The site is approved for building 77,000 square feet of class-A heated space.SHORELINE, WA—Following the addition of 29,400 workers during the first half of 2018, Seattle is on pace to create more than 50,000 jobs for a fifth consecutive year, according to a second half of the year report by Marcus & Millichap. Office positions, many of them tech related, account for 60% of this year's employment growth, as higher-paying job creation reaches its highest level since 1999.
The strength of this economy is in turn attracting more families and individuals to the area, translating to net migration of nearly 29,000 residents this year. Overall, the metro's population is forecast to grow by 49,500 people in 2018, with annual household formations totaling 25,000.
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In response, developers finalized 594,000 square feet of self-storage space during the first six months of this year. An uptick in completions during the second half will push annual delivery volume beyond 2 million square feet for the first time since at least 2000.
Clearly, the Pacific Northwest remains a top target market for self-storage developers as well as investors. One future development example is a fully entitled, ready to build self-storage site that recently sold in the North Seattle city of Shoreline. The site totals 41,000 square feet and is approved for building approximately 77,000 rentable square feet of class-A institutional-quality heated space. The site is located on Aurora Ave North, and offers visibility and accessibility in a growing trade area.
“The pace of new residential construction in the greater Seattle market has helped drive self-storage demand and interest,” Greg Wells, senior director with Cushman & Wakefield, tells GlobeSt.com. “This offering generated interest from multiple different sources of capital, i.e., local, national, institutional and private, and shows the continued depth of interest in the self-storage sector.”
The buyer was Baranof Holdings LLC in a joint venture with an institutional equity partner. Jim Lewis and Wells with Cushman & Wakefield's self-storage practice group handled the transaction on behalf of the seller, Lake Union Partners, a private development firm based in Seattle.
“This transaction is an example of the continued appetite for well-located development opportunities in high-end, high-barrier-to-entry markets,” said Wells.
The Cushman & Wakefield self-storage practice group offers investment advisory, valuation, consulting, feasibility and data services in all major US markets.
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Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is an editor for the south and west regions of GlobeSt.com. She has 25-plus years of real estate experience, with a regional PR role at Grubb & Ellis and a national communications position at MMI. Brown also spent 10 years as executive director at NAIOP San Francisco Bay Area chapter, where she led the organization to achieving its first national award honors and recognition on Capitol Hill. She has written extensively on commercial real estate topics and edited numerous pieces on the subject.
