Seattle Sees Office-Space Sales Boom in 2021

CommercialCafe.com took a look at 2021’s biggest commercial portfolio deals and, while California markets topped the list, Seattle saw some significant activity, as well.

Front-of-the-envelope math from CommercialCafe shows the San Francisco Bay Area generated $1.88 billion in “West Top 50 Office Entries by Sales Volume” last year. Seattle’s total is only slightly behind that, with $1.789 billion. Seattle is the only non-California market listed in the top nine for similar deals.

Meanwhile, the West was home to the highest number of portfolio transactions in the top 50. Here, six portfolios were traded (all of them in California), with the priciest of these being the Village at San Antonio Center I & II in Mountain View — a 456,760-square-foot property for which Brookfield Properties paid $630 million in March.

Expectedly, Amazon played a role in Seattle’s surge, but it wasn’t the largest deal. The largest was 300 Pine, the former Macy’s building downtown, purchased for nearly $580 million by the Urban Renaissance Group. In a close second was West 8th, an Amazon-leased tower bought by Kilroy Realty for nearly $490 million.