"In Seattle, rents fell by 1 percent last year after the city added an estimated 10,000 new apartments."
I don't think enough people recognize what an amazing accomplishment this is: flattening rents in the face of ongoing massive job growth.
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But in the end, how far rents will drop is determined by the cost of building homes:
"He estimated that in Seattle, developers would struggle to break even on apartments renting for less than $1,900 per month for a one-bedroom unit."
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Seattle can help bring average rents even lower in two ways: (1) upzone to allow more homes in more of the city, and (2) minimize the regulatory costs it imposes on homebuilding.
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Unfortunately the main affordable housing policy Seattle has been working to adopt over the past 3 years -- Mandatory Housing Affordability -- combines a good thing (upzones) with a bad thing (added costs to pay for below-market-rate units).
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Seattle set out to reform it's design review process to reduce the costs it imposes on homebuilding, but the watered down reforms finally adopted won't help much and actually add more process.
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Seattle's 2015 HALA plan recommended reforming the historic review process to help housing affordability. So far, the city has hired a consultant who will deliver a report around the end of this year. TL:DR for my "report": Seattle's process is broken.
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Seattle's 2015 HALA plan also recommended raising thresholds that trigger SEPA review of homebuilding projects to eliminate cumbersome, redundant process that drives up rents. Three years later, still waiting...
sightline.org/2017/11/07/was
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And one more to pile on the costs that keep rents higher: Seattle still seems intent on imposing new impact fees on homebuilding. Impact fees effectively penalize renters and newcomers to the benefit of incumbent homeowners.
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For Seattle, is that all rents fell (on avg) 1%, or new leases were down 1%? The former is much more impressive than the latter, though either is progress.
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