There's bad news coming from the commercial property market, but not the sort you have been hearing from banks that loaned money to developers of properties that have fallen in value.

The bad news comes from Washington, where a group of foreign investors represented by HSBC Holdings PLC just paid a top price for a stake in 1625 I Street, an 85,000-square-foot office building that the Wall Street Journal reports is fully rented.

It seems that these investors and others like them are bullish on the D.C. commercial property market because they expect the government to continue to grow and sop up office space at a rate that private sector firms in other cities cannot hope to match.

Good news for property developers, bad news for taxpayers, who will suffer a double whammy: The cost of all those new bureaucrats, and the rising cost of the space needed to house them and their mounds of paperwork.  More here.