This is the average cost of rent in Seattle & the cheapest area to live right now

If you’re looking to move, or are wondering what the rental market is like right now, Apartment List has analyzed Seattle’s data for February! It reports that Seattle is currently the 17th most expensive large city in the US, with a median rent of $1,970.

This is actually the same as January’s, and is 0.1% higher when looking at year-over-year data.

According to the report, within the city of Seattle, the median rent currently stands at $1,838 for a 1-bedroom apartment and $2,294 for a 2-bedroom.

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When looking at all bedroom sizes (meaning the entire rental market), the median rent is $1,970. Compared to the US as a whole, rent for 1-bedroom has a median of $1,207, and $1,359 for a 2-bedroom, as well as $1,373 overall.

“The median rent in Seattle is 43.4% higher than the national, and is similar to the prices you would find in Oakland, CA ($2,012) and Miami, FL ($1,883),” states the February report.

Looking at the Seattle metro area, Apartment List says “the median rent is $1,912 meaning that the median price in Seattle proper ($1,970) is 3.0% greater than the price across the metro as a whole. Metro-wide annual rent growth stands at 0.3%, above the rate of rent growth within just the city.”

So where is the cheapest area in the region right now?

According to the stats on the 22 cities in the Seattle metro area, Apartment List says “Lakewood is the metro’s most affordable city, with a median rent of $1,373.”

If you’re looking at 1-bedrooms, under the overall US median of $1,373, Lakewood’s 1-bedrooms are at an average of $1,107, followed by Auburn at $1,300, and Tacoma’s median for a 1-bedroom is $1,365.

On the opposite end, Issaquah is currently the most expensive, with a median rent of $2,389.

In order to come up with its rent report, Apartment List uses “reliable median rent statistics from the Census Bureau, then extrapolate them forward to the current month using a growth rate calculated from our listing data.”

Let’s see how these numbers change in March!