Published in the Fall 2022 SIOR Report,  was an article reported that GSA has established a goal to restrict new lease agreements to net-zero buildings by the year 2030. One big problem with this, according to John Robbins, CEO of Carpenter Robbins Commercial Real Estate in San Ramon (and a great friend of mine!) is…Read More→

Reported in the San Francisco Business Times 9/29/22,  the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Jamie Dimon suggested that those who come to the office every day will be getting the better assignments versus those who work remotely or only come in occasionally. But, “The Survey job site Monster found most workers would quit their…Read More→

Editor: Jeffrey S. Weil, MCR.h, CCIM, SIOR Executive Vice President 1850 Mt. Diablo Blvd. Suite 200 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 Phone: +1 925 279 5590 Fax: +1 925 279 0450 Email: jeff.weil@colliers.com Blog: www.OfficeTimes.com   October 1, 2022 Issue: 254   If you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter, please send their…Read More→

  “Is San Francisco’s CRE Market On the Verge Of Collapse?   MyEListing.com, a Texas-based commercial real estate marketplace, has published a report based on San Francisco data, and it paints a picture of a seriously struggling office market. The pandemic-driven “work-from-home” model appears to be taking permanent hold in The City by the Bay. With…Read More→

In an article by Sougata Mukherjeee, Editor-in-Chief of the Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, he wirtes that GICPte  and Workspace Property Trust just spent $1.1 billion on purchasing 53 suburban office buildings  “That’s a bet that reflects institutional investors believe remote work is here to stay, and now office buildings near residential neighborhoods…Read More→

BizNews 9/6/22 had a great quote that to me sums up the dilemma many corporate executives are now facing. “What is the purpose of an office?” said Matthew Saxon, Zoom’s chief people officer. “It’ll be different for different companies, but one of the things I think this huge experience we’ve all been a part of…Read More→

  It is probably something most of us don’t even want to think about now. However, many corporate leaders already have emergency contingency plans for what to do in case of a fire, earthquake, flood, power outage, or other natural disaster and unfortunately Covid has now been added to the list. Buildings magazine July 2022…Read More→

TheRegistry published on Spt. 6. 2022 where in 2015 Northwestern Mutual paid $37.8 million for the 100 unit Arroyo Residences apartment complex in downtown Walnut Creek at 1250 Arroyo Way, and now Rockwood Capital just purchased this property for $66 million, $440,000 per unit. The property is a half-mile walk from Bart, walking distance to…Read More→

  The SF Business Times August 28, 2022 reported “The owners of nine San Francisco properties assessed at more than $100 million are scheduled to appear before a city board to reduce their assessments be cut in half”. They claim that the pandemic impact in 2021 dramatically affected their property values. I added up the…Read More→

Recent surveys have supported allowing pets in the office will increase workers returning to the office. about 71% of employees said their employer made changes to its workplace pet policies within the last year. Those sorts of changes can help employee retention and satisfaction, with about 86% of employees surveyed saying they would look forward…Read More→

  The San Francisco Business Times on August 26, 2022 reported “that of the 25 startups on Forbes ‘Net Billion Dollar Startups 2022’ list 12 of them are Bay Area companies. So go ahead and move to less-costly areas like Boise or Oklahoma and try to raise millions or hundreds of millions for your next…Read More→

vv This story encapsulates what is going on these days in the ‘back to the office’ vs hybrid vs remote work discussions on-going in today’s Corporate America.  In Bisnow August 19, 2022, Centene, a large healthcare company in North Carolina, was weeks away from completing it’s 800,000 square foot headquarters facility in Charlotte and stated…Read More→

On a national level, the Colliers Q2  2022 U.S. Research Report reported that net absorption was positive for the third time in the past four quarters. Asking rents are holding firm but ‘generous concessions are on offer’. Sublease space is at record levels, now totaling 218 million square feet. Locally there is good news and…Read More→

Today: Bulk of genetic testing company’s 1,000 layoffs will be in S. F.; Metromile’s new owner slashes dozens of San Francisco jobs; yesterday headlines, Twitter set to close parts of it’s SF1.7 SF Footprint. There have been a few bright spots but overall during the past six or more months folks may have left their…Read More→

  Prologis May Soon Have Over One Billion SF Of Industrial Properties, but there is another story in the pending acquisition of Duke Realty. The San Francisco Business Times put a great spin on another angle to industrial real estate. Prologis has a division called Essentials which sells all kinds of products and services important…Read More→

  The San Francisco Business Times had an article on June 9, 2022 where studies are showing that due to remote work office values could drop by half a trillion dollars in the United States during this decade.  This $500 Billion dollar negative valuation change would affect not just investors but also local governments who…Read More→

Every business day I get several editions of the business news from the San Francisco Business Times. Here are the headlines from this morning’s edition, June 2, 2022: Why shares in this tech titan’s AI company have dropped 17% in 17 months; East Bay migraine patch developer files for bankruptcy; Gene therapy company abandons East…Read More→

Bisnow reported on May 25, 2022 “the demand for office space across the country fell 1.5% in April compared to March….Almost half of office visits in 2022 to date were just once a week, Bloomberg reported, citing workplace occupancy data company Basking.io, which aggregates WiFi data from 100 offices of seven organizations across a variety…Read More→

  San Francisco’s office vacancy rate went from4% in early 2020 to 24% in April 2022, with leasing coming almost to a standstill combines with a number of companies giving back space. Not surprisingly, this has placed millions of feet of planned office projects on hold. Right now there are about 17 million feet of…Read More→

A number of wonderful announcements about our commercial real estate markets. First, here in the San Francisco Bay Area Ripple just leased 130,000 square feet of office space at 600 Battery St. in San Francisco. Applied Materials just subleased 246,000 square feet 1t 3333 Scott Blvd. in Santa Clara,  and on a national level, the…Read More→

Where is the office market headed, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area? Yahoo just put i’s entire new 657,934 sf San Jose office campus on the sublease market. PayPal just announced it was vacating Downtown San Francisco, as have a number of other high-profile corporations. Is this due in part to the onerous San…Read More→

The overall office vacancy is at 15%, and this is true for both suburban and CBD markets. There is almost 122 million square feet of new office space under construction, 27 million of this in New York City Metro, 9 million in the San Francisco Bay Area, and 8.5 million in Washington D.C. Class A…Read More→

Amazon has increased its footprint from 97 million square feet at the end of 2016 to over 457 million square feet by the end of this year. This is an increase of 360 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space and in turn has created huge shortages and price increases in a number of…Read More→

“To attract workers back to the office, companies are leaning on the presence of tricked-out offices with leisure areas, modern technology, fitness areas, outdoor spaces and other amenities. Nationally, large companies are hosting parties, pop-up events, free food and even celebrities to paint the workplace as more appealing than home, according to the New York…Read More→

For years I have subscribed to Business Facilities, in which many of our country’s states tout how wonderful their economic climate is, their economic development departments incentive programs, and where major real estate deals have taken place around the United States. In the past I have felt a smugness about California’s place in our country,…Read More→

Who Is Kidding Whom?   Jim Gardner, Managing Editor of the San Francisco Business Times summed up the controversy over whether employees will be working in the office or working remotely. In his editorial titled “Back to the Office: Who’s Kidding Who?” Jim cited several surveys, and the bottom line appears to be, employers overwhelmingly…Read More→

Austin is leading the pack, with 53% of its workers back in the office. Los Angeles checks in at 40% and New York at 36%, but San Francisco is still at the bottom with only 31% of workers coming back to the office. This is having a negative impact on the City of San Francisco’s…Read More→

On March 21, 2022 Bisnow published report that “Half of all companies plan to require full-time in-person work within a year.  There seems to be a major disconnect between what employees want and what employers want…perhaps there will be two types of companies with two types of workers, those that require workers to be in…Read More→

  This has huge implications not just as a major office deal, but one that was signed while we are still struggling to get workers back into the office. Additionally this is a major signal to the world that despite high income taxes, high energy costs, high housing costs, a homeless problem the San Francisco…Read More→

Around the United States office occupancy levels are in the 40-60% range, but out in San Francisco it is in the 22-35% arena. San Francisco leaders are attempting to jump-start the return to the office, which has impacted the many restaurants and retailers who miss the foot traffic as well as major employers paying for…Read More→

Bisnow Jan. 23, 2022 reported national office occupancy rates, which had risen to 39% in November, 2022, is slowly back on the rise and now averages 36%.  However, the demand for office space has stalled and is at 58% of pre-pandemic levels. It had hit 87% in August 2021 when we thought we were out…Read More→

GlobeSt.com 1/22/22 reported that new office building construction was getting a 65% rent premium over average Class A rents, according to a study just out by Cushman & Wakefield. Peter Curry, real estate partner with Farrell Fritz, told GlobeSt that “front and center will be state-of-the-art air filtration systems, energy savings infrastructure, and a retreat…Read More→

According to a report just out by Colliers, the U.S. office vacancy leveled off in Q4 2021, net absorption increased and was positive for the second successive quarter, sales volumes are approaching pre-pandemic levels, and ‘California and Florida are projected to lead the economic recovery’. Yeah!  Sublease space levels declined but are still way up…Read More→

  There appears to be a number of apps out that can allow employees to upload their e vaccination status, employment information that then allows a touchless building access through the lobby without having to check in with security. These apps allow you to control the elevator to get you to your specific floor, and…Read More→

This is the highest it has been in 20 years. Even though net absorption is down, rental rates have only dropped 10-15% since the beginning of the pandemic. Landlords are holding firm on their asking rents, although there are still concessions in the form of free rent and tenant improvement allowances. John Bryant, CEO of…Read More→

Wells Fargo just announced that March 14, 2022 is now the magic day when employees can return to the office under a ‘hybrid flexible work model’ and that if they want they can come back earlier, starting this Wednesday. They reminded workers that almost 100,000 workers never left the workplace or have already returned, out…Read More→

Carter Kennedy, one of Colliers top Occupier Services gurus in our San Francisco office, sent me a report on their market. On the one hand, Multi-tenant Class A Trophy office buildings are doing quite well with a vacancy rate of only 4.4%. Many are net leased to strong credit companies. On the other hand, Multi-tenant…Read More→

An article in the San Francisco Business Times today listed the three main factors impacting the return to the office. #1, Covid uncertainty…companies have announced, tehn cancelled, then announced again only to cancel again plans to bring employees back to the office. “Experts say they fully expect additional variants to follow Omicron, which is keeping…Read More→

  Yesterday Slack’s CEO called ‘Return to Work a Doomed Approach’ and put 208,000 square feet of space on the San Francisco sublet market. The SF Registry reported on Slack, “Communication software firm Slack has decided that the future of work is not necessarily in the office and has placed 208,460 square feet of space…Read More→

If the San Francisco Bay Area were it’s own country, it would be ranked #19 in the world in terms of largest economy.  Recent major corporate expansions in this region have bolstered this well-deserved reputation. LinkedIn just expanded its Sunnyvale headquarters by committing to a number of new office buildings to be developed. Meta, formerly…Read More→

  39% of Small Business Owners Said They Would Fire Employees Who Refuse to Come Back to the Office, and in the same survey 39% said they would not. In an article in the San Francisco Business Times July 8, 2021, Digital.com surveyed 1,500 small business owners. ‘But about 47% of business owners who say…Read More→

Around the United States I have been hearing concern from landlord broker reps that with inflation rates rising, in many areas the standard annual rental increase of 3% might not be enough to keep up. The Federal Reserve Board seems to think that inflation is temporary. This reminds me, as a tenant representative broker, how…Read More→

#SIORDeloitte just came out with a CEO Survey that found CEOs expect one-third of their workforce to continue working from him in January 2022 and anticipate needed 26% less office space in 2022, compared to 2019 levels. In pre-Covid for the most part most employees were expected to come into the office every day, but…Read More→

At a recent commercial brokers meeting filled with industry experts…apartment house cap rates in the Bay Area are averaging 4.3%, even though apartment vacancy rates have almost doubled since the pre-pandemic, going from 4% two years ago to 7.6% currently. The eviction moratorium is about to expire in many regions and this might cause a…Read More→

Bisnow reported today on a Stanford and Hoover Institution working paper titled ‘Why Working From Home Will Stick’ ‘that the amount of work undertaken from home in the U.S. will rise from about 5% before the pandemic to about 20% after the pandemic. They surveyed 30,000 U.S. workers multiple times and asked them to report…Read More→