Sound Industrial Advisors
Buyer prospecting package  ·  Owner-user industrial  ·  Seattle  ·  August 2026

Who buys a SODO
building at $4.5M

15,600 SF on a 12,200 SF fenced yard, asking $288 a foot. There are three ways into this buyer pool: occupiers who could own, buyers who already bought in this size band, and sellers holding exchange proceeds with a clock running.

29
occupiers

verified in SODO, Georgetown, South Park and the Duwamish. 21 with both a phone and an email.

254
buyer trades

of 10,000 to 20,000 SF industrial in King, Pierce and Snohomish, September 2021 to August 2026.

108
named buyers

of the 254 buying LLCs now trace to a real person, up from 45 in the first cut.

28
1031 sellers

who sold in this band since September 2025, $141.8M of proceeds looking for a home.

Where the buyers bought

10–20K SF industrial sales by county · 5 years
King
122
Pierce
81
Snohomish
51

Snohomish is the thin county. It does not publish buyer names in bulk, so 31 of its 51 sales show a verified trade with no recoverable buyer until a public records request comes back.

When they bought

Closed sales per year · 2026 through August
2021 (from Sep)
31
2022
66
2023
48
2024
46
2025
41
2026 to date
22

The band still trades about forty times a year across three counties. This is a live buyer pool, not a 2022 memory.

How close each buyer is to this deal

All 254 ranked on size, price, recency and geography
Closest analoguesame size, price and submarket
6
Strong analogue
20
Comparable
68
Background
160
4 LLCs

One buyer, four buildings in this exact band, four different entity names. Grouping every sale by the taxpayer mailing address instead of the entity name is what exposed it, and it is the same move that put a person behind 108 of the 254. That buyer's managing partner used to run Seattle acquisitions for a national industrial REIT, and his cell is not published anywhere.

Sample deliverable: company names, people and the subject property are illustrative. Counts and method come from a live package, with every real name removed.
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Sound Industrial Advisors
Who to call first  ·  2 of 3

Three names in each lane, each with at least three people who can actually decide on a building, so one unanswered phone does not kill the lead. Coverage tags show what is verified on file.

Occupiers who could own

Halvorsen Construction

Custom GC · 41 staff · owns its building

They bought their current building in 2008, so the question is not whether they buy but whether they buy again. Their constraint is yard: 6,700 SF for crew trucks and staging. The subject nearly doubles it.

2 cells2 emails3 deciders

Ridgeline Fence Co.

Fence and gate contractor · 22 staff

Three yards across the corridor today. For a fence contractor the fenced yard is the product, which is exactly what this building sells.

Direct dialEmail4 deciders

Ellis Steel Sash

Family owned since 1950

A named owner sits separately from the president, which is usually where a purchase decision lives. Call the owner, not the front desk.

Direct dialEmail3 deciders

Buyers who already bought in this band

Portage Industrial Partners

4 buildings · 4 LLCs · 10–20K SF

The serial buyer the mailing-address match surfaced. Managing partner ran Seattle acquisitions for a national industrial platform before joining.

CellEmailUnpublished

Alder Investment Co.

Private investor · since 1992

President of the family investment firm and managing partner of the industrial arm that bought in Georgetown. Formed a new Kent acquisition entity in September 2024.

CellEmailOffice

Leary Holdings

3 Ballard and Fremont buys · 2023–26

All three under $4.5M, all tenanted. The brokerage that sold them one of those buildings is the warm route in, and it reaches a second buyer too.

Main lineWarm intro

Sellers on a 1031 clock

28 sellers · where each sits on the exchange clock
Inside 45 dayspicking targets now
2
Inside 180 dayscan still close
8
Past 180 daysproven, may be uncommitted
18

A 1031 buyer has 45 days to identify and 180 to close, so these are the only names in the package working against a clock. The hardest one to ignore sold an East Valley building to a public agency in April for $9.1M against a $6.6M basis thirty months earlier.

Tenants the county cannot see

59

businesses in industrial buildings that the assessor record does not name

3

of the 13 verified are Tier 1 and need to move

The assessor names at most one business per parcel, so every second and third tenant of a multi-tenant building was invisible. Joining the state contractor registry, which is keyed to street address, closed that gap. The best find: a 31-person electrical contractor whose building sold out from under it in September 2024, with the new owner's remodel permit already issued.

Contact depth on the occupier and tenant lists

3 or more deciders
25
Fewer, and why
17

Every company was researched for at least three people who can decide on a building, each with the source it came from: the company's own leadership page, the state licence file, trade press or a contact database. Most of the 17 fall short because the company really is that small, a two-person shop or a sole proprietorship, and the row says so.

3 flags

Twenty rows carry a cell or direct dial. Three of those numbers came back on the Do Not Call registry and are marked in red on the call sheet, so the decision to dial is yours. Everything else is a published main line or a verified direct.

Sample deliverable: company names, people and the subject property are illustrative. Counts and method come from a live package, with every real name removed.
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Sound Industrial Advisors
The list, built the other way round  ·  3 of 3

From every licence in the corridor to six calls

Businesses remaining at each screen · log scale
Active business licencescorridor, city licence file
19,982
In an industrial buildingand the tax bill goes to someone else
721
After chains and duplicates
678
Scored, corridor and south county
669
Verified by hand
40
Survived
6

The old 10–20K SF size band would have excluded 81% of the 721, which is why the canvass was rebuilt from licences rather than from the assessor.

Why 34 of the top 40 came off

Reason at hand verification
Wrong physical fit
12
Corporate branch
10
Too small for $4.5M
9
Dissolved or gone
3

The two signals that score highest, an out-of-area landlord and a recent building sale, are also exactly what a corporate branch looks like. A national company's local depot has an out-of-state landlord because head office leases it. Every rejection is kept with its evidence so any name can be reopened.

The six that survived

#BusinessWhy it fits this building
1Harbor Towing & Impound
Towing and impound · 2 yards · ~30 years
Leased yard is an existential risk in towing, because operators get pushed out when industrial land redevelops, so they buy when they can. The 12,200 SF yard and industrial zoning suit impound. Decided at the Burien head office.Call first
2Cascade Abatement
Abatement and interior demolition · 25 years
23,400 SF today with almost no yard, 1,600 SF. Twelve thousand square feet of yard is the pitch for a firm staging roll-offs and decon units. Locally owned, nobody above them.Tier 1
3Vashon Selections
Wine and spirits importer · 4 distributor licences
In 12,900 SF now, so 15,600 is a natural next step in the same corridor. Their landlord just changed hands, which makes the lease-or-buy conversation easier. Capacity is the question, not fit.Tier 1
4Duwamish Aerospace Finishing
Nadcap accredited · 51–200 staff
The strongest balance sheet of the six and a true lateral, 15,750 SF against 15,600. Moving a plating line needs a county discharge authorisation, so lead with what the seller would contribute toward it.Tier 1
5–6Two owner-occupiers
Trailer repair · lumber yard
Both already own their buildings. Call them as second-building buyers or as sellers, not as relocating tenants. One just opened a two-acre yard across the river.Owners

The price against the nearest listing

Asking $ per SF
Subject
$288
Six blocks away
$276

The price cut closed the gap from $41 a foot to $12, which is worth leading with to anyone who toured both and passed. But the listing has been out fifteen months. If that has produced tours without offers, a longer list helps at the margin and price is still doing most of the work.

Seven listing leads came out of it too

Not buyers, but worth a call. A 25-person millwork shop is moving into a building its owner bought himself, leaving 16,300 SF about to open. A lumber yard has moved its front door to a new site and is not marketing the old one. A 22,500 SF building has sat openly vacant for two years.

Two gaps, both fixable. The state corporations registry returned a verification hold all day, so filed officer lists wait on one retry. Snohomish buyer names need one signed public records form, and the export it unlocks carries exactly the missing field.

Sources: King, Pierce and Snohomish assessor sales and parcel records; City of Seattle business licences; Washington L&I contractor registry; company sites, state licence files and trade press for decision makers; national Do Not Call registry.

Sample deliverable: company names, people and the subject property are illustrative. Counts and method come from a live package, with every real name removed.
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