It is hard to believe that during the past twelve months at one point the price of a share of First Republic Bank stock was $171!  Today it is $13/share!  Before the pandemic San Francisco office buildings were selling for $800-1,200/rsf and considered among the best investments in the world. From the SF Business Times…Read More→

David Amsterdam, President of Colliers U.S. Capital Markets put out his latest report.   Year Over Year, Office is down 66%; Industrial is down 52%; Multifamily is down 76%; Retail is up 36%; and Hospitality is down 53%. Unless you have a totally leased office building, credit tenants with terms longer than the loan it…Read More→

SPUR and ULI San Francisco along with Gensler and HR&A Advisors did a study regarding the feasibility of converting office buildings to residential projects. “Because of their physical characteristics, office buildings in San Francisco are stronger candidates for conversion than office buildings in other cities in North America. For projects to be financially feasible, the value…Read More→

The national office vacancy rate is 15.7%, far better than the just-reported 29% vacancy rate for San Francisco. Nationally there is a record 242.7 million square feet of office sublease space available. Compare this with Q4 2019 when there was only 140 million square feet for sublease. According to a recent Colliers U.S. Office Market…Read More→

Laura Waxman, reporter for the SF Business Times, wrote yesterday that investors who purchased office buildings prior to 2020 paid top dollar. I remember prices of $800-1000 per square foot or more announced back in the good old days before the pandemic hit. “Companies paid top dollar for amenity-rich workplaces designed to keep employees both…Read More→

    In a recent New York Times article by Emma Goldberg, “Business leaders are in a phase of trial and error that comes with staggering stakes. They are figuring out how many days to call employees back to the office, and on to of that, how strictly to enforce their own rules.”  Office occupancy…Read More→

Headlines in today’s THEREGISTRY, Columbia Property Trust Defaults on $1.7B in Mortgage Notes on Buildings in San Francisco, Across The Country. The portfolio of seven buildings includes 650 California St. and 201 California St., both in San Francisco, as well as buildings in New York City, Boston and New Jersey.  The San Francisco office market,…Read More→

  Between 2029 and 2022, according to the SF Business Times, the share of workers living near its office locations fell, with the largest drop of 70% occurring in San Francisco,  followed by New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago falling by 67%, with the number of Yelp workers living in Florida and Texas going up…Read More→

  Slack just announced it is giving up 230,000 sf of headquarters office space at 500 Howard St. in San Francisco and moving into Salesforce Tower. Salesforce owns Slack. Down in Los Angeles, Brookfield defaulted on $784 million in loans on two downtown Los Angeles office towers, 555 West Fifth Street and the other at…Read More→

Twitter Being Sued For Not Paying Almost $7 million in Rent On SF Headquarters. Square sublet 78,000 sf of Downtown Oakland office space to Callisto in 2021 but now Callisto has put their space on the sublease of a sublease market. The total office vacancy in the Oakland office CBD market ranges from 18-25% depending…Read More→

  Meta (Facebook) just put 432,000 square feet of Class A San Francisco office space on the sublease market, with a lease term running until March 2031. This adds office inventory to the current 28% San Francisco office vacancy. Up in Portland, KBS REITS just defaulted on a 224,000 sf LEED Gold-certified office building with…Read More→

Two commercial real estate stories caught my eye in the January 12th, 2023 Bisnow daily newsletter. I think they are just warning signs of what might be coming throughout 2023 and beyond.  A few weeks ago I blogged that a number of major banks were unloading at a discount office building loans, and that in…Read More→

  “The Bay Area was ranked first on a list of 10 markets that lenders are most concerned about in terms of performance in 2023, according to a report released by real estate firm CBRE this month.  Phoenix and Portland rank No. 2 and 3, respectively, with Western markets Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Portland…Read More→

In a January 5, 2023 report by Aaron Jodka, Head of Research for Colliers U.S. Capital Markets, investment sales volume was down in November 2022 72% as compared with November 2021. Strong early-2022 numbers will still make last year a terrific success, but industrial volume is now down 80% and multi-family down 74%. Central Business…Read More→

I opened my daily Bisnow.com newsletter and the headlines blew me away. At the top was “Bed Bath & Beyond With 950 Stores Nationwide, Facing Bankruptcy”,  and below this was “Salesforce To Exit Office Space, Slash Workforce 10%”, but if this weren’t enough the next headline read ‘Amazon Ups Layoffs To 18,000”

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→

  Colliers newest report on the future of work had some very interesting thoughts. “30-50% of knowledge management work is anticipated to be automated by 2030. This will result in less real estate and facilities and more reliance on machine learning and predictive analytics to support real estate functions.” …”The office will evolve to be…Read More→

  Barclays Capital, Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and possibly other major lenders are reportedly looking to sell office building loans in major cities like New York to reduce their exposure. Bisnow on November 11, 2022 said “Lenders are reportedly focused on unloading office loans in their portfolio because they have been hit hardest by the pandemic and…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→

  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→

  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→

In the October 21, 2022 San Francisco Business Times article, 20 cities were mentioned that will pay folks to pack up and move to their city. Here are a few examples, and the incentives range from giving you a discount on buying a home there, unlimited golf membership, free use of co-working spaces, free fitness…Read More→

E-Commerce be darned, the Third Quarter 2022 Colliers Retail Market update shows the national retail vacancy rate at 4.3%. Compare this with the national office vacancy rate of 12%!  Malls are posting an 8.7% vacancy rate. There is 61.5 million square feet of new retail space under construction. NNN rental rates on an annual basis…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→

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→

San Francisco office vacancy, according to a number of reports, is in the22% range, but when you include occupied space that is available this figure increases to almost 30%. With two million square feet of office sublease space in leases that expire by the end of 2023, this space may go back to the landlords….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→

Manufacturing has been well aware of cybersecurity risks for years, and remember last year when one of the largest meat processors was shut down due to getting hacked, costing them millions in downtown and ransom? With so much of major office building technology going into the cloud and The Internet of Things (IoT) now connecting…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→

  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→

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→

Colliers just released a bullet list for August of a few  of the very positive news clips out. Blackstone, one of the biggest commercial real estate investment companies in the world, just raised 24.1 billion for its latest real estate fund, ‘the largest fundraise on record’. “July’s job report marks the return of full-pre-pandemic employment…Read More→