With an unprecedented amount of activity, there is no shortage of projects to choose among. Generally, developments had to be under construction or close to it to be considered. Some early projects, like Amazon’s newly proposed 600-foot-tall Bellevue tower made the list because the nearly $1 trillion company does not dawdle when it comes to developing real estate.
The projects stretch from Redmond to Renton and, not surprisingly, most of the biggest have been leased to the so-called FANG companies — Facebook, Apple and Amazon and Google, with Netflix the odd-company out in the Seattle region, which instead has Microsoft.
The bottom line is that with strong demand, and low supply rents will increase. The Broderick Group brokerage said that barring a major negative economic event, there’s no reason downtown Bellevue rates won’t grow 10 percent or more over the course of 2020.
They’re already at a record level of up to $68 per square foot per year. Still, that’s significantly lower than in the Bay Area, so expect the FANG companies to make more big marks in the Puget Sound region.
