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→

Bisnow March 4, 2026 Amazon is planning to cut 49,000 desks from its office footprint in perhaps the biggest shift in its real estate strategy since it courted offers from cities and states for a second headquarters in 2017. Management told members of Amazon’s global real estate and facilities group on Feb. 3 that the company aims to…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!

SF Business Times 1/20/26 “The tech industry’s embrace of stricter return-to-office policies will help fuel a 15% increase in San Francisco office leasing this year, real estate software company VTS said. The city’s fast-growing AI companies also will help ease almost 13 million square feet of San Francisco office space this year, VTS predicted.” I…Read More→

“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→

Not sure of the dicotimy but the SF Business Times headlins 1/16/26 read “Signs of Promise for Oakland’s Office Market” and the subheading rea “Vacancy Rises but Net Absorption Drops in Optimistic Signal”…Where I grew up when the vacancy rate rises and net absorption drops, this is the opposite of any positive signs…then in today’s…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→

Basically, there has been little news over the past month. AI continues to lease space in San Francisco, tech companies have been purchasing  office buildings in Silicon Valley, foreclosures and discounted commercial property debt continue, there is a lot of capital looking for solid investments, the $1-5 million dollar mom & pop retail and warehouse…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→

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→

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→

I have been participating in several AI/Commercial Real Estate programs and just learned something most of you may already know. Make sure you understand the terms of use of whatever Ai Chatbot program you are using, with the paid programs perhaps less problematic than the free ones. Some folks are downloading their leases for almost-instantly…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→

“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→

The good news is “The Brookings Institution published a report that confirms that the Ba Area is the epicenter of the AI race in the U.S. The report calls the San Franisco and san Jose areas a “superstar cluster”…While AI-related job postings only make up 2.5% of all job openings nationally,  the Bay Area has…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→

One the one hand, “The half-decade push to bring employees back to the office after the onset of the pandemic has crossed a significant threshold, according to JLL: More than half of employees at Fortune 100 companies are now required to come in five days a week. July 23, 2025 “  ET Emily Wishingrad, Washington, D.C.  While…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→

Bisnow May 29, 205, according to a CBRE report, “Artificial intelligence (AI) development likely will be a sizable driver of U.S. office demand over the next decade considering the impact it is already having on the country’s tech epicenter of San Francisco. AI-related companies have leased more than 5 million sq. ft. of San Francisco…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→

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→

The Seller acquired this 24-story office building, built in 1988, back in 2005 for $314/rsf so the discount is not as bad as some of the other recent Class A office sales in San Francisco, where the original purchase back in 2018 or 2019 was in the $500-700/rsf range…still, just another sign that our market…Read More→

There are a number of major factors that might prevent to return of a healthy office market. The pandemic showed corporations that they can be extremely profitable even with many of their employees working from home, and even though many companies now have RTO mandates ‘the toothpaste once out of the tube can be hard…Read More→

Globest.com reported that the 3,165-unit apartment complex in San Francisco, Parkmerced, is in default after the owner, Maximus Real Estate Partners defaulted on a $1.5 billion dollar loan backed by the complex.  There have also been articles like one in the March 20, 2025 Business Times “Paramount wrote the value of its investment in the…Read More→

  Two years ago at our annual Northern California SIOR Chapter event at the San Francisco Ferry Building, where major industrial developers forecast what they think this industry segment will be doing over the next year…I remember a consistent comments that their pencils were put away and that new Bay Area industrial development for the…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→

“The commercial real estate office fundamentals have not changed and remain weak…we’re 18 months into seeing the losses materialize…we still have quarters to go. We expect the market for office space will remain challenging for several years…” according to Wells Fargo CEO Mike Santomassimo.  San Francisco Business Times 1/30/5 So tenants should take advantage of…Read More→

6001 Shellmond St., Emeryville, a110,000 sf Class A eight-story office building with adjacent shopping and retail was purchased in 2017 for $33 million, and the $21.6 million loan was just purchased for $6.8 million last month. $300/sf before,$62/sf now…

Cisco just listed 663,000 square feet of its Silicon Valley office and R & D space for sale. Situated on 32 acreas in North San Jose at Tasman and Zanker Roads, it is only a portion of its much larger facility there. Up in Folsom up near Sacramento, IntelC orporation is planning on selling its…Read More→