Renters in Seattle and San Francisco are struggling to meet housing costs. A new survey from Refin has found that 40% of low-income households in the two cities are rent burdened, meaning that rent payments exceed 30% of their income.

The tech industry is driving the housing affordability challenges in both markets.

In San Jose, housing values have increased 46% to $1.1 million since 2015. In Seattle, housing prices are up 56% to $625,000. The markets also have a similar share of rent-burdened households. In San Jose, 41.3% of households earning 80% of the median-area income were considered rent-burdened, while in Seattle, 42.7% of households in the same category paid more than 30% of their income on rent.

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Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.