The Watsonville real estate market is seeing improvements in some areas, much as the rest of Santa Cruz County. The commercial real estate sector of the market has picked up somewhat, although the industrial market is having continued trouble and Watsonville apartments are becoming more important for the market than Watsonville homes for sale. An August 23, 2010 report from the Mercury News found that "Office vacancies dropped back down to last year's levels and rents climbed slightly but the opposite was true for warehouse and manufacturing markets, which saw a climb in vacancies and a drop in rents, according to the latest quarterly report on commercial space by Cassidy Turley/ BT Commercial...After closing in on 1 million square feet a quarter ago, total office availability in the county dropped to 922,000 square feet, according to CT/BT. In the second quarter, office vacancies were still elevated, dropping only to 12.4 percent in the from 13.1 percent in the first quarter. CT/BT related the drop to a corresponding drop in the local unemployment rate...Santa Cruz, however, had a slight increase in vacancy to about mid-16 percent; Mid County saw a minor decrease remaining in the high 6 percent range; and Watsonville reported a noticeable decline to below 5 percent. More than 90 percent of the 203 listings countywide are less than 10,000 square feet."
Watsonville apartments for sale have become more attractive investments lately, according to an August 16, 2010 article from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. The piece by Jennifer Pittman noted that "In the Silicon Valley, there were no apartment building sales recorded during the first two quarters of 2010, but sales have been reported in the current quarter, according to RealFacts, an apartment data research company. According to RealFacts, there hasn't been an apartment property sold since 2007. The company, however, doesn't track data relating to complexes of fewer than 50 units and there are only about a dozen properties in Santa Cruz County with more than 50 units. In Santa Cruz County, where building is limited, there should be a "swelling of demand for rental properties," Fletcher said."