Where is the current state of the Northern California office market? I have been asking dozens of landlords, real estate directors and senior office brokers this question the past several weeks. There are a few bullish landlord and landlord-reps who believe the market has begun its recovery. One major landlord who specifically asked not to…Read More→

A bit of good news in the hiring department, but mostly still a continuation of the past three years of corporate realignment, consolidation, cost-cutting, offshoring and other factors that have brought about the constant job layoffs. According to the San Ramon Valley Times (9/16/04), “J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. says it will rehire 4,000…Read More→

Good job news department: Silicon Valley Biz Ink (6/25/04) “In a Manpower survey of 35,000 U.S. employers, 30 percent expect an increase in hiring activity for the quarter, compared to 20 percent for the same quarter in 2003. Also, the survey found that the Western region is poised for the strongest job growth, with 33…Read More→

National and Greater Bay Area Big Picture on Office Leasing: During the past several weeks I have met with some of the top office brokers from across the country as part of my 20-year involvement with SIOR (Society of Industrial and Office Realtors), who are usually the top 5 percent of their industry. Overall, the…Read More→

What interesting dynamics currently going on in the office industry … there are billions of dollars chasing commercial real estate investments with limited quality sale opportunities, so cap rates (the rate of investment return) for some product types are at an all-time low. Short- and long-term financing is plentiful and also still at record lows,…Read More→

In the last OfficeTimes issue, December 1, 2003, I stuck my neck out and declared the official “bottom” of the office market. During the past 60 days, numerous economist and brokerage reports seem to support this. However, we are not quite out of the woods yet, as several submarkets are still experiencing downward-trending rental rates…Read More→

Where is the office market, nationally as well as locally, and where is it headed between now and 2005 or beyond? If it is possible to have hit bottom overall, while still anticipating further major rent reductions in a number of submarkets as well as additional significant corporate layoffs, than “officially” as of December 1,…Read More→

It’s been a recent “hobby” of mine to track media articles on “Offshoring” as well as interview clients who have sent jobs overseas. Has it worked, is it really as cost-effective as is claimed, and what bodes for offshoring in the future? There have been a number of laid-off employee demonstrations against this trend recently,…Read More→

Where is the office market headed, are there sub-markets where we’ve hit bottom and when will we begin to see a general office recovery? Two months ago, I stuck my neck out (June 1, 2003, www.officetimes.com) and predicted we’d hit bottom sometime in 2005 (6 to 18 months from June 2003). Barring a huge international…Read More→

Rental rates for almost every class and category of office and lab space are still at record-lows, with landlords now competing head-on against long-term plug and play space. The vacancy rates in most Bay Area sub-regions are still up, although a few stronger submarkets like the better San Francisco prime Financial District view space, Downtown…Read More→

According to the SF Business Times (2/28/03), “Synthetic Leases Causing Real Problems: A change in accounting rules will shift hundreds of millions of dollars in previously hidden real estate costs onto local company books, and may lead to a flurry of corporate building purchases. Prompted by last year’s accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom, the…Read More→

Headlines: “S.F.’s office bust not as bad as elsewhere, but it may get worse” (SF Business Times 12/6/02), “Valley vacancy rate highest in U.S,” (San Francisco Chronicle 1/9/03), “Biotech Firms Hand Out The Pink Slips” (SF Business Times 1/10/03), “Office Vacancies Climb to 16%: Landlords Face A Tough 2003” (Wall Street Journal 1/13/03), “Office Properties:…Read More→

I had the numbers double-checked, and no matter which way they were counted, as of this month the overall Bay Area office/R & D vacancy is in excess of 84 million square feet, with 50 million feet in the Silicon Valley, 15 million feet in San Francisco, and the rest on the Peninsula and the…Read More→

From time to time I almost see a glimmer of hope for the Bay Area office market, like when brokers at a regional meeting talk excitedly about a recent flurry of touring activity, but then they acknowledge it is all in under-5,000 sf tenancies, or when a company like ValleyCare leases 55,000 sf in Pleasanton….Read More→

Okay, where the heck is the good news in today’s office market…the few silver linings are ample building parking (usually), less commute traffic, some of the lowest prices on office space in the past 15 years (in many areas), and it’s a lot easier to get a table at your local restaurants for business lunches….Read More→

General market overview: The Greater Bay Area office market, overall, still offers approximately 50 million square feet of available office and flex space. In several submarkets such as San Francisco and Downtown Walnut Creek the under-10,000 sf tenant activity is brisk. Several additional types of office space also seem to be more desirable, particularly high-quality,…Read More→

Wow, this issue marks the beginning of the 22nd year that I have been writing this bimonthly office industry newsletter, reportedly the longest running private newsletter of its type in the United States. The distribution list is now in the thousands, and thanks goes out to all of our readers for your support as well…Read More→

Welcome to 2002 and the 131st edition of this OfficeTimes newsletter! Almost 22 straight years of unbiased reporting and predicting on the office market industry, and with written evidence (i.e. copies of every past issue) most of the time, our predictions have come true. Great article in Pike Net Dispatch (12/13/2001) on corporate real estate…Read More→

I recently gave a Greater Bay Area office market overview at the Northern California CCIM chapter meeting. The handouts are available at www.officetimes.com/ccim4.pps. One portion of the talk was regarding office building industry changes due to 9-11-01. These changes include expected major increases in commercial property insurance premiums, more stringent security measures (especially in trophy…Read More→

Even mentioning the terrible events in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania gets me worked up. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched more intensive T.V. or listened to more radio in my life, and my eyes misted many, many times. I can’t even begin to express how much sorrow, sympathy, and sadness felt about what happened…Read More→

The following headlines summarize our current Bay Area office market: “Asyst halts plan for new headquarters,” “Troubled 333 Grant building hit with default,” “Jeeves canceling move!” Last summer (Issue 122), I stuck out my neck and surmised we had already reached a peak in the office market, and then earlier this year voiced an opinion…Read More→

I hosted an office broker program titled “I-680/Tri-Valley Office Market Melt-Down or Just a Blip?” last month with an open forum between the 65 East Bay office leasing agents and a number of invited media. We polled the group as to how long they thought our current downturn would last and the majority felt we…Read More→

In the August 1, 2000 officetimes.com Issue 122 the first sentence was “In my humble opinion, the Bay Area office market reached its peak in March of 2000.” True, we had a lag effect in a number of sub-regions playing rental rate catch-up, and even today there are still record sale prices of well positioned…Read More→

According to Business Xpansion Journal (November 2000), the American Electronics Association (AEA) tracks state-by-state growth trends of the various sectors of the industry. The employment rankings in selected electronics manufacturing categories include: Computers and office equipment: 1) California 2) Texas 3) Massachusetts; Consumer electronics: 1) California 2) New York 3) Indiana; Communications equipment: 1) California…Read More→

Building Operating Management, November 2000, had an interesting article titled “Weighing Electronic Procurement”, where facility executives were queried on their usage of the Internet for building industry purchases. One executive stated, “We don’t order online as a rule,” while another believes the invoice cost reduction alone can be reduced 70 to 80 percent with an…Read More→