The Stratford Co.

Specialty: Land development, office, multifamily, senior housing and real estate investment

Management: George Webb, founder and CEO

Founded: 2003

Headquarters: Seattle

Current projects: Pine Street mixed-use project on Capitol Hill

Welcome to a new era. Though the past few years had been a deal maker’s market, according to George Webb, CEO of The Stratford Co., we’ve now entered an operator’s market. That’s another way of saying that property owners will have to know their stuff if they expect to survive in this economy.

“People who know how to own and operate (their properties) will thrive,” Webb said, whereas in the past, “people who bought (properties) and didn’t know what they were doing made money.”

Layoffs

The Stratford Co. develops, owns and operates an array of properties, including offices, senior housing and multifamily developments.

The souring economy has put some business on hold for Stratford — Webb said he’s had to lay off staff — but one project still in the works is a 118-unit apartment building in the Pike/Pine corridor on Capitol Hill with 13,000 square feet of commercial space.

Webb said he’s under contract to sell the site to a large national developer (he declined to say which one), but said the project demonstrates how there is now “a flight to absolute quality” in the market, and “a flight away from anything that isn’t.”

Seattle projects are still in high demand, he said, but outlying projects are having trouble attracting interest from lenders.

Apartment owners should continue to see “pretty strong” demand for rental units, but Webb expects demand to moderate over the next few years.

“I don’t expect to see any light in the short- to mid-term on for-sale properties,” he added, “but distressed-type opportunities will grow in the next two years.”

Lingering recession

The big wild card for the real estate market will be global economy, Webb said, citing pundit predictions that the recession could stick around till 2010.

“I can’t disagree with that from what I see on the ground,” he said.

Departures by big commercial office tenants such as WaMu in Seattle or Russell Investments in Tacoma could also affect how quickly the local real estate market rebounds, he said.

The outlook is also bleak for senior housing, which correlates closely with the single-family market. When home sales are slow, seniors are reluctant to move to retirement centers unless they have to because of declining health.