Multifamily developers added a record number of new apartments across greater Seattle this year. But renter demand has so far picked up across the region to meet the added supply, signaling this high-profile market is headed toward balance for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

Roughly 13,000 units were added to greater Seattle’s multifamily inventory in the past 12 months, including a record 4,600 apartments finished in the second quarter, CoStar data shows.

Renters leased 4,800 units in the most recent quarter, representing a significant shift toward supply and demand equilibrium in the region, where apartment leasing has trailed new construction on average in the years since the onset of the pandemic, according to the latest CoStar Market Analytics report.

Seattle has ranked among the nation's fastest-growing big cities by population since 2010, according to census data, fueled by the expansion of tech companies including Amazon and Microsoft. With more people moving to the city, Seattle's downtown had the highest number of apartment units under construction last year among major West Coast cities, outpacing other high-growth areas such as Santa Clara in California’s Silicon Valley and the heart of San Diego, CoStar analytics show.

Seattle's leasing increase has helped keep the market's apartment vacancy rate of 6.9% almost a full percentage point below the national rate of 7.8%, according to CoStar, though slightly above the 6.8% rate seen about a year ago. Heightened leasing is also expected to help push rent growth back up to 3.4% for the year, from 1.1% last year.

The data reflects a similar rebound in apartment demand across the United States this year, driven by rising consumer confidence and diminishing concerns of a recession, according to CoStar's Multifamily National Report.

Luxury apartments make up most of the units completed so far this year in Seattle, including a cluster of large projects in and around the downtown region, such as Hilite, a 206-unit project in Rainier Valley.

The project is among three complexes totaling 770 units completed this year by developer One Trent that also included the Rook in downtown Tacoma and the Kerf in Bellingham, a city just south of the U.S.–Canada border.

The downtown complexes leased at a robust rate averaging more than 125 units per month in the first six months of 2024, CoStar data shows.

The thousands of apartments opening throughout the region represent the tail end of a multifamily construction boom across most of greater Seattle since 2021 that has started to recede this year.

Here's a handful of the largest multifamily projects that have finished construction in the greater Seattle and Puget Sound region this year.

• Russell Square, a developer based in Seattle, in May opened the 570-unit Highlands at Silverdale, a sprawling project at 11501 Clear Creek Road NW, near Bremerton, Washington.

• Scottsdale, Arizona-based Alliance Residential Co. this spring opened the 190-unit Broadstone Savoie at 35 112th Ave. NE, in downtown Bellevue. The property offers one- and two-bedroom units, with rents ranging from about $2,800 to $5,000 per month.
  

• Locally based developer Timberlane Partner opened the first studio and one-bedroom units to renters in March at the nine-building, 162-unit Sumner Mill apartments at 5816 162nd Ave. E in Pierce County's Sumner.
  

• Tarragon, a developer that has offices in downtown Seattle and Sumner, finished construction in March of a 216-unit apartment complex at 3200 Willamette Drive NE in Lacey, a suburb of Olympia.
  
• The first apartments in a master-planned development totaling 1,000 multifamily units opened in Puyallup's South Hill neighborhood, southeast of Tacoma, Washington, where strong renter demand has held the vacancy rate below 7%. Corliss Management Group, a family owned real estate company based in Seattle, opened the first two of five planned buildings at the 120-unit Douglas at Sunrise complex at 12004 E. 179th Court, part of the 1,500-acre Sunrise development.

The number of apartment starts over the past year have dropped to less than a third of their 12-month average in 2022, when multifamily construction reached its peak. Developers have broken ground on just 2,530 units this year, as of last week.

That puts the region on a pace well below last year’s annual total of 6,700 units — the lowest number of apartment starts since 2010, when Seattle’s tech boom was just starting and the nation’s construction industry was digging out from the financial crisis and housing market collapse, CoStar data shows.

The pipeline of projects under construction is also showing signs of emptying as developers deliver projects.

About 20,700 apartments were under construction across the region at the end of the second quarter, the lowest quarterly total since the end of 2017 and well below the all-time quarterly high of almost 28,700 units under construction at mid-year 2022.