Apartment rents in downtown Bellevue have risen dramatically, particularly in the area around the new Amazon Towers. Rental rates have increased more than 7 percent over the past year, a record jump for the Bellevue core. The current vacancy rate for market-rate apartments is a slim 3.8 percent.
Amazon has moved thousands of employees into downtown Bellevue, driving demand for nearby residences among walk-to-workers. Based on the ratio of Amazon employees who preferred to walk to work in Seattle in 2021 – about a fifth of the workforce – about 2,400 of the Bellevue Amazon employees would be seeking to live nearby, i.e. within a 15-minute walk. At present, that number would take up about a third of downtown Bellevue’s apartment inventory.
Stalled new construction in downtown Bellevue has kept vacancy low – in fact, there were no new units built over the past year despite the fact that the number of renter households has risen. At the same time, Bellevue has been busily leasing office space in the past six months, which could further increase rental demand as more employees move into the area.
Downtown Bellevue’s 7-plus-percent rent increase stands starkly above the citywide rent increase of 3.9 percent over the past 12 months. By comparison, the annual rent growth in the greater Seattle area was 1.2 percent over that same period.
As it stands currently, downtown Bellevue rental rates are among the highest in the region, with an average monthly rent of around $3,100. This is higher than Bellevue’s citywide average of $2,600 and well beyond the Seattle metro’s average of $2,000.
This post was based on information found on CoStar.
