In our contentious environment there are initials and acronyms for everything. The latest is GAFA. This stands for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. The biggest fruit hanging on the tree of office real estate is clearly Amazon. Their footprint is 10.1 Million square feet or about 23% of all office commercial real estate in downtown Seattle. Add Google for 607,000 square feet, Facebook for 484,000 square feet and Apple a paltry 30,600 sf, but growing.
The tech industry features fluid employment, millennials galore and aggressive recruitment. It has spawned incredible multiple residential growth and a whole genre of lifestyle recruiting using the multiple residential lifestyle for bringing in even more people.
When we look at the numbers we forget to take into account the multiplier effect of each job in a basic industry. As long as we take the time to step back and count the 21 cranes building offices and hi rises in Seattle and the effect of spin off businesses from the existing businesses, we are looking good moving forward for Muti-family and offices. For the small investor it gets even tougher as rents rise and competition for product survives. For the institutional investor in office and multi family, it is nirvana.
