Tacoma rent is rapidly rising, according to a Zillow report released Thursday.
The top four fastest appreciating rental neighborhoods are Tacoma’s Central, South End, Eastside and West End neighborhoods.
Rents in the Central neighborhood grew 9.9 percent over last year, and the South End neighborhood grew 9.2 percent. That’s about 6 percentage points higher than the regional average (3.3 percent), according to Zillow.
Tacoma’s Eastside (8.9 percent) and West End (8.3 percent) saw similar growth.
The median rent in those neighborhoods was between $1,591 per month (Central) and $1,859 per month (West End).
Everett’s Westmont neighborhood had the fifth fastest appreciating rents in the Seattle metro area, growing 8.1 percent over 2017.
The good news for renters is that rent appreciation is slowing year-over-year. Rents appreciated 5.8 percent in 2017 compared to just 3.3 percent this year. Seattle has one of the nation’s most expensive rental markets, and the trend of slowing rent appreciation was similar in other pricey markets, such as Los Angeles, Portland and Boston, according to the report.
“Over the past two years, rent growth slowed across the country as new apartments hit the market and renters with the financial means to do so increasingly became homeowners,” Zillow Senior Economist Aaron Terrazas said in a statement. “The slowdown in rent growth was most prominent in the markets that moved most quickly to add units – either because it was easy to build or because of local demands.”
However, Seattle’s rent appreciation was still above the 2018 national average of 2.1 percent.
