Is Tacoma being set up for a big fall when the housing party finally ends? Quite possibly—especially when it comes to condos downtown.
A tally of downtown projects by real estate consulting firm McCament and Rogers for the City of Tacoma shows 774 residential units are currently being built in 13 different projects around downtown. In planning and design phases are 1,014 additional units. Hundreds more housing units are in less formal planning stages. Those under-construction and planned units will join 997 condominiums and apartments built downtown since 2000.
That’s 2,785 units — something akin to adding a city the size of Steilacoom in downtown Tacoma.
According to sales people and developers, many of those projects are selling or being rented at a brisk pace.
…
Even with the tax benefits and the gentrifying downtown, some real estate sales people wonder whether the market can absorb the hundreds of units that will go on the market beginning next fall through the summer of 2007.Privately they say they’re concerned that the biggest projects — such as the 183-unit Esplanade just under construction on the Foss Waterway — are too big to enter the market all at once when so many other projects will hit the market at the same time.
And even more privately (as in—they wouldn’t admit it to a newspaper) they’re concerned that I think that by the time these units are ready, the whole market will have tanked and none of them will be selling… Or at least that’s what they should be concerned about, methinks.
(John Gillie, Tacoma News Tribune, 04.23.2006)