Seattle Construction Still Booming!

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Published by jlspr on March 11, 2019

Seattle Construction Still Booming!

Seattle is not slowing down its development in the city. In the central part of Seattle, there are 66 major projects underway. Half a year ago, Seattle peeked at 74 projects. The trend seems to be buildings; Amazon’s Seattle campus alone has 44 buildings.

Two-thirds of the developable land is reserved only for single-family houses, which is the only thing that may stop this building frenzy. “The construction boom is especially noteworthy because most of the new projects are apartments, and the bevy of new housing opening up in the city in recent years has resulted in a slowing rental market — but developers seem undeterred.” (Seattletimes.com)

Seattle’s rent has grown at about the same rate at inflation while every 1 in 10 apartments in Seattle sit empty. Since new buildings are having such a hard time fill up, they are using luring tricks of one to two month free rent to get people to sign a lease with them. Downtown Seattle Association says half of the apartments in central Seattle were built in the last 10 years.

Office Expansion

Office construction has not grown as rapidly as the residential market. Just a half million square feet opened making Seattle’s office construction only one-fifth of the amount built from the previous years. This year 4.5 million square feet of office space is set to open, for Amazon’s growing campus and the new expansions coming from Facebook and Google. The largest hotel in the Pacific Northwest built in the Denny Triangle is set to open soon; the Hyatt Regency Seattle, with 1,260 rooms helped to open 2,100 new hotel rooms last year in Seattle.

The first part of the new Expedia campus is the biggest project underway right now, valued at $600 million. Rainier Square’s office and housing development is a close second, valued at $570 million. Other big ones include 2+U project at $390 million and Colman Dock upgrades at $350 million.