Five Washington rental markets, described plainly.

Tacoma is the largest city in Pierce County and the easiest of the five to read from the street. Much of its housing went up in the first half of the twentieth century, in neighborhoods like the North End, Hilltop, the Stadium District and South Tacoma, and a good share of those houses have since been split into duplexes or given basement units. Some of those conversions were permitted. Some were not, and a lender or insurer will want to know which.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord sits to the south along I-5, and military households on transfer orders rent throughout the south Sound. The University of Washington Tacoma campus is downtown, on the T Line light rail, which was extended up to Hilltop in 2023. Tacoma Dome Station connects to Sounder commuter rail and regional buses heading north toward Seattle.

Look carefully at the age of the side sewer and the electrical service, and remember that houses built before 1978 carry a federal lead-based paint disclosure requirement. Tacoma also has its own Rental Housing Code on top of state law. The Home in Tacoma zoning changes opened many lots to middle housing, which makes an older house on a generous lot worth analyzing twice: once as it stands, and once as a site.

Spokane sits on I-90 near the Idaho line, a mountain range and most of a state away from Tacoma. Its rental stock includes brick walk-ups and older apartment houses near downtown and in Browne’s Addition, early twentieth century houses on the South Hill and in neighborhoods such as Emerson-Garfield and the Garland District, and student rentals in Logan, next to Gonzaga University. Spokane Valley, to the east, is a separate city with its own codes and a great deal of mid-century and newer housing.

Renters include students at Gonzaga and Whitworth and staff at the hospitals on the lower South Hill. Fairchild Air Force Base, west of town, adds military households. The City Line, a bus rapid transit route that opened in 2023, links Browne’s Addition, downtown, Gonzaga and Spokane Community College.

Winter is the big difference from the west side. Snow load on roofs, ice dams, pipes that freeze in a vacant unit, and heating costs in older buildings with boilers all belong in the analysis. For owners who live on the west side, professional management is usually part of the plan from the start. For a purchase in Spokane, I can represent you or connect you with a licensed agent through the Homexa® network.

Kennewick, Pasco and Richland sit where the Yakima and Snake rivers meet the Columbia, in Benton and Franklin counties. The area grew around the Hanford Site, and federal work at Hanford and at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland still shapes who rents there, including engineers and contract workers who arrive for a project and may leave when it ends. Lease terms and turnover assumptions should reflect that.

Much of the housing is newer than in the Puget Sound cities, with subdivisions in Southridge and around Canyon Lakes in Kennewick and a lot of recent construction in west Pasco and south Richland. Columbia Basin College in Pasco and WSU Tri-Cities in Richland add a student market. I-82, I-182 and US 395 tie the three cities together.

The climate is what west-side buyers underestimate. Summers are hot and dry, so the age of the air conditioning matters as much as the furnace. Many yards are watered through an irrigation district that bills separately from city water, and a lawn can be gone by August without it. Find out how water is supplied and who pays for it before you estimate the owner’s costs.

Kent is really three places. The valley floor along the Green River holds warehouses, distribution centers and the Kent Station area downtown. East Hill is where much of the city lives, in houses, townhouses and apartments. West Hill runs toward I-5 and the airport.

Employers in the valley, including aerospace companies such as Blue Origin, bring renters who want a short drive to work. Kent Station has Sounder commuter rail service toward Seattle and Tacoma, and SR 167 and SR 516 carry most of the car traffic. For small investors, Kent often means newer townhouses and triplexes like the building pictured, or an older rambler on East Hill.

With townhouses, read the association’s rental rules before anything else. With older houses, look hard at the roof, the siding and the original plumbing, and price the reserves accordingly.

Auburn straddles the King and Pierce county line, so two parcels a mile apart can have different assessors and different tax levies. Lakeland Hills, at the south end of the city where it crosses into Pierce County, is a planned community with homeowners associations. Lea Hill, above the valley, is home to Green River College and a mix of older and newer houses. Downtown and the valley floor have older, smaller houses within reach of Auburn Station, where Sounder stops.

SR 18 and SR 167 cross in Auburn, which gives renters a direct route to the Kent Valley and, by way of SR 18, to I-90. It is also the closest of these markets to my office in Sumner, a short drive south on SR 167.

The notes above are context. The inputs for any analysis come from the property itself, starting with its tax record and the leases signed near it. Two duplexes on the same Tacoma block can produce very different results, and the only way to know is to run both.

If the property is somewhere else in Washington, such as Puyallup, Lakewood, Federal Way or Yakima, send it anyway. The method is the same, and so are the limits stated at the foot of this page.