Rental Market Skyrockets in Seattle-Bellevue

Leigh Nunn emails:

I can confirm that the Seattle-Bellevue rental markets have been fast and furious. My wife and I have been looking for a home to rent in the Bellevue area for the last few months and have witnessed no less than skyrocketing rental prices. We rented a three bedroom home in Bellevue from 2010-2013. That same home would today rent for at least 30% more than we were paying last year, and it would only take a few hours on craigslist to draw more interest than the owner would care to handle. Last month my wife called on a craigslist ad that had only been posted for 20 minutes - the owner had already scheduled two viewings.

At one point we submitted an application to rent a newly remodeled three bedroom home in a suburb adjacent to Bellevue. The owners had an open house on Saturday morning and received over a dozen applications by noon. After narrowing the applicants down to three possibilities they asked for any voluntary "adjustments" to the rental applications. The house ended up renting for an extra 10% above the advertised price.

We are a young family and can't afford this rapid rate of rental price inflation. We were fortunate to have access to a much less expensive, although temporary and not ideal, living situation. Our mid/long term plan is to move out of the Seattle metro area to a location with lower living costs (which wouldn't affect our income).

Cheers

PS - Your site is one of the few I read every day.