As you may already have noticed, Seattle’s real estate market is closely following in the footsteps of its “city by the bay” counterpart in California. Seattle’s market, however, shows no signs of sludge. The recent growth there is largely attributed to the influx of major corporations and the accompanying pool of employees. Amazon, for instance, has brought 24,000 new workers into the city of Seattle (for reference, the population of Mercer Island, a suburb of Seattle, is 24,098). This new demand for housing, coupled with lack of physical and geographical space needed to build new homes, has driven housing prices up and up. The median home value in Seattle is $585,400. Seattle home values have gone up 16.7% over the past year and Zillow predicts they will rise 8.1% within the next year.
With conditions the way they are and such a promising future, investing in Washington’s housing market seems to be an opportunity that many investors are finding difficult to pass up.
