Headlines in the May 21, 2026, SF Registry read “San Francisco captures 80% of all U.S. AI Venture Capital of Office Leasing Snaps Back”, ‘Ai companies have leased 10.6 million square feet of office space in the city since 2019, more than any other market in the world”.   However, the San Francisco office vacancy is…Read More→

“Overall vacancy closed Q1 at 28.7%, marking the largest quarterly decline since Q3 2019. San Francisco recorded its largest quarterly net occupancy gain in more than six years.” Derrick Daniels, Regional Research Director for Colliers International shared with me his latest findings. Currently ter ear 227 companies looking for over 7,500,000 square feet of San…Read More→

Headlines from just one page of the San Francisco Business Times April 16, 2026 read as follows: Harvey AI doubles Space in Headquarters; Howard Street is Site of Anthropic Leasing Spree; Large Office Tenants Circle San Francisco Market Again…it appears there are dozens of 100,000 sf plus office prospects currently looking for San Francisco office…Read More→

By Don Sweeney The Sacramento Bee    “They are not mostly fleeing to Texas, despite memes and advertisements touting it as an alternative to California. The top beneficiaries of Californians seeking their fortunes elsewhere are Nevada, Hawaii, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho and Washington, the study found. Other states benefiting from the California exodus include Colorado, Montana, Utah,…Read More→

Even with Ai companies taking down millions of square feet of San Francisco Class A office space, the 123 Mission Street office building in the financial District of San Francisco was purchased by Juul I June 2009 for $397 million, a hefty $1,093/sf, to accommodate the rapid growth of its vaping business. This 363,000 square…Read More→

  The Registry reported that Newmark has identified 390 active requrements totaling 9 million square feet of San Francisco office demand. Half of this is AI. In one of my recent blogs, I reported that real estate consulting firm VTS predict if AI companies will lease 13 million square feet of office space in San…Read More→

A few weeks ago, Anthropic leased 400,000 sf of office space in San Francisco, and this week OpenAI did a ten-year lease for 439,000 sf in Mountain View a 350 and 380 Ellis Street. Then on March 1, 2026, Bay Area News Group said this: “Nearly 410,000 jobs in the region (our Bay Area region)…Read More→

Tesla can lease space anywhere they want, but as another case in point of how strong California is, Tesla just leased 108,000 square feet of research and development space at 45401 Research Drive in Fremont. Take that, Texas!

“For the past four years, the city has been rolling out the red carpet for developers or building owners to convert underutilized historic office buildings: cutting fees, slicing red tape, relaxing zoning restrictions, and eliminating both affordable housing requirements and transfer taxes. The city has about 30 million square feet of vacant office space. Despite…Read More→

First, Anthropic just leased 480,000 square feet of Class A office space at 300 Howard Street in downtown San Francisco for a 13-year lease term. Next, Roblox leased 325,000 square feet at San Mateo’s Bay Meadows and will have a total of 1 million square feet of office space. Thirdly, Tiger Global Management just signed…Read More→

East Bay Times 1/28/26  “Pinterest plans to lay off under 15% of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring that arrives as the image-sharing platform pivots more of its money to artificial intelligence. Beyond the coming layoffs, Pinterest said it will reduce office space. isn’t the first company to turn to job cuts while pivoting…Read More→

Yes, it is apples and watermelons, so this blog does not intend to compare one commercial sale with another, but only to point out we are seeing interesting pricing differentials depending on where in the Bay Area, what type of property and who the buyer is. As an example, Apple just paid$216 million, or  $811/sf…Read More→

CoStar November 30, 2025 reported on a study by MIT that artificial intelligence is now able to replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market. This is The Project Iceberg Project Iceberg – Coordinating the Human-AI Future which focuses on 151 million working Americans and projects 13,741 workers apparently can or will be replaced by AI,…Read More→

There has been so much positive news about new lease signings, some of them very signficant, and mostly fueled by the AI explosion which fortunately has been centered in San Francisco. Billions of dollars in new fundings and millions of feet of office space leased during the past year by this one industry category. However,…Read More→

  Office building sales continue to experience at times significant discounts as compared to pre-Covid values, and as a recent case in point 2001 Broadway in Oakland, California, a 56,000 square foot office building just closed escrow in October at a 76% price drop as compared to what it was purchased for in 1016.  $19.5…Read More→

According to a recent article by George Avalos in the East Bay Times, “An estimated 60% of the workforce physically located at Bishop Ranch has returned to the campus…by comparison, the turn-to-office rate was 49% for Silicon Valley and 41.8% for San Francisco, according to figures produced by Kastel Access Control System. Workers also appear…Read More→

About to close escrow, according to TheRegistryy-9/18/25 , 201 California Street, San Francisco, a 272,000 square foot office property which was purchased in December 2019 for $239 million, $878/sf, may be going now for$57 million, $250/sf and a 75% discount…

Databricks is looking for 200,000 sf in Sunnyvale, another AI company making the news. Neuralink just took 144,000 sf at 499 Forbes Blvd. in South San Francisco. Pump.co leased 36,000 sf at 455 Market Street, AI Startup Abridge leased 80,000 sf at 208 Utah St., Anthropic took 104,000sf at Foundry Square III, Resolve I leased…Read More→

In a recent poll, 63% say they worked fully in person in 2025 as compared with 46% who worked fulltime in the office in2024. “Demand for office space will probably not return to pre-pandemic levels, said Santa Clara County Assessor Gret Monteverde, since working from home “seems to be at some level something that is…Read More→

About to close escrow, according to TheRegistry-9/18/25, 201 California Street, San Francisco, a 272,000 square foot office property which was purchased in December 2019 for $239 million, $878/sf, may be going now for$57 million, $250/sf and a 75% discount…

According to Derek Daniels, Regional Research Director for Colliers International, “In terms of the latest on tenant touring demand, “There are close to 7 million square feet of active office tenant requirements in San Francisco. This includes large blocks requirements seeking to expand. Ai and related industries are driving growth in the San Francisco office…Read More→

Tech companies have placed 373 office spaces on the market for sublease, with tech companies responsible for 82% of this. Some of the larger spaces include: XCorp 468,855 rsf; One Tenth 313,229 rsf; Cruise 333,345 rsf; Meta 265,088 rsf, Charles Schwab 259,977 rsf Dropbox 196,425 rsf Xynga 185,118 rsf, Airbnb 150,656 rsf; Salesforce 148,910 rsf,…Read More→

I recently attended a presentation by Ken Larson, President of  Blueline Associates, Inc., a commercial construction company based in Pleasanton in business for over thirty years. I had asked Ken to address how we real estate brokers can assist our clients, both from the tenant as well as landlord side, in keeping tenant improvement costs…Read More→

“In 2025, twenty percent of $4.8 trillion of outstanding commercial mortgages held by lenders and investors will mature, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Among loans backed by industrial properties, 22 percent will come due in 2025, as will 24 percent of office loans. In recent years, lenders have allowed extensions when loans come due,…Read More→

City, county and state governments…so these are captive users of office space, and right now there is an extended Prrime Day offce building sale going on where in many parts of the United States a government or non-profit entity can purchase a quality office building at a 70-80% discount. How come more municipalities aren’t doing…Read More→

David Amsterdam, President, Capital Markets for Colliers had a few noteworthy comments. “Office vacancies set another all-time high, though they are increasing at a more moderate pace.” Nice spin…’Supply-side pressure has all but shut down, setting the stage for recovery in the quarters ahead….Economic uncertainty has many occupiers in a wait-and-see holding pattern. The market…Read More→

  June 10, 2025 I stuck my neck out and delcared that the officical ‘Bottom of the Office Market’ day…since then other corporations have added return-to-office mandates, but one of the strongest cases for the future return of the office was the announcement by Hines that they would like to build a 1,225 foot office…Read More→

You can go back to my newsletters and blogs over the past year, but I have repeated opinioned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is allowing corporations to do more work with less employees. I haven’t seen any documented studies yet, but asreported in Techspot June 27, 2025, “Salesforce CEO says 50% of company work is now…Read More→

Lawrence Stone , Santa Clara County Assessor, Always Has Great Insights!   My favorite County Assessor in the entire Country has been Lawrence Stone, who is retiring from Santa Clara County Assessor after over three decades in this role and 47 years as a public servant. His Annual Report is superb, loaded with facts and…Read More→

Over my past 45 years of predicting where we are in the office market, and my published and printed newsletters sent out every other month will attest to how lucky and accurate I have been so far…well, I hereby declare June 10, 2025 as the official bottom of the office market…I am seeing more and…Read More→

The good news is that more people are coming to work in downtown San Francisco in 2025. “Office badge-swipe data compiled by the security company Kastle from select buildings in the San Francisco area continue to show weekly office-occupancy numbers compared to pre-COVID attendance being among the lowest of 10 metropolitan areas. For the week ending…Read More→

Just this week’s headlines….Machine Investment Group Acquires Distressed San Jose Luxury Condominium Development; Lener Takes Back 541-Room Signia by Hilton in San Jose Deal; Peninsula Land & Capital Buys 210,000 SQFT Class A Office Property in Walnut Creek for $22.5MM ($107/rsf, versus the $66 million-$314/sf)  the former owners paid for the property in 2017).  So…Read More→

SF Business Times May 9, 2025 “Remote job postings in San Francisco have plunged 71% over the past three years, as employers claim leverage and a new generation of AI companies dries a return to in-person work…The shift refkects a cooling labor market and a rising number of companies from Uber to JPmorganChase mandating office…Read More→

  45 Fremont Street, San Francisco, a 620,000 square foot Class A office property owned by Shorenstein and Blackstone, goes back to market at direction of  lender Bank of America. With a loan value of $347 million this puts the debt at $560/SF, which pre-covid would make sense but in today’s office sale market with…Read More→

  On the one hand we have the recent announcement that the 260,000 SF Pacific Plaza office building at 1340 Treat Blvd. in Walnut Creek, directly across the street from the Pleasant Hill Bart Station, Class A and mostly leased to credit tenants, but plans now underway to replace it with 400 housing units. On…Read More→

While I am all for positive news, especially when it comes to the office market, sometimes articles are done in a possibly misleading spin. TheRegistry on April 22, 2025, headlined “JPMorgan Chase Plans to Expand Lease at San Francisco/s 560 Mission t 280,000 SQFT”. The article starts as follows: ”JPMorgan Chase & Co. is doubling…Read More→

  In an article written by Joe Gose and published in the New York Times 4/14/25, sales of office buildings across the country are up 21% from 2023. CBRE reported that in 2024, 6.5 million ore square feet of office space was leased than was vacated. In major higher-cost cities the average asking rate of…Read More→

There was an announcement in TheRegistry that Google is putting over 1,000,000 square feet of office space on the market at Pacific Shores, Redwood City.  Yesterday there was a press release that Workday in Pleasanton was putting a 209,000 square foot office building on the market, vacant. A week ago I toured a Concord office…Read More→

Two positive news releases just out regarding the San Francisco office market…the Transamerica Pyramid, which has gone through the first phase of a $250 million dollar renovation, just signed a 123,000 square foot long-term lease with the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockus LLP.  This landmark office building is asking $300 per annual square foot…Read More→

I have been writing and publishing the OfficeTimes Corporate Office Perspective for the past 45 years, and during this time I have made many industry predictions. Almost every one of them has come true, and this is documented if you want to check. It almost feels like we are at the office building bottom, but…Read More→

San Francisco and Oakland have been experiencing fire-sale pricing of office buildings over the past few years, with office properties that previously sold for $500-1000/rsf selling for $350-300/rsf/ Very recently we are beginning to hear of I-680 Corridor Class A, well-located office buildings and complexes potentially on the way to Trustee sales in the $100-200/rsf…Read More→

1440 Broadway, Oakland,  a 91,000 square foot office building built from 103-1911, which was purchased in 2018 for $43.5 million, just sold for 5.5 million.  I have seen recent articles claiming we are at the bottom of the office market, and if the bottom was much lower this building would have been free…

Bisnow headline, The retail apocalypse is back, Why It Seems Like All Of America’s Chains Are closing, then I opened my Morning Brief, “Party City Out Of Business After Nearly 40 Years”,  and the next headline, “The Container Store Files For Bankruptcy”

Bisnow reported on Dec. 4, 2024 that Brookfield Properties 8 million square foot office portfolio is now being  powered by nuclear energy.  “It not only sets a new standard for how owners can purchase clean energy, but it’s also a very scalable model that other property owners can follow,” Brookfield Properties Senior Vice President of…Read More→

Snowflake just sublet from Meta 773,000 square feet of office space, and this is significant for several reasons. First, for the San Francisco Bay Area this is a huge office deal, but as importantly, Snowflake previously relocated its headquarters to Bozman, Montana. Like many companies seeking a less expensive place to do business than our…Read More→