Dylan Simon -- Kidder Mathews

In less than four months, we're staring down the year 2020. What do we have in store for the year(s) to come?

Getting the best information about economic and investment markets remains essential to making critical decisions about when and how you invest in the Seattle and Puget Sound apartment market.

Fortunately, this Fall we’re in store for outstanding events, terrific speakers, and a tremendous amount of useful information (and networking) to make the most out of what remains of 2019.

37 percent of executives said their outlook for the real estate market this year is “marginally more optimistic” than it was last year, and 33 percent said they were “significantly more optimistic.”

It may seem like a distant future, but when your investment horizons are measured in 5-7 year hold periods, 2025 suddenly feels much closer.

If you haven’t checked your calendar recently, setting oneself up for success in the 2020s starts today.

To help you get started, we’ve analyzed five markets that are exciting prospects for the next market cycle.

“While some have anticipated the bottom falling out of the market for more than a year, Q1’s year-over-year uptick in deal volume suggests resilience in the commercial real estate sector.”

"Both cities will see costs rise by 5 percent, outpacing the expected 4.3 percent increase in the top 46 global markets, according to the company's annual International Construction Market Survey. The expected rate of cost escalation for San Francisco is unchanged from 2017, when it also rose 5 percent."

"After stumbling out of the gate in 2017, the apartment investment market posted a strong Q1, according to Real Capital Analytics (RCA), deal volume growing by 55 percent, year-over-year. Of the sectors tracked by RCA, the apartment sector, which saw 27 percent more activity than office, was the 'largest, most liquid' commercial group in Q1, RCA reports."

"While intelligent building management systems (BMSs) come at some cost, property managers with cloud-based BMSs stand to save 25 to 50 cents per square foot in energy costs on an annual basis, which could pay off the cost of the system in one and a half to four years."

"As available real estate becomes increasingly scarce, commercial real estate professionals need imagination and the right tools to keep pace with demand."

"Predictability in planning and infrastructure are important in the success of an emerging market, Parks said. 'Plans laid down by municipalities have to have enough flexibility to allow developers to achieve their goals, as well as the goals of the municipality, such as placemaking or walkability.'"

2019 marks an exciting milestone for me – five years of blogging about commercial real estate!

While I’m always ready to weigh in on the latest real estate trends and predictions, ultimately, I continue to write this blog to provide granular market insights to better help readers grow their real estate businesses and success.

For today’s post, in honor of this five-year milestone, I revisit my top five most read blog posts and analyze which predictions rang true, what we got wrong, and even my biggest blog flop.

The 2019 legislative session certainly was a busy one. 481 bills passed the state legislature, many with direct implications for the commercial real estate industry.

We see the real estate excise tax overhaul as the most urgent and actionable, as it changes Washington’s excise tax from a flat statewide rate to a progressive structure.

How will this impact you on January 1, 2020?

Dylan Simon and Jerrid Anderson of Colliers’ Seattle Multifamily Team closed the sale of The Hudson Apartments in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood on Thursday, April 11, 2019. The sales price of the building was $38,750,000 — representing a 4.3% capitalization rate.

The value of commercial starts may have dropped, but residential seems to be going strong: "On the residential side, however, the value of multifamily and single-family starts through April jumped 42 percent to just over $2.9 billion."

"High occupancy rates are helping keep apartment rents high and rising. 'Rent growth—while below the cycle’s peaks—has outperformed many investors’ expectations,' says Willett. Same-property rents for new leases climbed 2.6 percent in first quarter compared to the year before. That’s about the same as the rate of rent growth has been over the last four quarters, according to RealPage."

"Gains in high-growth Western tech markets, including San Jose, Calif.; Seattle; Denver; and San Francisco, were at above-trend levels in the latest three-month period following a longtime deceleration trend from 2015 to 2017.

On a trailing three-month (T-3) basis, which compares the past three months to the previous three months, rents increased by 0.3% at the national level. San Jose led the nation, with 0.7% rent growth on a T-3 basis, while Chicago, Denver, and Seattle bounced back at 0.4% after short-term rent declines in late 2017 to early 2018."

"The finding that 64% of the population lives in markets that are more affordable to rent than buy, showing that homebuying will continue to be an uphill battle in 2018."

“'We look forward to cities that are also progressive and are thinking forward and long-term in terms of affordable housing and mass transportation and being able to move people around,' Schoettler said."

Can you believe it's been a decade since Amazon made their move to SLU? "Ten years ago Thursday, Amazon announced it would move to South Lake Union, consolidating the company’s growing footprint into an 11-building campus and abandoning the former hospital building on Beacon Hill that the company had called home."

"The home price is listed at $33 in Bitcoin and a 20 percent down payment equates to $7. That price translates roughly to $535,000 at current market prices for the cryptocurrency."