Office space hard to find as tech firms from Amazon to Facebook settle in Seattle
Seattle now has a smaller share of offices sitting empty than San Francisco or Manhattan, the two most expensive commercial real estate markets in the US
It’s not just housing prices: Seattle is not the bargain it used to be for companies, either.
Historically, the city was a cheaper place to rent office space than a lot of other cities with advanced economies. That held true through last decade’s economic upswing, and during the recession.
But the city’s recent boom driven by Amazon and other tech companies has propelled Seattle up the ranks of the nation’s most expensive places to rent an office, passing Chicago and Los Angeles just in the last three years.
During that span, Seattle office rents have surged 31 per cent, or about two and a half times faster than the national average, according to an analysis by Cushman & Wakefield for The Seattle Times.
And finding office space is getting harder, despite all those cranes putting up new office high-rises.
The vacancy rate has dipped to 5.7 per cent, down from a high of over 20 per cent during the recession and the previous recent low of 8.8 per cent a decade ago.