There are a lot of reasons folks move to Seattle from around the country. Spacious apartments isn’t one of them.
Seattle apartments constructed in the past 10 years have an average size of 649 square feet, according to a new report from RentCafe.com, an apartment search website. Among the 100 U.S. cities with the largest number of rental units, Seattle ranks last for average apartment size.
Seattle apartments used to be a little bigger. Ten years ago, they averaged 706 square feet. But as the cost of housing rose, developers responded by building smaller apartments, including a slew of micro-units, which can be as tiny as 150 square feet. Many renters in Seattle seem willing to sacrifice living space to lower the rent.
According to the report, new construction in Seattle increasingly focused on studios and one-bedrooms, which have also shrunk in size over the past decade. For example, the report shows that the average studio in Seattle is now 371 square feet, down from 442 square feet one decade earlier.
Apartments with two or more bedrooms now make up only 19% of new inventory, down from 24% 10 years ago. But unlike studios and one-bedrooms, the larger apartments have grown slightly.
Tiny apartments might provide a solution to counter the high cost of housing in Seattle for some — in particular, single people. And in fact, single people are a large and growing segment of the city’s population. In my previous column, I reported on new census data showing that for the first time, half of all men in Seattle were never-married singles.
Small apartments don’t work nearly as well for couples or families, who might find themselves having to look outside of Seattle for housing.
Among the 100 cities in the report, only one other had an average new apartment size below 700 square feet: Portland, where the micro-unit trend has also taken hold. The Rose City ranked second with an average of 668 square feet.
Two New York City boroughs take the third and fourth spots, with Queens at 702 square feet followed by Brooklyn at 708 square feet. San Francisco rounds out the top 5 cities for smallest new apartments, averaging 716 square feet.
Nationally, there has been a recent uptick in average apartment size since 2022. Before that, square footage was on a fairly steady downward slide.
Among the 100 cities in the report, 85 have seen apartments shrink over the past 10 years. Detroit had the most dramatic decrease, with the average apartment down by 184 square feet, or 25%. According to the report, Detroit is experiencing a similar trend as Seattle and Portland toward construction of much smaller apartments.
Most of the 15 cities where units have increased in size are smaller and less densely populated, but there are some exceptions. In San Francisco, the average unit grew 59 square feet, and the average apartment size also increased in the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
So where can you live if you want room to stretch out?
The 10 cities with the largest average apartment size are located in the Sunbelt. Tallahassee ranked No. 1, with an average of 1,130 square feet, 74% larger than Seattle. Another Florida city, Gainesville, ranked second at 1,122 square feet, followed by Baton Rouge, La., at 1,055 square feet.
The apartment size and rent data are current as of February 2025. The data comes from Yardi Matrix, a RentCafe.com sister company specializing in apartment market information for more than 177 U.S. markets.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.