Seattle Offers Office Space Aplenty, No Jobs

We here at Seattlest have been enjoying spectacular growth here in the last year, and our dusty old newsroom is feeling a bit cramped. Fortunately, now appears to be a great time to look for office space: According to the NY Times, vacancies are up to 10% and expected to reach 15% by next year.

It’s an abrupt turnaround since last year, when Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate brokerage, and the Urban Land Institute both named Seattle as one of the top five office markets in the country for investors. Sales of office buildings reached $11.47 billion in 2007, some seven times what they were in 2004, according to Real Capital Analytics. Deals so far this year have totaled only $375 million.

And what with unemployment rates on the rise, Seattle's got the cheap office space and the desperate workforce necessary to make it the Mexico of the Pacific Northwest. Yay!

"A Cool Office" courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool photog Grundlepuck.