Downtown Seattle population rebounds, hits new high in 2021

It wasn’t long after the pandemic hit that some people prophesied the end of American cities. COVID-19 should be a game changer – who would ever want to live in a densely populated neighborhood again?

And for a while, people who had the means to leave fled these neighborhoods, often to quieter, rural areas. But as it turns out, the allure of city life is not that easy to erase.

Downtown Seattle’s population hit a new high in 2021, as did downtown apartment occupancy, according to a new report from the Downtown Seattle Association.

Now I can imagine that some readers are immediately skeptical. Cheerleading in downtown Seattle is the DSA’s job, after all. But the data her report is based on comes from two independent sources unrelated to strengthening the inner city.

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The first source is ESRI, a mapping software company that also produces demographic data. According to their estimates, the greater Seattle area reached a record population of just under 99,000 in 2021. )

The growth of the larger inner city has been remarkable over the past decade. ESRI estimates show the population has increased 60% since 2010 when the population was only 62,000.

Population estimates can be a little “mushy”. But I tend to think that the downtown population is booming because that’s backed up by the second data point in the DSA report, which is a more specific number.

It comes from CoStar, the nation’s leading provider of commercial real estate data. Their data, taken straight from property managers’ reports for each building, shows record occupancy and rents for the greater downtown Seattle area in the second quarter of 2021.

During this period there were around 52,400 occupied units, exceeding the previous high of around 51,100, which was in the first quarter of 2020, shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic. At the low point in 2020, the number of units occupied fell to around 49,000.

In mid-2020, the number of people moving out significantly exceeded the number of people moving in. But now things have turned. In the last quarter there were 1,735 more people moving in than moving out to apartments in the city center (the data does not include owner-occupied apartments).

Rents, which have also come down last year, have fully recovered (I’m not sure if I would call this part good news). In the last quarter, asking rents in the larger downtown area peaked at $ 2,221. This just misses the previous high of 2,207 US dollars from the first quarter of 2020. The rental concessions have also decreased significantly compared to the previous year.

“I think we have in many ways overstated the impact of the pandemic on the behavior and preferences of people accessible to urban locations and walking distance,” said Jon Scholes, president of DSA. “I am honestly not surprised by the data.”

Scholes believes that an upswing in the inner city is optimistic, which in some ways is already underway. He notes that the data on visitor numbers and hotel occupancy are moving in the right direction – in particular, leisure traffic has recovered strongly, says Scholes. On the other hand, the emergence of the delta variant of the coronavirus has made it difficult for office workers to return to the city center, who may now be delayed.

“The idea that everyone is in the office five days a week does not correspond to reality,” said Scholes. “We’re going to have a slow recovery of workers with their feet on the street and their dollars through the doors of the places, and that’s going to hold the retail and restaurants back to some extent.”

Scholes believes Seattle is very well positioned for a business travel rebound, not just because of the massive convention center expansion that will open next year, compared to other US cities. It’s also up to the Seattle residents themselves that business travelers feel comfortable coming here.

“They know that this is a place that is over 80 percent vaccinated,” emphasizes Scholes.