Seattle Has Smallest New Apartments in Nation

It pays to be lean when moving into a new Seattle apartment.

That’s because the Emerald City has the smallest new apartments in the nation, with typical units built in the past 10 years at 649 square feet, the Seattle Times reported, citing a report from RentCafe.

The average Seattle squeezebox is 8 percent tighter than the 706 square feet of a decade ago.

Among the 100 U.S. cities with the largest number of rental units, Seattle ranks last for average apartment size, based on February data hauled in by Yardi Matrix.

The reason: as the cost of housing spiked, developers built smaller apartments, including micro-units as small as 150 square feet.

At the same time, new construction in Seattle focused on studios and one-bedrooms, which have also shrunk since 2015, according to the report. The average studio in Seattle is 371 square feet, down from 442 square feet a decade ago.

Apartments with two or more bedrooms now make up 19 percent of new inventory, a drop from 24 percent 10 years ago. But unlike studios and one-bedrooms, the larger units have grown slightly.

Among the 100 cities in the report, only one other had an average new apartment size smaller than 700 square feet: Portland, a leader of the micro-unit trend. The Rose City ranked second, with an average of 668 square feet, according to RentCafe.

Two New York City boroughs ranked third and fourth, with Queens at 702 square feet followed by Brooklyn at 708 square feet. San Francisco rounds out the top five cities for smallest new apartments, averaging 716 square feet.

Since 2022, there has been an uptick in average apartment size from coast to coast. Before that, square footage was on a fairly steady downward slide.

Among the 100 cities, 85 have had their apartments shrink over the past decade. Detroit had the most dramatic decrease, with the average apartment down by 184 square feet, or 25 percent.

The largest apartments built since 2015 were in Tallahassee, Florida, with an average 1,130 square feet, followed by Gainesville, Florida at 1,122 square feet and Baton Rouge, Louisiana at 1,055 square feet, according to the report.

— Dana Bartholomew