Why Is Washington State So Expensive?

At a time when affordability has been top of mind for residents across the country, a new report shines light on just how rapidly costs have risen for those living in Washington state. In fact, the report finds that, from 2013-2023, prices rose faster in the Evergreen State than in any other.

For certain metropolitan regions — around Spokane and Tri-Cities, for example — costs of living rose particularly sharply. The cost of living for a dual-income family with one child rose about 30 percent from 2021-2025 in those areas, per the report.

“As somebody who lives in the Northwest, and particularly in the Seattle area, cost of living is very expensive,” says Morgan Shook, senior policy adviser at public policy research firm ECOnorthwest, who was not associated with the report. “The cost of goods and services have been just appreciably more expensive … gas is really expensive, as well as a range of retail and personal services. Whether you’re going out for lunch, dinner or even just groceries.”

One of the biggest drivers of the rising cost of living in Washington, and the Seattle area in particular, is housing. To some extent, housing, wages and prices all rise together — when cost of living is high, workers need to earn more to live there, so companies often pay higher wages; then, to make up for the higher labor cost, companies raise their prices.

But housing costs in areas like Seattle have been outpacing wage growth.

From 2010 to 2019, the median home value in Seattle rose 80 percent, while the median income in the county that encompasses Seattle only rose 55 percent. In addition, from 2014-2019, rent increases in most parts of the city outpaced income growth, with rents in the most affordable areas rising fastest.

How and why did everything get so expensive?

Many People, Few Homes

For a while, home price fluctuations in Seattle had mirrored national trends. In Seattle and nationally, average home prices rose between January 2000 and 2007, when they peaked. By January 2007, the average home price in Seattle had grown 82 percent over what it was in January 2000, compared to 71 percent across the U.S. Prices then tumbled everywhere for several years.

After the mid-2010s, however, Seattle began outpacing much of the country.

By August 2020, the average Seattle home price was 157 percent higher, compared to 103 percent across the U.S. That disparity extends to the state overall: In Washington state, home prices in 2020 were up 154 percent compared to January 2000.

Today, housing availability is a statewide problem and a huge driver of cost of living.

“Washington’s growing population exceeded 8.1 million people in 2025, and this growth has put a strain on the state’s existing housing supply and affordability,” Gov. Bob Ferguson said in an executive order in December 2025.

More than half of Washington renters spend over a third of their annual gross income in housing costs, and a quarter pay more than half. The Washington Center for Housing Studies, meanwhile, found that 80 percent of households were priced out of homeownership in 2025.

A 2023 report found the state needs to add 1.1 million homes by 2044 to meet projected needs. More than half of that housing must be affordable to people earning less than half of area median income. That means adding 55,000 homes per year.

High-paying jobs in life sciences, global health and technology have drawn people from around the world to come live and work in Seattle. A 2021 city of Seattle report found that in 2005, the city had a ratio of about 1.8 jobs per housing unit. But the city couldn’t produce enough housing to maintain this balance. From 2005-2019, the city gained about two net new jobs for every one new unit of housing, and from 2011-2019, added about 2.6 net new jobs per one unit of new housing. Overall, the city added 169,461 jobs from 2005-2019, but only 84,185 new units of housing.

Other cities with strong job growth like Austin, Dallas and Las Vegas have been able to build housing to accommodate new arrivals, resulting in home and rent prices stabilizing, says Barbara Denham, lead U.S. economist at economics advisory firm Oxford Economics.

“There’s so many parts of the country, like Arizona, Texas, Nevada, where they just have huge, open, very dry and boring swaths of land that developers can come in and just build, build, build … it keeps the price of housing down,” Denham says.

One factor challenging Washington may be how the state has balanced various goals when planning for growth. State policy stemming from the 1990s directed fast-growing counties and cities to plan for where this growth should occur, while following certain principles. Those include reducing sprawl and encouraging development in urban areas, as well as protecting air and water quality and preserving open space. The law drew boundary lines around metropolitan areas and discouraged building outside of them, to protect farm and forest land.

This leads cities to focus on in-fill development, with developers constructing in gaps between existing buildings or on lots that already have other structures. That’s the most difficult kind of development, Shook says. Rising labor costs, limited locally available construction workers and shortages of building materials driven by high demand also sent Seattle construction costs rising 40 percent from 2009 to 2021, per the city.

Insufficient stock drives up prices, and those unable to afford homebuying become a captive market for landlords, who can raise rents, Denham says. (From 2000-2020, Seattle only saw rents stabilize or decline when housing vacancy rates hit at least 6 percent, per the city report). As rents rise, people are less able to save up for a house, feeding the cycle.

Lower-income renter households in King County often resort to overcrowding, squeezing people into units with too-few bedrooms because it’s what they can afford, Shook says. Others may not find somewhere to live at all: The city reports that, in 2021, about 34,000 people earning less than $40,000 from jobs in Seattle lived more than 25 miles outside the city and commuted in; someone earning at this level could only afford a studio in “one of the lowest cost areas of the city.”

Washington’s population, and thus housing need, continues to rise — the census lists it as tied with several other states for the sixth fastest-growing between 2024-2025. But decline in net international migration is slowing the rate of population growth across the U.S., and Washington is feeling that, too. The number of net new arrivals in 2025 was the lowest the state had seen since 2013 (with the exception of 2021, during the pandemic).

In Seattle specifically, new college grads are expected to keep arriving as job growth continues, Denham says. But much of the area’s population increase comes from international immigration. A combination of domestic and international migration raised Seattle’s population by 49,000 in 2024, but by just 19,000 in 2025 and is expected to only add 9,600 people in 2026, she says.

Other Factors

Beyond housing, some other costs are unusually high, too. Gas at the pump is the second most expensive in the U.S., per a report. Transportation is a big factor — oil has to be brought in over mountainous terrain and delivered to spread-out population centers, says James McCafferty, director of the Center for Economic & Business Research at Western Washington University. Only a small portion of Washington’s oil comes via pipeline, the cheapest transportation method — with the rest delivered more expensively via ship and rail.

“North Dakota can send their oil south into the U.S through a pipeline for far less expense than it is to ship it by train to northwest Washington to be refined,” McCafferty says. High labor costs make it more expensive to refine the oil in the state, too, he adds.

Tackling Housing

A flurry of state laws seeks to ramp up housing supply. Just in the past year and a half, the state has lowered parking requirements for homes to reduce construction costs, capped some rent increases and sought to streamline permitting.

Washington also has been funneling more money into its Housing Trust Fund, which helps low- and very-low-income people get housing, by funding rent and home down payment subsidies, housing construction and other projects. The fund spent nearly $729 million in the 2021-2023 budget cycle, up from roughly $242 million in the previous cycle and $112 million the budget before that.

But the biggest change is in the works. The state plans to revamp its approach by creating a cabinet-level Department of Housing, which would bring the state’s various housing-related efforts into a single department. The move is intended to provide more transparency and coordination, including reducing administrative hurdles.

A task force is preparing recommendations for how to do this, which lawmakers will consider during the 2027 session.