Faro Labs / Markets / Seattle, WA
Seattle real estate investment market
What a typical rental in Seattle, Washington costs, rents for, and returns: underwritten by Faro's own engine, not a scraped summary.
Returns assume 20% down at 6.75% over 30 years, 7% vacancy, and standard operating costs: Faro's default assumptions, the same ones every report starts from. Home value and rent trends as of 2026-05-31.
Difficult for both
At market rent, a typical Seattle rental runs $3,856 short each month, and home values moved −2.7% over the last year. Neither leg is carrying deals right now, which means the ones that work here are bought well below market rather than at it.
The price a deal actually works at
Faro models five price points for Seattle, from a weak buy to a strong one. The market-rate deal is $865,273; a good buy is $778,746 and a great one $692,218 roughly 20% below market value. Those are the bars a specific listing gets measured against when you run it.
How Seattle compares
Of the 210 markets Faro publishes, Seattle is the 19th most expensive to buy into: 118% above the median covered market, and the 199th strongest on rent-to-price. Within Washington it's the 2nd priciest of 6 markets we cover. On the last year of home-value change it ranks 173rd.
To break even at the default financing, a typical Seattle property would need about $7,056 a month in rent: $4,760 more than the $2,296 the market currently supports.
What each tier costs in Seattle
Faro models five price points per market. A listing gets measured against these bars, not against a national average.
| Tier | Purchase price | Market rent | vs. market rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weak buy | $951,800 | $2,181/mo | +10% |
| Fair buy | $908,537 | $2,250/mo | +5% |
| Market rate | $865,273 | $2,296/mo | — |
| Good buy | $778,746 | $2,411/mo | -10% |
| Great buy | $692,218 | $2,526/mo | -20% |
A typical Seattle deal, underwritten
The market-rate property above, run through the same engine every Faro report uses.
| Purchase price | $865,273 |
|---|---|
| Monthly rent | $2,296 |
| Cash required (20% down + 3% closing) | $199,013 |
| Net operating income | $7,608/yr |
| Monthly cash flow | -$3,856 |
| Cap rate | 0.9% |
| Cash-on-cash return | −23.2% |
| DSCR | 0.14 |
Rents are climbing faster than prices
Rents rose 1.5% over the last year while home values moved down 2.7%: a 4.2-point gap. When rent growth outruns price growth, yields improve without you doing anything: the same $865,273 property collects more each year against a price that hasn't moved to match. It's the rarer of the two directions and it's what turns a marginal market into a workable one over a hold.
Expensive, and the rent doesn't follow
Seattle is the 19th most expensive of the 210 markets here, 117.9% above the median, but rent only reaches 0.27% of price a month, so the income never scales with the entry cost. A typical property needs $199,013 in cash and still runs $3,856 short each month. Buyers here are underwriting appreciation and the loan paydown, not the rent, whether or not they say so.
What it would take to break even
A typical Seattle property would need about $7,056 a month to cover itself at the default financing: 207% above the $2,296 the market currently supports. That gap is the honest size of the problem: it isn't closed by trimming an expense line, it's closed by buying meaningfully below market, putting more down, or finding a property that rents well above its market's median.
Seattle investor questions
Is Seattle a good place to buy rental property?
A typical Seattle rental at $865,273 renting for $2,296 a month returns 0.9% on a cap-rate basis and runs short by $3,856 a month at 20% down. Individual deals vary far more than markets do, which is the whole reason to underwrite a specific address.
Can you cash-flow a rental in Seattle?
Not at the market's own price and rent. A typical property runs $3,856 short each month. It would need about $7,056 in rent to break even. Deals that work here are bought below market rather than at it, which is what the price ladder above is for.
Are rents going up in Seattle?
Rents moved up 1.5% over the last year, measured across 22 ZIP codes. The typical market-rate rental sits at $2,296 a month.
Where do these numbers come from?
Price and rent come from a modeled city-level benchmark dataset; the year-over-year trends are Zillow's ZHVI and ZORI indices, taken as the median across every covered ZIP so one unusual ZIP can't swing the figure. Every return metric is computed by Faro's own underwriting engine. Days on market and sale-to-list aren't shown because we have no city-level source for them we'd stand behind.
Other Washington markets
Run the numbers yourself
A market average is not a deal.
Paste a real Seattle listing and Faro underwrites that specific property from its own comps, with a target price you can actually offer.
Estimates for analysis and educational use only: not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Verify every number independently before making a purchase decision.