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→

  In an article written by Joe Gose and published in the New York Times 4/14/25, sales of office buildings across the country are up 21% from 2023. CBRE reported that in 2024, 6.5 million ore square feet of office space was leased than was vacated. In major higher-cost cities the average asking rate of…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→

Two positive news releases just out regarding the San Francisco office market…the Transamerica Pyramid, which has gone through the first phase of a $250 million dollar renovation, just signed a 123,000 square foot long-term lease with the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockus LLP.  This landmark office building is asking $300 per annual square foot…Read More→

According to the San Francisco Business Tims February 28, 2025, “A majority of San Francisco business leaders said their companies have plans to expand their offices in the city as they both push for more in-person work and grow headcount, according to a survey by KPMG. Three-quarters of the 100 San Francisco-based executives surveyed by…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→

San Francisco and Oakland have been experiencing fire-sale pricing of office buildings over the past few years, with office properties that previously sold for $500-1000/rsf selling for $350-300/rsf/ Very recently we are beginning to hear of I-680 Corridor Class A, well-located office buildings and complexes potentially on the way to Trustee sales in the $100-200/rsf…Read More→

  It took DOGE only six days to terminate 22 Federal leases. GSA oversees the federal government’s 360 million square feet of owned and leased properties.  Landlords with GSA as a tenant may be worried as many leases have early termination clauses. As reported in a January 18, 2018 Colliers Insights report, “Investors and lenders…Read More→

1440 Broadway, Oakland,  a 91,000 square foot office building built from 103-1911, which was purchased in 2018 for $43.5 million, just sold for 5.5 million.  I have seen recent articles claiming we are at the bottom of the office market, and if the bottom was much lower this building would have been free…

“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→

“The Trump administration is considering selling two-thirds of the Federal government’s office stock to the private sector, according to people familiar with the transition operations. About three-quarters of the 70 million square feet of office space GSA leases from private landlords in D.C. is also likely to be canceled.  The GSA has been working to…Read More→

Robert Half in Bishop Ranch, San Ramon, just announced it was downsizing from 250,000 sf to 73,000 sf, and across the Bay in San Francisco Google just renewed and expanded its offices at Hill Plaza on the Embarcadero from 416,000 sf to 550,000 sf, but before you begin celebrating their expansion, they are also giving…Read More→

It has been suggested to me that I try to put a more positive spin on my blogs regarding the office market…so here goes!  If you ever wanted to purchase a downtown San Francisco high rise office building for 30% of what the price was five years ago, now is your chance!  This week I…Read More→

GSA has 78 million sf of office leases either expiring or can be terminated by end of 2028. While there appears to be a push to get all government employees back in the office five-days a week, The American Federation of Government Employees union just reached a deal with GSA to protect and extend hybrid…Read More→

Bisnow reported on Dec. 4, 2024 that Brookfield Properties 8 million square foot office portfolio is now being  powered by nuclear energy.  “It not only sets a new standard for how owners can purchase clean energy, but it’s also a very scalable model that other property owners can follow,” Brookfield Properties Senior Vice President of…Read More→

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→

Bisnow August 29, 2024, reported that 1 in 6 .S. office buildings are strong residential conversion candidates. On the one hand, it could be viewed as only 1 in 6, while a more optimistic slant would be 17% of U.S. office buildings may be residential conversion candidates.” Manhattan led U.S. markets with more than 53%…Read More→

There have been a number of estimates of the job displacement, current and future, due to AI (Artificial Intelligence) and yes, there will be some offset due to new job opportunities in Ai. “300 million jobs could be lost to AI…44% of companies using or planning on using AI believe it will result in layoffs…Read More→

In a August 22,, 2024 Bisnow article quality office space is now table stakes and to win landlords are shooting for ‘flight to experience.” “It’s really about that experience you feel as you walk in,” Harvest Properties Senior Director of Development Danielle Friend said at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco during Bisnow’s State of the Bay Area…Read More→

Google has come out and told their employees who haven’t received approval to work from hom that they will have to spend at last three days a week in the office. The Verge posted part of the Google internal memo which read, “We know that a number of people moved to fully remote work for many…Read More→

  A perfect storm of plunging property values for aging buildings, weak tenant demand coming out of the pandemic and high interest rates for new loans and refinancing has left the $2.4 trillion office building sector wobbling. In New York 1740 Broadway which Blackstone had paid $600 million for ten years earlier just sold for…Read More→

There are a number of reports around the country that price discounts on office buildings are a boon to non-profits who have access to cash to acquire these office facilities for their own long-term use. Bisnow June 3, 2024 “With overall U.S. commercial real estate pricing down 21% from its March 2022 peak, according to Green Street,…Read More→

  ”Artificial intelligence is expected to replace 85 million jobs by 2025, according to a report from the World Economic Forum. That has implications for real estate, CBRE Investment Management Chief Investment Officer for Americas Direct Real Estate Strategies Julie Ingersoll said. “If we lose 25% of our jobs in the United States — think coding jobs, secretarial, even sales-related…Read More→

Not sure if it was bound to happen, and also not sure if just because there are mandates the office world will return to pre-Covid occupancy levels, but Bisnow May 24, 2024 reported that “Citigroup, HSBC and Barclays are among the financial institutions planning to tell workers that a return to five days a week…Read More→

Bisnow May 8, 2024, It is not easy or inexpensive, but many office projects have ample parking and are located near residential and commercial areas. “Leopardo Vice President of Healthcare David Rutledge said when developers are looking to build a new healthcare facility from the ground up, they often find that ideal sites like Knightly…Read More→

I’ve had folks tell me the positive news that institutional investors are once again purchasing San Francisco office buildings, which to them is a sign this market is recovering. I remind them that the price might be twenty cents on the dollar, and if you own other office buildings this is a great way to…Read More→

I was in a recent meeting and was made aware of multiple suburban office buildings where the tenants had been on month-to-month and were all finally given notice to vacate.  I met with a major office park investor who is planning on demolishing a number of very nice Class A office buildings, relocating the tenants…Read More→

The european office market, with a current vacancy rate of around 8.7%, appears healthier than our U.S. rate of 20%. There are varying reports of what the occupancy levels are, with one report stating that 70-90% of European office workers are back in the office, while another report had this sfigure closer to 57%, getting…Read More→

This may be a new record for the most office space, both direct as well as for sublease, in the United States, according to Avison Young. This is 23.7% of the office inventory in the country. Some positive trends that may improve office Landlord’s assets in this Bisnow April 8, 2024 article, “Swaths of layoffs…Read More→

I have been predicting for some time that office occupancy will go up over the next few years-in my opinion from the roughly 50% where we are now to perhaps 70% once all the corporate mandates become effective. However, we will not get anywhere close to the pre-Covid levels as there has been a transformational…Read More→

“The self-proclaimed leader of the return-to-work movement is now staring down some of the emptiest office buildings in the country. Houston, Dallas and Austin are the first-, second- and third-most-vacant office markets among the nation’s largest 50 metros, according to Moody’s Analytics.”, according to Bisnow 2/29/24. I still think San Francisco has a higher vacancy, but…Read More→

This was the headline from the January 8, 2024 BisNow newsletter. “Roughly 19.6% of office space in major American metropolitan areas was vacant at the end of the year, according to new data from Moody’s Analytics. That is up from 18.8% at the end of 2022 and higher than the previous record of 19.3% reached in 1986 and 1991.” Texas…Read More→

  I’ve been speaking with commercial real estate appraisers about this recent sale and the impact it will have on future office building financings, refinances and sales. This is an official comp that will be hard to ignore, and will make it mch harder to prove to a buyer or lender that your similar Class…Read More→

  Bisnow 12/19/23 reported that according to data from the National Bureau f Economic Research, 44% of bank loans are on property values that are less than the outstanding loan balances. This means that even if the lender is willing to refinance, which most these days aren’t, they will require the borrower to pay down…Read More→

San Francisco’s office vacancy rate of 35%, the highest on record, is expected to climb further as corporations continue to give up office space as they ‘rightsized’. Pre-pandemic the vacancy rate was below 5%!  According to the San Francisco Business Times 12/5/23, “Salesforce which announced its plans tp lean out its real estate portfolio at…Read More→

I have recently interviewed a number of office building experts and for suburban Class A office buildings in the Walnut Creek/Concord, Northern California region the cost to build a brand-new Class A office building is $500-700/square foot. This price includes land, architectural, permits, construction of the base building, parking structure, all the soft costs like…Read More→

  There is simply no way to sugar-coat what is happening in most parts of the United States in regard to office space and the office market. In just the past few days, Block announced it will cut 1,000 jobs, Microsoft placed 130,000 square feet of its 355 Market Street, San Francisco space on the…Read More→

Contrary to reports of corporate executives mandating or begging or offering incentives for employees to return to the office, many will and many won’t. Either way we have far too much office space than is needed, even if more folks come into the office three days a week. As a case in point, last week…Read More→

A recent 2023 U.S. CEO Outlook survey by corporate-services firm KPMG poll showed that CEO confidence in having their employees return to the office almost doubled over the past year,, and while 45% believed that workers would continue in hybrid positions last year, in 2023 only 34% believe this. Last year 20% of CEOs thought corporate…Read More→

Office workers mandated to return to the office, at least a few times a month, are finding a productive way to work the system to get noticed, socialize, meet with their colleagues, and not face horrendous commutes. They work from home in the morning, then zip in when the commute traffic has died down, spend…Read More→

The SF Business Times  Oct. 2, 203 reported on a recent survey of 2,000 full0time employees by Owl Labs, The Hybrid Work Survey, which found “…69% of employees believe their company is requiring in-office work due simply to traditional work expectations. That disconnect is one of many factors that have limited enthusiasm for returning to…Read More→

  The Bay Area News Group reported that 26% of residents work remotely, down from 36% in 2021. However, ‘despite the drop-off, there were still more than four times as many people working from home in 2022 as in ears leading up the pandemic, when just 6% of workers were mostly remote.’ Public transit ridership…Read More→

If true this could be great news! A recent working report from New York University and Columbia University identified older office buildings that were physically suited for conversion from office to residential. “The papers authors…identified 140 office buildings across San Francisco for which residential conversion could make financial sense. San Francisco, the paper’s authors write,…Read More→

Austell Place, a 170,000 sf 100-year-old office building and was renovated in 2019 will now have 1,000 migrants living in the building. It had previously been converted from a 100-year old warehouse to a modern office building. It has floor-to-ceiling windows. I tried to find details of how this office-to-residential conversion will work but at…Read More→