Here’s how housing in Bellingham, Whatcom is stacking up
Metropolitan Seattle is now among several places across the U.S. where buying a home is considered impossible, and renting in Washington state isn’t any easier, according to a pair of recent reports that add to the dismal housing data.
MoneyGeek, a personal finance website, has added Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue to its list of 26 locations where owning a home is unaffordable.
“By the fourth quarter of 2021, the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price index had risen by 18.6% within the previous 12 months. It’s no wonder that nearly 50% of Americans are concerned about affordability, wondering if they can handle soaring mortgage payments,” MoneyGeek said in a report released Wednesday, April 13.
“Supply chain-related delays and labor shortages exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic are slowing new home construction, meaning houses aren’t being built fast enough to satisfy demand. With a tight inventory of available homes, home prices are quickly rising,” MoneyGeek said.
In Bellingham, the online real-estate company Zillow tracks the median home price at $674,577 in March 2022, up more than 25% over 2021.
Homes often sell above the asking price, according to recent Bellingham Herald reporting.
For renters, the median rent in Bellingham is about $1,900 a month, according to recent Herald reporting.
In its most recent ALICE Report, the United Way of Whatcom County found that 39% of residents were “asset-limited, income-constrained, employed.”
That means that nearly half of Whatcom County residents are classified as “working poor” because they earn more than the federal poverty level, but cannot afford housing, child care, health care, transportation and food.
Some 859 people were homeless in 2021, according to the annual Point in Time census of people living without shelter in Whatcom County.
A 2021 report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed that renters in Washington state must earn $29.31 an hour or work 86 hours at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Sperling’s best places online site shows Bellingham’s cost of living rate at 121.7, where 100 is the national average.
Sperling used a median home price of $559,100 and listed a rent range from $900 for a studio to $2,500 for a four-bedroom unit.
All that data is exacerbated by the lack of housing availability.
Bellingham’s vacancy rate was 1% in fall 2021, according to a report from the Western Washington University Center for Real Estate Research.
A vacancy rate of 5% to 7% is considered healthy, according to the city of Bellingham website.
“Another driving factor for home demand is increasing rates of remote work,” MoneyGeek said. “According to a Pew Research Center study, U.S. workers who say their jobs can mainly be done from home (59%) are working remotely all or most of the time. As more Americans don’t have to contend with lengthy commutes, they’re opting for homes outside of expensive cities in more affordable suburbs, where they can find more living space for their money.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Here’s how housing in Bellingham, Whatcom is stacking up."
