Oh, Pike and Pine, remember when you were mine? (Image: Stacy Peck)
Just as the Wimps have given up on Capitol Hill, comes a sign that those bullying developers and landlords are increasingly worried that the days of easy pickings in the neighborhood are over.
“In our portfolio, we’re starting to see signs of things slowing down a little bit,” Billy Pettit, senior vice president at Pillar Properties, said Monday. While demand remains high, he said the large number of new units coming to the market is reason to pause, especially since the increase in supply is slowing down rent growth. There are 22,000 units projected to open this year and next. Combine that with the 7,400 units developers opened last year. – the highest level of production seen locally since 1991 – and it’s easy to see why landlords are concerned.
“This means rents won’t increase at the rate that some sources say they will,” the Puget Sound Business Journal concludes.
In September, CHS reported Dupre+Scott analysis showing rents across Central Seattle including Capitol Hill were up about 4% for the year — down from 8.4% a year earlier. Following a spike of new units coming online in 2014 Capitol Hill is poised to add at least 560 new apartment units in 2015 and more than 1,500 more in the next three years, according to Dupre+Scott. Meanwhile, 2016 is set up for a year of progress on a plan to create 20,000 affordable apartment units in Seattle by 2025.
““This means rents won’t increase at the rate that some sources say they will,” the Puget Sound Business Journal concludes.”
What the hell does that mean?
What “sources?” What “rate?”
Good God, that is some weaselly bullshit. You can never be wrong.
It’s as empty as saying
“it won’t rain as much as some people might think.”
Here let me make a more useful prediction.
Capitol Hill rents WILL keep going up. Up more than most people have the ability to pay.
“Capitol Hill rents WILL keep going up. Up more than most people have the ability to pay.”
Possibly true, but it is always thus. Supply and demand set these kinds of prices. If more people want to live on Capitol Hill than there are places to live, prices rise until there is equilibrium. Price increases stop when people refuse to pay them, or when housing supply reaches saturation. At that point prices stabilize or fall until vacancy rates approach zero, then the cycle starts. That’s the point of the article.
So where is it chiseled in stone that housing has to be part of the “free market.” There is an affordability crisis all over the first world with housing cost.
No, it’s not “ever thus.”
Adding inventory has never, and never will, lower rents because developers won’t build one stick more than there is peak demand. The best you get is a slow down of rate increases.
There are only three things that lower rents in growing markets: Economic contraction, natural or man made disaster — or government interference in the market.
The housing market in Seattle isn’t going build its way to cheap rents with out government making that happen. Ever.
What the hell does that mean?
“Capitol Hill rents WILL keep going up. Up more than most people have the ability to pay.”
What “sources?” What “rate?”
Good God, that is some weaselly bullshit. You can never be wrong.
It’s as empty as saying
“it won’t rain as much as some people might think.”
Some people want to feel like the are gettign screwed. When those units come on line there will be competition to fill them and you will see incentives come back and older units will get considerably cheaper
No they won’t.