Bisnow Dumber 16, 2022  “More than 71% of corporate real estate professionals say they expect hybrid work to result in space demand reductions of at least 20%, according to a survey from Colliers and CoreNet Global. Almost 19% expect that demand to shrink by 40% or more, while just 7% believe that the move to…Read More→

Bisnow Dec. 16, 2022 “Hybrid work plans are starting to become set in stone across more of corporate America, and as more companies finalize their policies, how much office space they are going to cut from their footprints is becoming clearer. More than 71% of corporate real estate professionals say they expect hybrid work to result in…Read More→

At the Bisnow December 8, 2022 D.C. Region Finance and Deal-Makers Summit, major commercial real estate lenders discussed how they are dealing with the current turbulent times. “The pullback is happening across all asset classes, given how this year’s sharp rise in interest rates has dramatically altered the math for new deals. But Ekeroth, Regional Director with Northwestern…Read More→

According to a new survey by Clarify Capital and reported by SF Business Times December 12, 2022, “The survey found about 68% of those working remotely would prefer to look for a new job with remote options if forced to return. About 27% would try to negotiate a higher salary instead of searching for a…Read More→

  Meta has placed 114,000 sf off office space in Fremont on the sublease market. It is also rumored to be considering giving up 430,000 sf at 181 Fremont St. in San Francisco. Pinterest giving up a chunk of their San Francisco office space. Salesforce just this week considering giving up more space in San…Read More→

Bisnow December 6, 2022: “In an effort to entice employees back into the office, companies have ramped up digestible perks like beverages and food, but a recent survey conducted by proptech firm Essensys indicated that employees don’t care about snacks or other frivolous amenities — they want better technology and flexible workstations. Of the 1,000 U.S. workers the…Read More→

In The SFRegistry December 2, 2022, Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce said this: “There’s a lot of things pre-pandemic that we had in our company that are expenses that we don’t need post-pandemic,” Benioff stated. “So before the pandemic, the percentage of remote workers for Salesforce was approximately 20 percent. For other companies…Read More→

In a BisNow article published November 17, 2022, “Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed plan to improve or expand their existing occupancy, Many are also implementing new procedures or technologies to help manage the shifting flor of employees into the office. Although hybrid work schedules are now the norm for 70% of workers, only one-third of…Read More→

The New York Times recently published a lengthy article titled ‘After pandemic, office buildings are still in trouble”. “ The value of office buildings could plunge 39%, or $454 billion, in the comping years, according to a recent study by business professors at Columbia University and New York University…In a sign of how fast the…Read More→

  Texas Instruments just signed a lease for 210,000 square feet at Santa Clara’s Great American Commons, Exelixis signed for 100,000 at The Loop in Alameda’s Harbor Bay, and Convene signed for 65,000 square feet of office space at 100 Stockton St. in San Francisco.  

Credit for this statement goes to Jessica Pernicone, principal at JLL. “There is a certain amount of productivity you can get from being at home when you have heads-down deep work. However, if that’s not what your job requires all the time there are feelings of isolation and people start to feel disconnected from their…Read More→

Sara Bloomberg in the SF Business Times Nov. 4, 2022 reported that according to Pitchfork, Stanford University and UC Berkeley are the top producers of startup founders om the world.  Harvard and MIT were next at #3 and #4.  This is reassuring as a future source of new companies requiring Bay Area office space!

Joseph Gordon with Bisnow wrote on November 8, 2022 that according to a number of sources, new office leases showed 18% fewer deals as compared to Q3 2021, and 15% less than Q3 2019. The average size of the deal also went down 16% in 2022 as compared to 2019. Leases are also getting shorter…Read More→

Bisnow October 27, 2022 reported “Dave Welner, chief financial officer of the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other platforms, said on its third-quarter earnings call Wednesday that Meta expects to lose roughly $2B from its cutback on office leases this year.”. Then today Meta said it was slashing 11,000 jobs.  Lyft is trying…Read More→

  THEREGISTRY November 4, 2022, Cresa reported that Bay Area leasing activity to date remains 50.2 percent below 2019 levels during the same timeframe and in the last year, 3.6 million square feet of direct space has been added to landlords availability.  There is demand for trophy office space in San Francisco, upper floors with…Read More→

  According to the latest Colliers U.S. Research Report, office vacancy went up in the third quarter 2022 with San Francisco and Seattle posting the largest increases and Dallas and Houston seeing their vacancy rate come down. San Francisco is now above 20% as compared with Manhattan which is at 11%. “Class A asking rates…Read More→

Between 2018 and 2021, 352 Corporate headquarters have left California. The three top relocation destinations were Texas, Tennesee and Nevada. The main reasons given for thir exodus include California’s high taxes, the cost of living, the heavy regulations and the legal environment. Of the 153 that left just last year, 80 dwere from Los Angeles,…Read More→

  As reported in the San Francisco Business Times October 18, 2022, “Layoffs and economic uncertainty notwithstanding, the Bay Area is expected to enjoy economic growth of 4.8% this year, fueled by what remains strong performance from the tech sector, according to new research from the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. The report, 2022’s Fastest-Growing…Read More→

  According to a just-released Colliers national U.S. Industrial real estate report,  the national average is 3.7% vacant ranging from a low os 0.7% in Reno/Sparks, Nevada to a high of 8.8% in Huntsville, Alabama.  There is 656.0 million square feet of new industrial space currently under development, with the Dallas/Fort Worth area accounting for…Read More→

  The CIM Group out of Los Angeles had plans for a 1.1 million square foot office tower in downtown Oakland, but is now proposing a 487 foot tower to build 600 residential units. This would be the tallest building in Oakland. According to CoStar News, “While to pivot is a boost of momentum for…Read More→

  According to a recent Colliers Capital Markets report, multi-family and industrial cap rates may be negative as they relate to the currently rising interest rates. Cap rates have yet to increase in transactions. Sellers will likely hold onto their assets unless they need liquidity. My opinion, up until a few months ago it was…Read More→

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→