SEATTLE — As home prices and public safety worries remain elevated, one in three Seattleites are considering leaving the Emerald City, according to a Seattle Times/Suffolk University poll conducted in June.
About 33% of Seattle residents surveyed said they were seriously considering moving out of the city. Sixty-seven percent said they were not. The poll of 500 residents was conducted by phone from June 12-16 and has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Among the residents who say they are considering leaving, 37% blamed rising housing costs, and 34% cited public safety as their primary reason for moving.
Reasons for moving were also closely tied to income levels and homeownership.
Overall, renters (44%) were more likely than homeowners (27%) to consider moving out. Respondents with lower incomes, especially those earning less than $20,000, were more likely to blame soaring Seattle home prices for motivating them to move. Poll data shows this group also reported experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity at the highest rates.
Meanwhile, public safety was the main concern among respondents in the highest household income bracket, those earning over $250,000 a year. These residents were also more likely to be homeowners than renters.
Of those wanting to move, 80% rated Seattle poorly as a place to live and 66% said they did not feel safe in their neighborhood. In comparison, among the two-thirds of Seattleites who did not consider leaving, 88% rated the city as an excellent place to live and 72% said they felt safe in their own neighborhood.
Notably, the majority of respondents citing housing costs as a major reason for wanting to move out rated Seattle as an excellent place to live, indicating their reluctance to leave if not for affordability.
In the last three years, costs in the Seattle metro area climbed over 20%. Before the pandemic, it took nine years for costs to grow that much.
Meanwhile the Seattle metro area’s home price index is now 40% higher than 2018, down from 50% in 2022. But wages have not kept up with these cost increases, and well-compensated tech and finance workers are skewing the city’s income average.
In the past two decades, King County’s middle-class residents moved more frequently than those in any other income group, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco based on credit scores.
Moving patterns revealed these residents were more likely to move out of the county’s wealthiest neighborhoods. While lower-income residents moved less often, they were more likely to move out of the Puget Sound region altogether.
About 65% residents considering leaving said the city’s ability to make progress on homelessness had gotten worse, and 60% rated the quality of education poor.
Along party lines, Republicans (53%) were more likely than Democrats (24%) to express a desire to move out of the city.
Phoenix and Spokane are the top destinations for Seattle-area residents moving out of the region, shows data from Redfin.
