(upbeat music) - I'm Starla Sampaco in the Crosscut KCTS9 newsroom.

Seattle has consistently been one of the fastest growing cities in the US causing housing prices to skyrocket.

Seattle city reporter Josh Cohen asks, do you have to be rich to buy a house in Seattle?

- [Josh] Seattle's housing market is kind of a mess.

A quarter million dollars will get you a 400 square foot condo.

Try to buy a house for less than $600,000 in most of Seattle and you'll find nothing.

The median Seattle home is selling for $855,000.

When you look at your single family homes, it jumps over $950,000.

Part of the problem is there's not much supply and a ton of demand.

Seattle has consistently topped lists of the fastest growing cities in the US.

The population has increased by about 150,000 in the past decade with many coming for high paying tech jobs.

Housing construction hasn't kept pace and 80% of it has been apartments built for renters.

So do you have to be rich to be a homeowner here?

Even eight months ago, the answer was almost definitively yes.

Buyers needed a lot of money to compete in a world where all cash offers for 20% over asking price were common.

But the market has cooled a little in 2022 thanks in part to rising interest rates.

Higher interest rates mean higher monthly mortgage payments but also slightly less competition giving buyers more negotiating power.

It also opens the door to alternative financing like two to one mortgage buydowns, which lower the interest rate for the first two years of the loan.

Similarly, adjustable rate mortgages lower the rate for five, seven or 10 years before reverting to market rate.

The trade off with adjustable rates is that buyers could end up paying more in the long term than with a fixed mortgage.

For a lucky few lower income residents, there are nonprofit programs that can drastically reduce the cost of buying a home.

But the housing market cool down hasn't made Seattle cheap.

Right now, to buy a $650,000 town home with 3% down, a buyer would pay $4,500 a month and needs a household income of at least $160,000 to comfortably afford that.

That might not be rich by Seattle standards, but for more than half the city's residents, that's still far out of reach.

- I'm Starla Sampaco.

For more on the housing market, visit Making Seattle Home on crosscut.com.

(upbeat music)