Since the gold rush, Seattle has had its booms and busts. With each population swell, there has been talk, and maybe some grumbling, about who is coming and what mark they will leave on the city. That has been no less true with Seattle’s latest migration.
If your suspicion is that the so-called tech boom is ushering in a new group of techies from California, you might not be far off; but that’s not the whole story either.
Redfin, the national real estate brokerage, with its user data on home buying behavior, says buyers from San Francisco’s Bay Area, indeed, have their eye on Seattle.
In fact, the number of Redfin home buyers who closed a deal in Seattle doubled over the same seven-month period in 2015 compared with last year.
Nela Richardson is chief economist at Redfin. She says buyers are coming for the lifestyle, which tends to be more kid-friendly.
“There’s a lot of single family homes in the actual city,” said Richardson. “That’s a dramatic turnaround from San Francisco.”
Richardson says inventory is low in both cities, but there are still more affordable homes in Seattle compared to the Bay Area, where the median home price is $1.3 million.
Seattle isn’t the only destination, though. Tech workers can telecommute from anywhere, so they are also considering cities such as Portland and places in the Midwest where they can have more square footage once they start to have children.
But it is notable, when people move here, they really are moving to the city. Alan Durning is executive director at Sightline Institute, a public policy think tank in Seattle. He says that is a change from the dot-com bubble of the late 90s.
“It’s happening in the center city, much more than the past several [migrations],” said Durning. “That is, there’s less sprawl happening.”
So, can you blame the migration on any one business sector in Seattle? Nela Richardson at Redfin says, “not really”.
“It’s easy to point the finger at the Amazons and the Microsofts and say you’re the cause of my high home prices,” said Richardson.
She says it is more nuanced than that. Growth, change and low inventory; combined with the after-effects of the last housing bust; all play a role.
