Secondary Market: Seattle

Colocation Insights

• Sabey absorbed I-Nap’s 3 MWs at their SDC Seattle Building 5 facility, adding it to their wholesale offering.
• Centeris Data Centers had an active 2022. Three tenants completed over 1.25 MWs of transactions.

Market Trends

• Demand is growing from all sectors. Providers are seeing increased leasing activity from hyperscale, enterprise, satellite, SaaS, hybrid, 5G, edge users and others.
• Satellite-to-server connectivity is growing rapidly, with the ability to impressively reduce latency times between markets.

Notable Activity

• Toptana Technologies is building a new cable landing station off the state’s coast. It will provide diverse, transpacific network capacity from the Pacific Northwest to the Asia-Pacific and Oceania markets. It will also have terrestrial connectivity to the I-5 corridor, Seattle, WA and Hillsboro, OR. The project begins construction in late-2023, with completion expected in 2025.
• Washington State renewed and expanded its tax abatement program for renovation or construction of qualifying data centers of at least 100,000 sq. ft. The tax benefits extend to qualifying data centers’ tenants.
• Digital Realty’s Westin Exchange is focused on the concept of “digital gravity,” where its dense networks and circuits offering enables increasingly enhanced connectivity across metro markets in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Figure 1: Historical Market Information

Source: CBRE Research, CBRE Data Center Solutions, H2 2022.

Figure 2: Historical Supply and Demand

Source: CBRE Research, CBRE Data Center Solutions, H2 2022.

Figure 3: % of Total Secondary Market Inventory

Source: CBRE Research, CBRE Data Center Solutions, H2 2022.

Figure 4: Market Fuel Mix

Source: Seattle City Lights.

Figure 5: Average Asking Rates

Source: CBRE Research, CBRE Data Center Solutions, H2 2022.