WCRER provides easy access to key housing data elements through dashboards providing data for counties and cities. Data can be viewed for specific quarters or years in graphical form or easily downloaded in various formats.
Data are provided where available for all counties and for cities with populations 10,000 or above as well as selected smaller cities. The start dates for each data series vary depending on the availability and consistency of the data.
City and County Dashboards
The main city and county dashboards, which are updated quarterly, provide the following information:
- Median House Prices are based primarily on data from Cotality (formerly CoreLogic), who collect the data from county property assessors. In some cases, we obtain the data directly from the county property assessors. Both the county and city house price data pertain to single-family houses and represent the midpoints in the distribution of prices for each location. Median house prices are provided only for those cities with enough transactions to allow for meaningful comparisons over time.
- Average Apartment Rents are based on data obtained from CoStar. To give a more comprehensive picture of affordability in the rental market, they reflect units categorized as both market-rate and affordable, but exclude specialized categories, such as housing for seniors or the military.
- Apartment Vacancy Rates are also based on data obtained from CoStar. New properties still in the lease-up process (within two years of completion of construction) are omitted from the data.
- Median Household Incomes for counties and cities are estimated by WCRER based on information from the Washington State Office of Financial Management, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The income estimates and Housing Affordability Indexes (see below) are subject to change as new data become available.
- Housing Affordability Indexes (HAIs) represent household income as a percentage of the income required to afford to buy or rent the relevant dwelling unit. Index numbers of 100 or greater indicate that the relevant dwelling unit is affordable, while numbers less than 100 indicate that it is not affordable (although less expensive units would be affordable). For more details, please contact WCRER. Because the HAIs are based on median incomes in each county or city, and higher cost jurisdictions tend to have higher median incomes, they do not indicate relative affordability across locations. Instead, they are best used to track changes in affordability in specific locations over time. The following HAIs are reported:
- for a median-income household purchasing a median-priced single-family house, with a 20% down payment;
- for a first-time buyer with income at 80% of the median household income, purchasing a single-family house priced at 85% of the median house price, with a 10% down payment;
- for a median-income household renting an average-priced apartment, and
- for a low-income household with 70% of the median income renting an average-priced apartment.
City and County Building Permit Dashboards
The city and county building permit dashboards provide annual numbers of units permitted for single- and multi-family properties separately. The data are from the US Census Bureau’s Building Permit Survey and are updated early each year when the preliminary “year-to-date” numbers are published for the previous year. Those numbers are revised several months later when the Census Bureau publishes the final “annual” numbers for the previous year.