The Remaining Growth Market in the Real Estate Investment Sector

Care Professionals and Investors Meet Up To Fulfill Rapidly Growing Demand In Assisted Living

Americans Over 65 To Grow By 35% between 2015 and 2025

Sarah's Place, a Successful Adult Family Home in Port Orchard

The metrics for the housing industry are pretty bleak. Recent statistics form the National Association of Realtors indicate that nationally homes sales declined 27% from a year ago in July. The July total closings for Kitsap County in 2009 were 284 units and only 204 in July of 2010,  a decline of about 28%. The number of pending sales in July 2010 totaled 376, a decline of 70 from 346 in July of 2010 or 20%.

This is of course great news for home buyers and to a lesser extent for real estate investors. The number of families that have lost their homes due to foreclosure has risen, a lot. Because most of them cannot qualify for a new home loan they are forced back into the rental market creating more demand for rental housing. This trend should continue to play out over the next 2-3 years but the growth in demand for rental housing will also be constrained by the continuing loss of incomes through job losses and business failures.

The untold good news for the real estate market in the coming decades concerns the aging of the population. In a recent economic report by First Research, a unit of Wells Fargo Bank, they indicated that the number of Americans over 65 will grow between 2015 and 2025 by 35%. The age at which these seniors enter into assisted living facilities will likely stretch out as the average life span increases but eventually aging baby boom generation will need various forms of assisted living options including in home care, adult family homes, skilled nursing facilities and nursing homes.

Institutional care facilities will be constrained by their funding model which depends largely on Medicare and Medicaid payments. Given the current fiscal crisis with state and federal governments revenues from these sources are more likely to decline that increase in the next decade or more. Most states have resorted to creating less costly, neighborhood based, small care facilities also know as adult family homes to close the care gap and give non-profit and for-profit entities a longer leash to solve the problem.

Recent investigative news reports in Washington have uncovered some concerns about the operation of a segment of these homes such as regulatory non-compliance. Although licensing standards and operations are rather strict and enforcement is constant the shear size of the current and coming demand has encouraged some operators to rush into the market with sub-standard living units and a lack of management and marketing skills needed to attain economic sustainability and the highest standards of quality care. However, the laws of supply and demand will prevail and individuals may have the best opportunity ever in today’s low cost environment to position themselves to be leaders in quality of care and provide themselves with  long term sustainable income.

Jim Freeman, a managing Broker, and Ellie Renne, associate broker with Coldwell Banker Park Shore Real Estate in Port Orchard, WA have launched a service to help current future owners of adult family homes and assisted living facilities to start, acquire, sell or improve adult family home businesses. For more information please visit www.AssistedLivingAssistant.com.

Miles Yanick & Company is a full service Architectural, Land Planning and Interior Design firm serving Kitsap County and Western Washington.  They can be contacted by phone at 206-842-6516 or email at office@milesyanick.com.

Contact:

Miles Yanick

Phone:  206-842-6516

Email: milesyanick@milesyanick.com

Conveniently Located Commercial Property Optimized For Local Business

Anderson Properties has announced that they have made special warehouse office condos for sale or lease at 650 Bovela Lane in Poulsbo, WA. Each unit is approximately 1,692 square feet and have various existing configurations of office improvements and warehouse space. They are ideally suited for commercial  real estate uses or storage. Located just off Viking Avenue at Bovela Lane you can reach Highway 3 at Finn Hill in under 10 minutes.

Some units are already leased and may be purchased as investment property. Special SBA financing is available along with potential seller financing. For more details about these units or to request a list of commercial industrial Kitsap real estate please visit:

http://www.kitsaprealestateadvisor.com/modules/wfchannel/index.php?pagenum=32

Comparing that to the Colliers Report of the same period the downtown Seattle totals were 37,779,190 sf with a direct vacancy of 8.31%. Both markets saw an increase in inventory because of new construction.

Kitsap added 137,416 sf, mostly in Bremerton, Bainbridge Island and Silverdale. While there was a positive absorption of space for the period, the vacancy rate increased from 12.55% in October of 2007.

Downtown Bremerton Renaissance

The conclusion? Absorption of space up to October of 2008 was acceptable but there is anecdotal evidence that everything halted severely after that. New construction plans have been put on hold indefinitely and a number of largely vacant buildings have been put up for sale. Landlords can expect to lose existing tenants more than gain and should look to manage their properties well until some sort of a turnaround.

It is a good time to be buying for cash flow and certainty of leasing income with the caveat of finding reasonably priced debt financing.

For more detailed information on specific sub-markets or properties email your request to jimfreeman@jimfreeman.com.

(1) Source: Bradley Scott

Port Orchard waterfront and marina

The much beloved Natural Health Food Store has moved to the Westbay Center in downtown Port Orchard. For the past 27 years owner Patricia Anderson has helped thousands of South Kitsap residents with education and products to improve their health through good eating habits. The new store location is 1341 Bay Street, Suite A and is open for business.

This applies to local retailers as well as national chain stores but the experienced local store owners know that the fact that they live in the community and have the opportunity to build social connections with their customers can give them a competitive advantage over the chains with their reliance on price. Ms. Anderson has a number of plans to add products and services to her store to deliver more value to her customers.

Nearly all retailers in Kitsap are suffering from a drop in sales. This is showing up as increased vacancies in the various Kitsap retail centers, although not yet at crisis levels for mall owners. As of the summer of 2007 retail vacancies were still below 7%. If consumer buying habits remain depressed we could see vacancies rise to double digits in retail for the first time in at least a decade.

With the addition of Natural Health Foods the Westbay Center in a counter trend to rising vacancies is able to offer a greater variety of goods and services through local vendors including Café LaGarmache’ Catering, Pedro’s Mexican Grocery and Restaurant, Help Line, a driving school, a tobacconist and the Hi Tide Tavern and Restaurant.

Kitsap Commercial Industrial Real Estate Announcement

First Building In Phase One Development Scheduled For Completion

SFI Holdings LLC announces the opening of the first building of phase 1 of their 80 acre Gig Harbor North Airport Industrial Park located adjacent to the Port Orchard Airstrip, a private airfield located at 12300 Sidney Road in Port Orchard, WA. The steel frame structure contains a total of 11,600 sf and can be divided into individual suites as small as 2,000 featuring both office and warehouse. The Park is accessible to Highway 16 at the Burley-Olalla and Mullenix interchanges.

The first building is scheduled to be ready for occupancy by December 1, 2008. The Gig Harbor North Airport Industrial Park is the closest park in Kitsap to the Narrows Bridge and access to I-5. Approximately 20% of the building is pre-leased.

Contact the Leasing Broker, Jim Freeman of Coldwell Banker Park Shore Real Estate at 360-616-7924 for leasing information or email questions to jimfreeman@jimfreeman.com.

Gig Harbor North Airport Industrial Park

Companies located in the older sections of the Gig Harbor North Airport Industrial Park have played an important role in the economic development of South Kitsap County and the Port Orchard area. The forerunner to one of Kitsap’s most successful manufacturing companies, Leader International, got its start in a former airplane hangar at the private airfield. Leader now occupies over 100,000 square feet of new industrial space in the Port Orchard Industrial Park, employees more than 50 people and was listed by the Puget Sound Business Journal in the top 100 fastest growing privately held companies in Washington State.

The Gig Harbor North Airport Industrial Park is currently home to Seattle Marine Construction. President Shannon Wagner and his team is the number one service provider for the Pacific Northwest fishing fleet when they need repairs and remodeling in port. Seattle Marine is also a manufacturer of high quality cabinetry and other building components.

Business and industrial parks that provide affordable, well planned infrastructure for such young and fast growing companies provide much needed jobs and incomes for workers living on the Peninsula. Economic development authorities in the county estimate that some 20% of the Kitsap workforce thought to be over 100,000 people must commute out of the county everyday to go to work. Parks like Gig Harbor North Airport Industrial Park provide high quality startup and expansion potential to create jobs and income, save fuel, reduce emissions and help Kitsap parents and adults to spend more time in their community for family, cultural and civic activities. Privately owned, zoned and developed land for industrial use is in short supply in the county.