Amazon's new HQ2 could come with a scary consequence for renters in the final cities - here's who is most at risk
- Amazon has narrowed its search for the site of its next headquarters, dubbed HQ2, to 20 cities.
- Amazon HQ2 would have great economic impact on the city it chooses, potentially lowering unemployment, increasing average wages, and raising rents.
- A report by Apartment List predicts Raleigh and Pittsburgh would feel the rent increases the most.
Amazon revealed the 20 locations on its shortlist for HQ2, its new $5 billion headquarters, on Thursday.
The e-commerce giant announced last year that HQ2 will eventually house 50,000 mostly white-collar workers making an average of over $100,000 a year.
Since Amazon has taken over Seattle, where it employs over 30,000 workers, the city has become the fastest-growing in the US and the nation's largest company town, The Seattle Times reported. As such, residents are paying a premium to live there.
The situation is likely to be the same for one of the final 20 cities vying for Amazon's HQ2 as they hope to replicate Seattle's economic boom. That's according to a report from Apartment List, which analyzed how rents in the top contending cities would be affected if Amazon moved in.
Apartment List gathered data - including vacancy rates, median income, and median rent, as well as housing development and rent increases from 2005 to 2015 - for 16 American cities in the running. They used this data to project how HQ2 could change annual rent growth and then calculated the expected additional cost to renter households over a 10-year period.
The study looks at the metro level, so Newark, New Jersey, and New York City, are broadly considered the New York metro area and Montgomery County and Northern Virginia are part of the Washington, DC, metro. Apartment List did not estimate the rent impact on Toronto, the only non-US city in the running, because their calculations used US Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
All data is from August 2017, when Apartment List first calculated the impact of HQ2 on the top contending cities.
Below, check out how rents would change in 16 cities if Amazon moved in: