Vacancies have shrunk to 2 percent or less. If you're an owner, Dicker advises, raise the rent. If you're a developer, build it. Two hundred people a day. Whether it's Dicker's remarks or the coffee kicking in, the room fills with an almost electric air.
Some listeners squirm in their seats, seemingly anxious to get on with the day's deals.
They need only look to the towering cranes that dot skylines from downtown Seattle to Microsoft's Redmond campus to glimpse the hundreds of millions of dollars in projects already under construction. Some firms are even turning away work. But catch developers away from the exuberance of a promising forecast breakfast and you find a touch of temperance behind their wide grins. Anyone who's been around since the beginning of this decade knows it ain't always so good. Just look at CB Commercial's year-end 1997 report on the Puget Sound office market.