WASHINGTON, DC—Federal procurement and contracting is huge, and this spending drives the 10 jurisdictions of the Greater Washington, DC office market. Indeed, this market is the largest recipient of contract dollars in the nation at $83.4 billion, followed by California at $57.9 billion. And, the national contract spending total was $470.8 billion in 2017.

In this exclusive, Robert Hartley, director of research for the Greater Washington, DC metro area of Colliers International, shared insights into how this federal spending tips the scales for a positive or negative outcome of economic growth.

“When we look at the revenue/R&D spending last year, the federal government procured $116 billion in R&D, more than Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, GlaxoSmithKline and Monsanto combined,” Hartley tells GlobeSt.com. “It’s an absolutely massive amount of spending and where these dollars flow really drives the regional economy. When you think of what Amazon has done for Seattle and what Apple has done for Cupertino, the impact to those areas is great. The DC region is the largest recipient of federal dollars of any area in the United States, and it is an enormous driver of our economy.”

Hartley points out that Northern Virginia is the largest beneficiary of federal dollars in this region. It received $41.8 billion — half the region’s obligated contract dollars — while 54.7% or $22.9 billion was received from the Department of Defense.

“When we start looking at nodes of government contractors and their impact on commercial real estate in our region, most of their business is done in Northern Virginia,” Hartley tells GlobeSt.com. “A lot of it is Defense, which involves high end, advanced types of work: cybersecurity, command and control, aerospace, weapons systems, national security, intelligence, aerospace and medical research. This work is tied to some of most sophisticated research in the US.”  Read Full Article