The latest quarterly sales report from CBA offers a data point that helps explain why everyone keeps talking about converting empty offices into apartments: office buildings are not trading the way they used to. Office sales volume across the researched Puget Sound counties fell to 96 transactions in Q2 2026, down from 119 a year earlier. This is a roughly 19% drop in the number of deals. Although dollar volume actually rose about 45%, to $387 million, that's attributable to a handful of larger trades; the shrinking deal count points to a thinner market and is often used as the real bellwether. A market where fewer buildings change hands can push owners to consider alternative uses.
That's the backdrop for some recent King 5 coverage of downtown Seattle's office-to-residential push. City leaders see converting vacant offices into housing as one piece of downtown's future. So far only a handful of projects have actually moved forward, even as roughly a quarter of downtown office space sits vacant. Developers point to a weak office market and a shrinking pipeline of new housing as the practical reasons conversions are starting to pencil.
Meanwhile, the demand side of that equation still shows up in the CBA data. Multifamily remained the region's largest asset class by dollar volume in Q2 2026, and its deal count actually ticked up from 84 to 92 sales year over year, even as total multifamily volume cooled. In other words, the appetite for residential product that conversions are meant to feed is still there.
