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→

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→

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→

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→

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→

  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→

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→

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→

“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→

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→

  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→

There have been recent reports out that the national office sublease vacancy has decreased over the past several months. Cushman Wakefueld put a positive spin on this, which is welcome considering all the negative press the office market has had since Covid first struck, with the office availability going down from 146.3 million square feet…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→

Updater is a relocation app that helps Americans with various tasks that come up with a relocation, such as hooking up to Internet, getting your mail forwarded, updating your various records, etc. They track who is going where in the U.S.  From migration analysis of 300,000 moves, less folks are leaving San Francisco than in…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→

There is a report out today from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics that predicts due to the post-pandemic work-from-home shift there will be a potential impact on downtowns and retail that formerly relied on office workers as their customers. Just think, even if employees were allowed to work from home just…Read More→

On the one hand we are hearing about major tech companies announcing a phased return-to-the-office,  with announcements by most of the big boys like Facebook, Salesforce and Google. On the other hand, Airbnb just announced today it was expanding its sublease inventory to 438,000 square feet,  which adds 287,000 square feet to its previous space…Read More→

The San Francisco Business Times May 13, 2021 reported on a survey taking by Blind, an anonymous professional network, who asked over 3,000 employees if they would rather work from home permanently or get a $30,000 raise and 64% said they would rather work from home.  Employees of two companies  would take the cash over…Read More→

  Bisnow May 2, 2021 reported that around the country office space tours were up 28% from February to March, and although this increase in interest has not yet turned into actual leasing industry experts believe companies are getting ready to return to the office. Google just announced today that most workers will have to…Read More→

According to the San Francisco Business Times April 30, 2021, Austin, Texas averaged a 30.8% office occupancy rate while San Francisco had a 12.2% office occupancy rate during the pandemic. There may be several reasons for this, including Texas’s much looser restrictions during the pandemic and in Austin many employees drive to work. In San…Read More→

One of the country’s largest owner of office buildings is Boston Properties, and today they announced that this Labor Day, September 6, 2021 will mark the official day when the office market will  turn around. Boston Properties has 195 properties with more than 51 million square feet, and it is ready to take advantage of…Read More→

Bisnow April 20, 2021  Survey by Savills reports “Seventy-three percent of the respondent companies said that their employees will be in centralized offices at least three days a week, while very few (4%) expect all their workers to be required to show up in person five days a week. A vast majority of companies (79%) are…Read More→

There are currently 9.5 million square feet of office sublease space available in San Francisco today, with an overall vacancy rate above 19%. Landlord reps are still optimistic that the market will come back as more people get vaccinated, while the tenant-biased reps remind us that this it the time to snatch up bargain sublease…Read More→

The highways in the Bay Area seemed to be back to grid-lock during commute periods, and part of this can be attributed to workers avoiding public transportation and driving to work. As of April 21, 2021 Bart ridership was down 86% from its baseline. Out in the suburbs the majority of office building parking lots…Read More→

Last week I wason a national Zoom call with 60 fellow SIOR members. While the office market in most areas has been hit by heavy amounts of office sublease space put on the market and corporate indecision on where and how much office space will be taken down long-term, the industrial market has been off…Read More→

In today’s East Bay Times a recent poll of Bay Area residents concluded that 20% of those surveyed felt working in the office was ‘very unsafe’ and 33% felt it was ‘somewhat unsafe’ in a poll of 1,000 registered voters for the Bay Area Council.  This means more than half polled  did not feel safe…Read More→

Remember after a major earthquake we stock up on bottled water, battery-operated radios, freeze-dried food, and other necessities if we were shut off from civilization until the highways and bridges were fixed? Now we have major Covid-19 sanitization, consultants advising office building owners to invest in self-opening doors, touchless elevator controls, and temperature checking stations…Read More→

Gensler, the largest architectural firm in the United States with a roster of some of the world’s largest corporate clients, has been studying the future of office space design. Outdoor spaces will be utilized for meeting areas, on rooftops, courtyards and nearby public areas. Safety for the employee will be forefront as the pandemic winds…Read More→

In the SF Business Times April 1, 2021, John McNellis, who is one of the top Retail industry gurus, reflected on what retail types thrived during the past years pandemic, and which didn’t. Home Depot and others in that category had a great year as those stuck at home worked on remodeling projects. Netflix did…Read More→

Wells Fargo just told its employees that employees would be coming back to the office after Labor Day. “We believe most of us benefit by being physically together”, Wells told employees. They currently have 200,000 employees working from home. Google said some of its U.S. employees could return t the offices this month in a…Read More→

The Colliers Capital Markets recent report on where national CMBS delinquencies stand had overall improvement for the eighth straight month, with Industrial (0.9%), office (2%) and multifamily (2.3%)  having the lowest delinquency rates. Hotel delinquencies are the highest (16.4%), , with retail second (11.8%). “The Mortgage Bankers Association notes that 5.2% of commercial and multifamily…Read More→

According to George Avalos, business reporter for the East Bay Times, “California’s job market should outpace the nation’s employment performance during 2021 – but remain two years away from climbing  back to the record job totals the state reached in early 2020” according to the UCLA Anderson Forecast just out. Also, the report cast doubt…Read More→

On the one hand you have Salesforce just announcing it was putting 225,000 sf of San Francisco office space on the sublease market (on top of the 8+ million square feet already on that market) as well as cancelling a 325,000 sf office lease near its Salesforce Tower that had yet to be built. Bad…Read More→

There have been a number of major tech and finance companies over the past nine months who have announced long-term stay-at-home policies, prompting thousands of employees to uproot their families, relocate to a much less expensive region, purchase a new home, and begin to enjoy life with less financial stress. Many companies have had detailed…Read More→

According to a recent article from Walker & Dunlop published in Bisnow, “From beer kegs to nap rooms to cold-plunge pools, the 2010s saw a parade of trendy office “perks”. For the companies that called the offices home, these add-ons were meant to bolster a bespoke brand of company culture, whether relaxed, luxurious or hyper-productive….Read More→