Investor demand is driving up rents in Seattle.
"Investor demand" is driving up rents in Seattle, according to a new report. lembi/Shutterstock

Curbed Seattle:

Rental site Abodo has released their National Apartment Report for May 2016 and it includes a breakdown of the places in the U.S. where average one-bedroom rents rose and fell over the last month. In Seattle, not only did one-bedroom rents rise, they rose more than any other city in the nation.

Seattle one-bedroom apartment rents shot up from $1,722 to $1,906 between April and May, according to Abodo.* The company says "investor demand" is driving the country's biggest rent hikes in places like Seattle. As Charles noted last week:

Housing, under the current condition, is not strictly about supply and demand but about leverage, interest rates, spreads, stock indices, and yield-hungry surplus capital. All of these financial features exert a big force on the present at the cost of what can only reward investments on affordable housing, the future.

Last year, a Journal of Urban Affairs study found that for every increase of $100 in median rents, the homeless population in metro areas increased by an average 15 percent.

*Abodo doesn't bother sharing its methodology with us, but Curbed notes that its findings track fairly closely with those of another company, Zumper, which recently pegged median Seattle one-bedroom rents at $1,770.