Population growth: 0.8%
Job growth: 4.2%
Market analysis: Seattle receives high marks for retail investment primarily for job growth, Strub of CrowdStreet said. “To not hide the elephant in the room, obviously Amazon is constantly creating new jobs there. And you’ve seen a lot of influx of jobs from Silicon Valley, [with] Facebook setting up new offices and Microsoft obviously expanding there,” he said. Not only does Amazon have headquarters in Seattle, but the city is also home to its grocery store, Amazon Fresh, and seven Amazon Go locations. Strub points out, however, that it’s not “grocery-anchored strip centers” that earn Seattle a top-five spot for retail investment but rather “experiential real estate that compliments a lot of office and multifamily developments.”
Grocery market share in 2021: In Seattle, Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway 36.7% had the highest market share when looking at the top 10 traditional grocers in the region. Portland-based Fred Meyer wasn’t too far behind with 27.2% share, and Bellevue, Wash.-based QFC came in third at 11.6% share, Placer.ai found.
Walmart again led in superstores, with 63.7% share, and Target having 36.3% share, but when comparing market share in 2021 to 2019, Walmart’s share fell 5.6%. Among the top four dollar stores in the region, Dollar Tree led with 74.7% share, followed by Big Lots (16.9) and Daiso Japan (5.9%), a Japanese-based dollar store with more than 80 stores in the U.S., including in Washington, California, Texas, New York, New Jersey and Nevada. (Market share data for wholesale clubs in the Seattle area is unavailable due to a low presence in the region, Placer.ai said.)