Below is a summary of sales for March 2011, from the Commercial Broker’s Association (CBA). I note the source because it is likely that not all sales that occurred are included. CBA data is a mixture of sales reported by their member agents and researching of sales that happened outside the system.
I have compared these numbers to similar data available from LoopNet, the national
commercial real estate listing service. After reviewing the data, I believe the CBA data to be the most accurate and useful for our local market and for tracking prices and trends in the local market. Occasionally, LoopNet has data that does not appear on CBA, which is the reason that I subscribe to their service. If you would like to have a complete analysis done of comparable sales for your property, please let me know. When performing analysis for a client, I compare and combine data from both sources.
March 2011 Sales
King County-There was a slight increase in the number of sales from February in King County, with 34 total sales. Only 2 property sales were foreclosure trustee sales. Sales were about evenly mixed between the 4 main property types: Industrial, Retail, Office, and Land.
The average price per square foot for each property type was: Industrial-$44/SF, Retail-$171/SF, and Office-$148/SF. Commercial land sales averaged $121/SF, after removing 2 residential land sales from the mix. Those two residential land deals would have lowered the average $/SF to just $5.84/SF
You may notice that the price per square foot for Office and Retail properties jumped significantly from February. This partially due to the lower number of foreclosure sales in each category.
Pierce County-Pierce County had a healthy increase in the number of sales. In March, 22 sales closed, more than in January/February combined. Sales were evenly mixed between property types. One thing to note, though, is that five of the office sales were of Frontier Bank locations throughout the county, by Union bank to the FDIC. I believe the result of this is an inflation of the average price per square foot for Office space. Typical sellers should not expect this kind of pricing in Pierce county.
The average price per square foot for each property type was: Industrial-$51/SF, Retail-$65/SF, and Office-$148/SF (again, this number is inflated by the Frontier Bank sales). Commercial land sales averaged $6.45/SF. The sale price for Commercial land is likely lower than typical due to sales transaction between government entities for several properties.
Snohomish County-There were only 4 sales reported by CBA for Snohomish County in March. Snohomish County commercial buyers seem intent on focusing on specific property types each month. In January, it was Industrial. In February, it was Office. In March, all the sales were Retail Properties. Also, all the properties were located in the southwest corner of the county, along the I-5 corridor. Another item to note is that half the deals were with cash buyers.
The average price per square foot for these Retail properties was $143/SF.
Leave a Reply