Formerly the headquarters of fallen mortgage giant U.S. Funding Group Inc., vacant and on the market for over a year, the building on 14300 S.E. First St. could be the poster-child for the region's troubled real estate market.
Sold in February for $1 million less than the original asking price to Camas-based CTC Holdings LLC, this two-story brick office building may also be a signal of the commercial real estate market recovery to come.
"There are deals being made," said Kevin Wingate-Pearse, a broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial Jenkins-Bernhardt Associates, who represented the seller in the transaction, CRP Properties, Inc.
But it seemed clear that the close to $1.7 million sale of the USFG Building was still an anomaly in a commercial real estate market nearly-frozen between landlords weary of taking huge losses and potential buyers happy to stay put.
"Many sellers still haven't revalued properties in their minds yet," said Adam Roselli, a broker at Eric Fuller and Associates and author of the Vancouver real estate firm's monthly Clark County Office Market Report. "And right now, it's such a good rental market that a lot of tenants have made the decision not to move yet."
Roselli's report has shown Clark County office vacancy rates holding mostly steady at around 18 percent since the start of the year, slightly down from over 20 percent last summer.
The deal for the USFG Building will result in software company Capstone Technolgies, Inc. of Camas taking over around 60 percent of the building's office space, according to Wingate-Pearse, who called the transaction the "biggest" he'd closed in 12 months.
Still, Wingate-Pearse said the market was far away from anything resembling a normal recovery. "The bid-ask gap is still a little bit too wide right now," he said. "But it is getting closer."
