Seattle Dethrones Manhattan as Top US Commercial Realty Hotspot

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Manhattan is no longer the biggest hotspot for foreign investors snapping up commercial real estate in the US, according to a new report by Real Capital Analytics (RCA).</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">This is the first time Manhattan hasn't topped the list

BY Realty Plus
Published - May 24, 2021 4:16 AM

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Manhattan is no longer the biggest hotspot for foreign investors snapping up commercial real estate in the US, according to a new report by Real Capital Analytics (RCA). This is the first time Manhattan hasn't topped the list since the global financial crisis in 2009, it said. The borough has been dethroned by Seattle, after investment in New York plummeted over the past year, per RCA data. RCA said that cross-border acquisitions of commercial real estate in Manhattan fell by nearly 80% to just over $2 billion in the year to March 2021. Over the same time period, foreign real estate investment in Seattle fell just 11%, to just over $2.5 billion, pushing it into the top spot, the report said. Real estate in the area is dominated by the tech industry, which now accounts for around 42% of the office space in the area, according to data from CBRE. The Northwestern city is home to tech giants Microsoft and Amazon, while Google and Facebook are both developing sites there. More than half of the cross-border investment in Seattle came from Canada, RCA said. In Manhattan, meanwhile, Asia accounted for the biggest chunk, followed by Europe. RCA said that Manhattan's dramatic fall in real-estate investment was partly due to uncertainty over the office market, as more companies continue to let staff work remotely. Rent in the area has been affected, too, with Manhattan's median rent dropping to an all-time low of $2,700 a month in the first quarter of 2021. The neighborhoods of Nolita, Lower East Side, and Little Italy had the biggest price drops. But Manhattan still remained around $400 million ahead of San Francisco in terms of foreign real estate investment. San Francisco took third place in the RCA ranking. The rest of the top ten was made up of Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Boston, and San Jose.