6. Seattle
A booming tech economy has kept developers interested in building apartments in Seattle, perhaps too interested. “The volume of new supply has dampened rent growth,” says Greg Willett, chief economist with RealPage Inc., a provider of property management software and services.
Seattle is the only city on CoStar’s list of top cities for new development where rents fell over the year the ended in the third quarter on 2018. It is number five on CoStar’s list of top markets for new development.
Developers had 24,388 new units of multifamily housing in some phase of the development process in Seattle in the third quarter of 2018, according to CoStar. That works out to 7.7 percent of the current inventory.
MPF counts 15,986 new rental apartments under construction in the Seattle metro area. That’s equal to 4.8 percent of the inventory across the broader metro area, making it tie with Charlotte, N.C. for number three on MPF’s list of top markets for new construction.