I’ve been spending the last few weeks putting together a photo album for Trouble 1. Like a real hands on photo album. I started for his 30 year birthday last year and made the first two, covering his life from my growing belly until he was five. Now for his 31 it was time for album nr. 3: summer -91 - summer -93. Which means our first stay in Seattle is told in pictures and writing.
Looking at a downtown picture shot from the Space Needle deck I am struck by how sparse it is. The high rises scattered over the area. And pointing the camera to South Lake Union I am thinking, wow these pictures are historic! Seattle has grown into a dense city and some places are completely changed. And the densification just keeps on happening.
There are more construction cranes in Seattle than in any other US city. While many American cities don’t have a real downtown, Seattle has a very clear and distinct one centered around the heart of shopping Pacific Place Mall, Westlake Mall and the Nordstrom flagship store. It’s great! Especially when you are new to a city it is really helpful to have a center to navigate around.
And as if that’s not enough one more downtown is coming up. South Lake Union in my pictures from 1993 is an industrial area area with one story buildings (Umebor, think Västerslätt) where you could find most anything from shipping and boat supplies to film rolls. And boy was that a hard neighborhood to navigate! Today it is the Amazon campus with 25 000 employees, more to come and a city center growing for the daily need for all those blue badged people. Easier to navigate? Well, they say it’s hard to get in and out because it’s already congested and has made the commute even worse.
For as long as I have known Seattle it has never been an inexpensive city. The only time the home prices went down was after the 2008 crash, but Seattle was never hit in the way many other cities in the US were. In 2010 I dreamt about buying the fabulous penthouse where I was staying for the summer which was for sale at a bargain, 375 000 $. I even bought lottery tickets! No luck though unfortunately.
Today Seattle tops the nation in home price growth. The national numbers are up 5.8% for the last year, Seattle 10.8%, close to double! During my early Seattle years renters were only people who were in transition or didn’t have a reliable income. That changed when home prices became unaffordable even for people with a more stable life, and during the past four years rents have skyrocket across Seattle about 40%!
So what happens to a city which is super expensive going on even more expensive? Well, except traffic congestion it attracts a finical elite. And some Seattleites who have been there for generations have to leave.
It turns out nearly half of Seattle millennials consider moving as Seattle-area costs are soaring!
45 percent of millennials in the Puget Sound region think they will have to move somewhere cheaper to afford the life they want, even though nearly all would prefer to stay in the area. Such a loss! Such a terrible loss!
This is not a problem exclusive for Seattle. Attractive places are difficult spots for young adults to start a life, same goes for Umeå although on a different scale. The condo market was up 12% only in the last quarter here. Those cities might also be a hard place to retire or being disadvantaged in other ways.
The costs in booming Seattle are even negative for tourism. A recent J.D Power survey ranks Seattle 37th on the list of the top 50 destinations in the US! The gorgeous Emerald City! What happened? Well, tourists have pretty much the same complains as Seattleites: traffic is bad and it’s expensive. A Best Western hotel in Seattle does probably not have a higher standard than in Phoenix or somewhere else. And Air.bnb doesn’t help. People offering apartments know the market values.
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