The future of Seattle commercial real estate is still a matter of conjecture. The givens are that the dynamics are shifting as working from home becomes a norm. The announcement in mid-August of Amazon, who employs (or did employ) 50,000 people in downtown that they are soliciting their employees to ascertain their willingness to consider moving to other locations from the downtown Seattle Amazon Headquarters caused national headlines. This headline follows on CHOP, boarded store fronts, homeless tents in downtown, and other national attention-grabbing incidences nationally and culminated in the resignation of Seattle’s Police Chief.

If perception is reality in real estate the same can be said of politics. The mass media has morphed from a dispassionate dispenser of news and conflicting opinions to a force for social change and finally, maybe, just maybe, the City Counsel of Seattle, may have unleashed a backlash. The actions of the counsel have attacked the core of the underlying financial sources of income to the city . The success and vibrancy of downtown is a function of Big Business (Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) and tourism (link Tours, Planes and Hotels) which is the breeding ground for the dynamics of small business.  This symbiotic relationship generates the “cache” that attract tourists to the sights, sounds and tastes of a vibrant city center. The current numbers are ugly but for the first time since Mayor Durkin announced The Summer of Love, there are signs…

Individuals, ordinary people, who have staked their lives and livelihoods in Seattle, are making their voices heard in newspapers and mass media. Seattle Commercial Real Estate has been solicited by a local TV station to discuss the office market issue. It should be noted that a brief interview stretched to over half an hour which is what it took to enlighten a simple uneducated investigative reporter to start to understand the interrelationship of office tenants, tourism, commercial real estate and multi-family aspects in the world of the real estate industry. The time devoted formerly to “love” and the time that is rising in terms of the devotion of mass media to economic reality and the damage of the socialist agenda of the City Counsel is starting to sink in. Will this tiny light grow following the elections and a myriad of other questions, are searching for an answer as it relates to commercial real estate in Seattle. Stay tuned…