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Last Friday, Oregonian reporter Jeff Manning wrote an on the development firm Opus Northwest putting , a 322-unit downtown apartment complex, on the market.

When the apartment complex actually sells, which shouldn’t be that long according to the few real estate professionals I have talked to around town, it will be very telling of the current state of multifamily in Portland. The questions until it is sold are: is it a distressed asset that just has to go? Or is it a product of the multifamily investment market heating up in Portland?

That won’t be known until the building is purchased, but it will be the best indicator of the market. From what I’ve heard, there are a lot of institutional investors out there that are looking to purchase in Portland.

When all is said and done, if Opus recoups its investment on the Ladd Tower, in my opinion, it will mark the first sector of the development industry that has actually hit recovery mode. And according to Robert Black, vice president of NAI Norris, Beggs & Simpson, multifamily usually sees the effects of real estate cycles before any other sector.

My point is that despite this lull period where everyone is only remaining optimistic to keep their sanity, I think we are finally seeing some quantifiable results of a recovery.

The fact that it is summer, a period when activity notoriously picks up in Portland, and the possibility that Opus might only be putting this on the market because the company is upside down on it, could refute this statement I just made. But it is really nice to see some actual deals accompany that optimism.