Real Estate Briefs

Greentree Plaza Shopping Center
sold for $22.6 million
A south Everett shopping center anchored by Target and Sports Authority has sold for more than $22 million just two years after changing hands for less than $14 million.

Bloch Properties LLC of Bellevue sold the Greentree Plaza Shopping Center to Colorado-based GDA Real Estate Services. The property, located along Everett Mall Way at Third Avenue SE, sold for more than $22.6 million, according to county records.

The strip mall includes Sports Authority and about 20 smaller shop spaces. The sale does not include the 100,000-square-foot space occupied by Target, which owns its building there.

Since 2004, when Bloch bought the property, a Starbucks coffee shop and Baja Fresh Mexican restaurant have been added there. Under Bloch’s ownership, the center also underwent a partial renovation.

Greentree Plaza was Bloch Properties’ only holding in the county.

GDA, on the other hand, is more than familiar with Everett Mall Way. In 2002, the firm bought Everett Mall Plaza, the strip mall immediately north of the Everett Mall, for $19 million — one of the biggest retail property deals in the Puget Sound region that year.

Artspace negotiating
with Everett on land lease
Minneapolis-based Artspace signed an exclusive negotiating contract with Everett to redevelop a public parking garage into a downtown arts community.

The city agreed in October to hammer out the terms of a 100-year lease with the group by November. If a contract isn’t reached at that time, negotiations will automatically terminate, unless both parties decide to extend talks.

Nearly two years ago, Artspace chose to build affordable studios and living spaces for artists and their families in Everett. It seeks to transform the city’s parking garage on Hoyt Avenue into a five-story building with 40 affordable apartments and a ground-floor art center.

Millions of dollars still need to be raised to turn the estimated $15 million arts dream into reality, but proponents say it is not a pie-in-the-sky proposal. They point to Artspace’s track record as reason for confidence.

The arts group owns 18 communities across the country, including projects in Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Chicago; and Pittsburgh. Most include living, work and retail space.

The Arts Council of Snohomish County is partnering with Artspace, and intends on owning up to 18,000 square feet of ground floor space.

Residential market shows
signs of slowing
The Puget Sound home market clearly slowed down in September as the number of homes available grew, sales slumped and prices rose at a slower pace, according to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service.

Pending sales in Snohomish County dropped more than 13 percent in September while inventories swelled by nearly 28 percent, according to listing service data.

The median price of the homes sold in the county was $330,000, meaning half the homes sold for more and half for less. That was an increase of more than 10 percent from a year ago.

While a 10 percent increase is still substantial, home prices were rising at a 20 percent clip last year. That percentage dipped into the teens this year and is now close to single digits in much of the Puget Sound area.

The slowdown is no surprise to the area’s real estate professionals. They’ve been saying for months that last year’s record-breaking market couldn’t continue.

In Snohomish County, the most expensive homes were closest to King County. Those also were the homes where prices rose the slowest from a year ago. In Maltby, the median was $391,086, a figure actually lower than the year-ago numbers. In the Edmonds, Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace communities, the median was $352,025, about 5 percent higher than last year.

Windermere donates $93,750
to local nonprofits
Sales associates and staff with the 12 Windermere Real Estate Snohomish County Group offices teamed up with the Windermere Foundation recently to donate $93,750 to 13 local nonprofit organizations.

The recipients included the American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs, Camp Fire USA, Christmas House, Cocoon House, Everett Community College Foundation, Housing Hope, Lake Stevens Family Center, Little Red School House, Recovery For Life Training Center, YMCA Monroe, YMCA Mukilteo and the YWCA.

Since its inception, the Windermere Foundation, supported by contributions from Windermere agents, owners and staff, has contributed more than $15 million to nonprofit organizations dedicated to assisting homeless and low-income families across the Western United States.

Office, industrial vacancy rates
remain in double digits
The Boeing Co.’s jetliner orders keep coming in, local unemployment is low and the economy is better here than in many other parts of the nation. But there’s still plenty of empty office and industrial space around Snohomish County.

Cushman & Wakefield reported 17 percent of the county’s office space was empty during the third quarter of this year. That’s down about a half-percent from the second quarter and nearly identical to this time last year.

Another commercial property firm, Colliers International, pegged the office vacancy rate above 16 percent, up slightly from the second quarter. That compares with an overall vacancy rate for the Puget Sound region of just under 10 percent, Colliers reported.

For industrial-oriented warehouse and manufacturing space, the county’s vacancy rate rose to nearly 13 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Colliers put the rate at 18 percent, also up from second quarter.

Leasing of the county’s commercial space has stayed at a fairly static level for several quarters, marred by just a few fluctuations. Gary Bullington, a director at Cushman & Wakefield, said part of the reason is that a few larger, hard-to-lease spaces skew the county’s vacancy rates.

Some of the commercial property statistics for this third quarter point positively. For example, investors are still buying buildings and commercial property here, and the average rental prices for office and industrial space have gone up over recent months. The countywide average for Class A office space increased to $24.95 a square foot during the quarter.

County to pay $2.1 million
for development rights of farmland
Snohomish County plans to pay $2.1 million for development rights on 71 acres at the Barlond farm in Arlington. The deal is expected to be completed by Nov. 25.

The deal is the first made under a fledgling program adopted last year that allows Stillaguamish Valley farmers to sell the development rights for their land.

Developers can buy those rights directly from the farmers and use them to build homes on 337 acres east of Arlington. County development plans call for urban development there.

The goal of the program is to preserve 3,400 acres of fertile county farmland.

Under a formula for the program, the county is lined up to get 49 transfer of development rights certificates for the Barlond farm. Under the program, those certificates can then be bought and used to build 196 houses in the east Arlington area.

That works out to more than $10,000 per house to be built, on top of all the usual development fees, Arlington community development director Brad Collins said.

Arlington plans to annex the area east of town to oversee the housing construction.

S. Everett apartment complex
sold for $31 million
Walden Pond, a south Everett apartment complex, recently was purchased for $31 million by a company that already owns more than 1,000 other units around Snohomish County.

Holland Partners of Vancouver, Wash., plans to renovate the 316-unit complex, which was built in 1991, according to county property records. The new owner has no plans, though, to convert the apartments into condominiums, said Aaron Lambert, a development and acquisition associate for Holland Partners.

Rents at the property, located on 100th Street SW, range from more than $650 for a one-bedroom apartment to more than $900 a month for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom unit. Walden Pond also has a pool and fitness center.

As with most other complexes in the area, there aren’t many empty apartments there either.

“In the weeks leading up to the sale, they were literally at 100 percent occupancy,” Lambert said.

The apartment complex last sold in 2001, for $21 million, to California-based ConAm Management Corp.