Average Rent in Washington: ZIP Benchmarks & Renewal Timing

What the rent evidence changes for a rental decision

Value the existing lease first. Then verify the tenancy’s increase eligibility, notice service and effective date. In the Eastside and Spokane comparisons, test competing supply and owner costs instead of assuming that a lower statewide benchmark makes the same debt budget work.

Redmond / Eastside and Seattle urban-core delivery pockets

A smaller regional pipeline can still leave a large project beside the subject

Kidder’s Q3 list identifies Overlake East in Overlake with 1,088 units expected in Q2 2027 and Aero1200 in Seattle’s Denny Triangle with 927 units expected in Q2 2027. Its completed-project table lists 217 units at Rove Redmond in September 2026. These are named project observations, not a census of every competitive unit.

Regional supply contraction does not remove a concentrated lease-up from a particular commuting or amenity catchment. Expected delivery and actual availability differ. Overlake and downtown Seattle are not interchangeable rental products, and Seattle city’s local notice rule should not be assigned to an Eastside address merely because it shares King County.

Decision. Map the subject’s real competitors, verify project status with current leasing materials and permits, and compare opening incentives for the actual unit type. Run a renewal budget with no assumed rent growth if those projects overlap the lease-expiration calendar.

What could change it. A delayed project, different unit mix or a tenant base that does not view it as a substitute can reduce exposure. Dated leasing evidence can show that a listed pipeline property has already been absorbed; the published expected date alone cannot.

Records to obtain. Project delivery evidence, live availability, incentives, floor plans, travel-time catchment and the subject’s renewal calendar.

Read the source reports

• Kidder Mathews Seattle Multifamily Q3 2026 — Q3 2026, p. 1; publisher Seattle/CoStar apartment market; listed construction delivery dates are expectations, not guarantees; accessed October 22, 2026.

Compare rents across these county groups

These analyst-selected sets use the listed county labels and the same September 2026 observation month. Each ZIP receives one equal vote. They are not official metro definitions, exhaustive regions or bedroom comparisons.

27 distinct county labels appear in the current sample; geographic coverage is incomplete and uneven. Only currently available observations from the same latest month enter these comparisons. Older retained records and missing ZIPs do not enter as zero rents.

Seattle illustration: keep unverified future increases out of the reference cash

The editable reference assumes an in-place $2,200 rent, 4% combined vacancy/collection loss, $8,500 annual recurring expenses, $14,400 debt and $1,500 reserves per apartment. All amounts and loss assumptions are hypothetical. It produces $25,344 collected income, $16,844 NOI and $944 cash after debt and reserves.

Initial calculated result: $25,344 collected rent, $16,844 NOI before debt/reserves, and $944 cash after debt/reserves. Change the assumptions below to test your own budget.

Continue with the right geography and tool

• Washington apartment cap-rate evidence — Separate an income recovery from the exit yield paid for it.
• King County rental evidence — Inspect county context without assigning one city’s ordinance to the whole county.
• Multifamily property calculator — Model unit-by-unit leases and buyer costs after confirming effective dates.
• Single-family rental calculator — Build a house-specific operating and financing budget.
• ZIP and bedroom HUD rent reference — a different measure from asking-rent ZORI; a PHA must still establish its payment standard and approve the actual contract.
• Property income calculator — use signed comparables and actual expenses for the subject property.

Washington rent questions

How these rent figures are calculated

State: Washington · USPS WA · Census state FIPS 53. Zillow supplies postal ZIP observations with city and county labels. We filter to valid positive rents in this state and the latest common observation month, sort the values, and take the middle value, or the mean of the two middle values for an even count. Means are the sum divided by included ZIPs. No population, household or rental-unit weighting is added.

The all-home, all-bedroom ZIP series is smoothed, not seasonally adjusted. A bedroom rent cannot be inferred from it. Membership can change after a refresh, so a change in this page’s median is not a matched-sample rent-growth rate. This edition does not publish a ZIP-sample growth claim.

Data: Zillow Research · ZORI method · National ZIP source CSV. The state benchmark is our ZIP-based calculation, not a provider-published statewide estimate. Occupied-unit Census rent, listing medians, effective broker rents and HUD gross-rent references answer different questions and are not blended here.

The observation month identifies the rent data available for this comparison. Historical or missing latest observations stay out of the current sample. Check the date before comparing a property with a newly advertised offer.

Market and legal sources below were reviewed 2026-10-22. Their own periods are shown next to each claim. Broker samples and boundaries are not fully disclosed; surveys may share underlying providers and should not be treated as independent experiments. The market interpretation is conditional research, not a property-level income guarantee. Recheck local rules, signed comparable leases and actual expenses before using an illustration in a transaction.