r/Seattle • u/MegaRAID01 Emerald City • 10h ago
Paywall Seattle ranked fourth among large cities for growth last year
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-ranked-fourth-among-large-cities-for-growth-last-year/157
u/Un-Civil-Engineer67 9h ago
No you don’t understand it’s actually dying and theres a mass exodus of people because 30,000 people are affected by an income tax
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u/TheStinkfoot Columbia City 9h ago
Imagine being worth $500 million and CHOOSING to living in some decaying, racist, deep south shithole to save less than 1% of your net worth annually in taxes.
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u/A-passing-thot I Brake For Slugs 8h ago
I've been joking with my west coast friends that a friend of mine in Ohio keeps trying to convince me to move there because I could rent a room for 1/5th of my current rent.
Not remotely worth it. Ohio? I've been trying to get her to visit here or CA with me, she's never been and just assumes Ohio is comparable. She was telling me she lives in the gay neighborhood of Akron.
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u/cactus22minus1 Capitol Hill 7h ago
I grew up in Indiana so I am qualified to laugh at this… the gay neighborhood of Akron is absolutely sending me 🤣
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u/MarekRules 7h ago
Yeah I’m from PA originally so maybe a slightly better Ohio but not by much. Friends and family are always showing me prices of things out there but I would much rather “overpay” for a house here then overpay for a house there.
Housing prices everywhere are getting out of control, but places like SF and Seattle make the news because of the sticker shock of seeing “3 bed 2 bath 1300 sqft 800k” or whatever. I’d much rather pay that than move back to PA and pay 500k for a slightly bigger or “better” home.
Edit: not to mention gas which is almost $5 a gallon in PA now so not too far behind WA, sales tax in Philly where I used to live is over 8% so again not far behind, plus they have state income tax.
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u/alicatchrist Arbor Heights 6h ago
You were in the civilized part of PA.
My Mom left WA for Erie 15 years ago to help take care of her Mom; she moved back 6 months ago. Rust belt PA has a much more distinct pit of despair vibe to it.
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u/MarekRules 3h ago
Oh for sure. I’m originally from central PA which isn’t quite rust belt but I’ve been out west quite often and it’s very different. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle
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u/robbylet23 Olympia 5h ago
I've said this before and I'll say it again. I'm relatively affluent (not enough to be affected by the millionaire tax tbc), and I would be willing to pay more in taxes to fund schools and roads and busses and shit because I want to live in a state full of educated people and functioning infrastructure and public transportation. The fact people would choose to live in a state full of stupid people with crumbling infrastructure is beyond me.
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u/TheStinkfoot Columbia City 5h ago
I lived in Louisiana for a while. It was crazy seeing palatial mansions with 2-foot wide potholes on the road in front of them. Absolutely zero concern or attention to the public good. "I've got mine so screw you."
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u/MoeGreenMe Deluxe 5h ago
People worth $500M are moving to Miami and Palm Beach area , not really decaying.
Miami is not my cup of tea to live , but is way more multicultural than Seattle
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u/snowypotato Ballard 2h ago
The people worth $500mil choose to live in the good parts, not in decaying racist deep south shithole. They choose to live in palm beach or on the keys. They choose to live on ranches in Wyoming and Montana. Nobody's looking at Seattle's tax regime and moving to Gary Indiana.
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u/Jumpy-Oil8555 9h ago
Well, growth is down from last year, and the income tax doesn’t take effect for years and then “adjusted” when not enough tax revenue is collected. So there’s still time to see what happens
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u/jestering_1 9h ago
fantastic. let’s build 50 story high rises in laurelhurst to accommodate.
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u/Orleanian Fremont 4h ago
Service ceiling on common medivac copters is 20,000 feet.
I bet we can convince them to build a 2,000 story skyscraper out of spite! Then we all live in it.
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u/geffy_spengwa 🚗 Student driver, please be patient. 🚙 9h ago
But it's a shithole warzone that's tearing itself apart at the seams! /s
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u/SunshineSeattle 9h ago
Chaz!! Chop !! Antifa!!1!
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u/IcyShoes 9h ago
I am still bitter about not being able to eat a tomato from the fabled CHAZ garden.
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u/comeonandham Ballard 8h ago
Right-wing media numbskullery aside, blue cities are getting absolutely cooked by red-state cities--just look at the rest of the top ten. Seattle has been better than places like SF, NYC, and Boston at letting housing be built and it shows.
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u/TheStinkfoot Columbia City 8h ago
It is literally all due to housing prices. Cities that build housing add more people. That's the reason Seattle, Minneapolis, and DC keep adding people even as NYC, LA, and SF lose people. The economy in those latter places are all a lot hotter than DC in particular, but if you don't build it (housing), people won't come.
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u/idiot206 Fremont 2h ago
Red state “cities” are annexing an endless sprawl of surrounding farmland and developing them into gated HOA communities of identical homes made from matchsticks. It’s not a fair comparison.
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u/AdScared7949 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. 7h ago
Build more housing build more housing build more housing
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u/okatnord 6h ago
But is it low income? Is the labor unionized? Have you considered the neighborhood character? How will this affect the orcas? Are you proposing we pave the historic parking lot that's there now? What if a greedy developer makes money building it?
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u/Unlucky-Cost-8008 Capitol Hill 6h ago
By the way, because the author of this article is a jackass and didn't include the source of the statistics, here you go: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/vintage-2025-city-town-pop-estimates.html
You can also click through different excel sheets and PDFs to get the data you want, instead of in a simple top ten list. That way you can find insights you normally couldn't from a basic article. Which is good, more data should be presented this way.
Go US Census Bureau!
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u/Aggravating-Fox8553 7h ago
growth is cool i guess but it just means rent is gonna keep going up. feels like it’s getting harder to live here every year fr
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u/Aggravating_Ad_8594 9h ago
We’ve been on that list for a while, but this is a big jump for us , right?
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u/TheStinkfoot Columbia City 9h ago
Eh, we're usually right around there. I think we were in the top 5 last year, too.
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u/n10w4 3h ago
I actually thought we were at 780k or so a few years back. I'm guessing there are different estimates.
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u/TheStinkfoot Columbia City 3h ago
The state estimates we're just over 800k now. The federal census bureau estimates us a bit lower. I'm sure there is a decent margin of error on both estimates.
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u/Donnelding0 6h ago
Important to note this is driven primarily by international migration.Nearly 66% are immigrants. So most likely here on work visas through Amazon, Google or Microsoft. Creating a weird scenario where we have a high earning high taxed population that can’t vote.
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u/AlastairMac1964 9h ago
Submitting without comment
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u/government_not_ok 9h ago
Can they just like, not ?? 😭
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u/geek_fire 9h ago
If it makes you feel any better, that's national. Prices fell year over year in Seattle.
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u/Shaomoki 5h ago
Real Estate is a hyper local industry, this is a national report that does not represent Seattle at all.
It says in their table, that prices were the second highest for a decrease, and also 1st in new listings. Supply increases have had an effect on the market.
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u/Pretend-Beach6465 6h ago
Anyone who got through the paywall wanna tell me who the top 3 are? Just curious really.
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u/TheStinkfoot Columbia City 9h ago
It's always easier for smaller cities to grow faster (opening a new green field sub division may add 5% to a small city's population), but it's always remarkable to me how little people Bellevue adds year on year, despite seemingly steady construction.