Report: Apartments in the Seattle area are getting bigger

Homes in the Seattle area are getting bigger, but that trend is being driven by suburban construction, according to a new study by RentCafe.

While smaller apartments are being built in Seattle itself, the apartments built in Everett are the largest in the country, averaging 1,195 square feet. The average size of an Everett apartment between 2016 and 2020 was 928 square feet, but this year there has been a 267 square feet increase in new units.

Cities in King County also saw growth, including Kirkland, where the average apartment size increased from 610 to 821 square feet this year. Auburn saw an 87 square foot increase and Redmond saw an average increase of 34 square feet. At the same time, Seattle apartments have shrunk by an average of 64 square feet.

Kirkland and Auburn are also bucking their trend of building smaller, according to RentCafe. Over the past decade, these cities have been building smaller and smaller apartments. But both cities are now building larger units.

Everett and Kirkland were the two cities with the largest increases in new home square footage, followed by Scottsdale, AZ, and Midland, TX. Chicago was the largest city on the list adding 38 square feet.

Of the 92 cities that RentCafe analyzed in the US, 36% of apartment buildings under construction tended to move towards larger apartments compared to five years ago. These apartments increased by an average of around 50 square meters.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, three-bedroom apartments saw the largest increase in square footage, followed by two-bedroom apartments and then one-bedroom apartments.

The study says the pandemic and working from home have made people more aware of the space they live in, particularly in relation to office and work spaces.

The average expansion of 48 square feet is large enough to accommodate a small home office, bathroom, or type of living space that provides a lifestyle upgrade for people who spend more time at home.

While it’s too early to say with certainty that larger homes are a result of the pandemic, RentCafe said the trend could be due to developers targeting high-income people who choose not to buy.

It could also be because people from urban areas are moving to the suburbs, the RentCafe article says, where people can find larger apartments but also easier access to nature while being near communal facilities.

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