Sometimes the key to success is being in the right place at the right time with the right attitude. Tune in to a lively and wide-ranging discussion with Paul Suzman, nephew of South African anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman and founder of OfficeLease, the West Coast’s first commercial tenant/buyer representative (founded 1981). Paul recounts his experiences in the Seattle area handling office leasing during the meteoric rise of tech titan Microsoft. His distinguished clients have included Nordstrom, Laird Norton Wealth Management, and Russell Investments, among many others. R.
Benefit from Paul’s decades-long observation and understanding of Seattle’s power structures and the relation between public and private sectors.
“Downtown is a very, very fragile organism.” - Paul Suzman
Join us in this episode as we talk shop with the executive director of Seattle Architecture Foundation Stacy Segal.
Stacy’s optimistic yet pragmatic perspective on Seattle’s built environment will inspire you to take one of the many tours offered by SAF that introduce tourists and locals alike to the layered history of the city.
“We’re becoming a … global city.” - Stacy Segal
Join us in this episode with Jim Goldberg and Allison Jeffries of Red Propeller as they trace their path into real estate marketing and branding – a journey that contributed to and paralleled Seattle’s emergence from regional to national and global prominence.
Prophetic storytellers skilled at channeling the spirit of a place, Jim and Allison have shaped our lived experience of Seattle. In her formative work in residential marketing for Paul Allen’s real estate company Vulcan, Allison and her team breathed life into the nascent South Lake Union neighborhood. After founding Red Propeller with Jim, she told the stories of such Seattle landmark developments as Stratus & Cirrus, The Danforth, Seabrook, Luma, Amli Arc, Pike Motorworks, Via6, Capitol Hill Station and Panorama.
Learn about current and future transformations of Seattle from this talented team and hear Allison’s insightful reminiscences of Paul Allen and his love for Seattle.
“There’s so much that happens at the street level.” - Jim Goldberg of Red Propeller
Join us in this episode for a conversation spanning Realpolitik, capitalism and moral philosophy with affordable housing activist Roger Valdez, founder of Seattle for Growth.
As the chief lobbyist behind Washington State’s 2005 cigarette ban, Roger understands that social and policy change is incremental and often glacial. Washington’s legislation came a full 40 years after the Surgeon General’s warning – a lesson that advocacy requires stoicism and perseverance. Hear Roger’s prescient economic analysis, influenced by Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, of Seattle’s housing crisis and his arguments in favor of further development. Propelled by his Christian faith, Roger embraces urban density as an opportunity for neighborly love and community.
“Abundance does create opportunity, and it creates competition between producers, which benefits the consumer.” - Roger Valdez
Working with local investors who seek positive returns while remaining sensitive to neighborhood needs, Scott has preserved bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and retail spaces that anchor the Pacific Northwest’s music, dining, and shopping scene and built 300 units of micro-housing, as well as a hostel in the International District. His projects include The Lodges on Vashon, Harvard Exit, Queen Anne Beerhall, American Hotel, Melrose Market, Spinnaker Building, Lynnwood Bowl & Skate, Cha Cha Lounge, Chop Suey, and The Crocodile.
Tune in to hear about Scott’s adventures in development and placemaking and hear how he overcame the many challenges he has faced along the way to creating memorable places across the Pacific Northwest.
”There’s … pride in being in a building that’s really beautiful.” - Scott Shapiro
Strap on your toolbelt, pull up your work-boots and join Edward for a constructive discussion with father-son developer duo Bill Parks and Andy Parks.
Bill reminisces about his many innovative residential projects, including Stonewater Lofts in Fremont, a site-specific installation inspired by the orangutan habitat at Woodland Park Zoo and re-created with the help of zoo designers, and Fremont Lofts, influenced by the steep townscapes of Umbria and Tuscany. After decades building Seattle as a contractor, Bill now uses his hands-on experience with materials and techniques, and collaboration with local artisans and fabricators, many of them friends, to make ingenious contributions to the built environment. Learn how Bill’s approach creates common spaces and places for communities to gather.
“My dad has taken a step back from worrying about maximizing efficiency and production and viewed his projects more as a form of expression.” - Andy Parks
Join us in this episode to fly away with Seattle artist Susan Robb, whose work is often both ephemeral and monumental.
Susan speaks with Edward about her subversive multi-media art practices (encompassing sculpture, photography, video, performance, and interventions) in both Seattle and Tacoma, and her artistic project to articulate and represent our emotional connection to place. Her public sculpture Parking Squid, commissioned by the Seattle Department of Transportation and installed at the Seattle Waterfront in 2012 (and since moved to Ballard), combines functional art (bicycles could be tethered to one of the squid’s tentacles) with an evocation of the mysterious creatures lurking in the depths of Puget Sound. Before today’s massive Waterfront redevelopment, the sculpture invited interaction with both city street and natural environment. Be inspired by Susan’s thoughtful engagement with development, regional history, homelessness, and climate change, crystallized in her place-making projects.
“Whose Seattle is this? Do we have a right to our past?” - Susan Robb
Join us in this episode for a chat with innovative architect Bradley Khouri, principal of b9 Architects.
Bradley’s expansive portfolio includes mixed-use and multi-family sustainable buildings across Western Washington. Hear Bradley dish about his experience with rapidly evolving zoning codes and their effect on housing affordability and sustainable architecture; meet a practical architect who is changing the face of Seattle neighborhoods for the future.
“We…approach design as if we’re looking at it for the first time.” - Bradley Khouri
Written by Edward Krigsman
Oftentimes we’re asked the question, how do you determine the value of an investment property? There are several ways to do it, and different approaches work best for different properties. For smaller duplexes, and fourplexes often times a quick and dirty way to discuss the value is to look at a gross rent multiplier. So you would take your gross rents, maybe $30,000 a year and multiply it times the gross rent multiplier or GRM that prevails for similar places in the neighborhood. So a property may sell for 10% or 20% its gross rent.
A property where the gross rents are $30,000, it may sell for $300,000. For example that would be a GRM of 10. With investment property, we also look at the price per square foot. A very similar metric as with single-family homes and since investors really look at the rent rate per square foot, which in the Seattle area could range from $1.50 per month for gross rents up to maybe $3 or $4 per square foot for smaller properties or newer and better properties.
You can look at the price per square foot since again, rents and value are related to size and since you’re renting out square feet that can be another tool for calculating the value. You can look at the prevailing price per square foot of similar investment properties. Duplexes, fourplexes, and the like in the area and then multiply that area times the square feet for the subject property, and you come up with an estimation of value.
That figure also works well for bigger, five units or greater, multi-family and commercial properties as well. But for bigger properties, we really rely on a capitalization rate to determine value. So a cap rate prevails in different neighborhoods differently. So in a very high demand area, you may see a cap rate of 3% or 4% or 5%. And that maybe like in Capitol Hill, in an urban area where there’s very, very focused demand and limited supply for rentals and limited land.
Cap rates again can be 3% of 4%. Whereas they may be 7% or 10% in outlying areas maybe Tacoma, Everett areas further out where there’s less demand for housing, lower incomes and so forth. Cap rate is determined by taking the NOI, the net operating income and looking at the ratio of that to its asset value. So, for example, if a property sold for a million dollars and it had a net operating income of $100,000, then the cap rate would be 10%.
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Time-travel with Edward to learn about Seattle Commons, Seattle’s legendary Central Park that never was, with Christopher Blado and Weston Brinkley.
Chris and Weston are members of the Atlas Obscura Society, a nationwide organization dedicated to finding and preserving the mystery and magic of everyday life. Atlas Obscura devised a counterfactual walking tour of Paul Allen’s brainchild Seattle Commons, exploring the South Lake Union site it would have occupied, as well as the reasons why 1990s voters failed to approve it. Come for Seattle Commons, stay for Chris and Weston’s trenchant insights into the civic and environmental politics that seem to define Seattle. The resistance to Seattle Commons eerily echoes other historical moments when Seattle’s engaged citizens have from many different points of view opposed proposed projects and this variegated and nuanced opposition has been boiled down at the ballot box to a simple no.
“If the vote were taken today, it could…go differently.” - Christopher Blado
