Published in the Spring 2026 SIOR Report, various SIOR brokers shared what they viewed what makes a successful office building….”a best-in-class amenity experience…such an experience might include bars, saunas, pickleball courts, treadmill desks, cold plunges, banquet seating, laundry services and wellness rooms.” “Amenities are no longer a luxury. They’re a necessity and standard.” Another broker…Read More→

Headlines in the May 21, 2026, SF Registry read “San Francisco captures 80% of all U.S. AI Venture Capital of Office Leasing Snaps Back”, ‘Ai companies have leased 10.6 million square feet of office space in the city since 2019, more than any other market in the world”.   However, the San Francisco office vacancy is…Read More→

BisNow April 27, 202,6 reported that the three largest office-to-residental markets are New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Chicago has a conversion pipeline of 5,000 units while Washington D.C. with the fourth-largest market for conversions had a 4,167 unit pipeline. The typical office conversion candidate is an older building with smaller floorplates in the core…Read More→

“Overall vacancy closed Q1 at 28.7%, marking the largest quarterly decline since Q3 2019. San Francisco recorded its largest quarterly net occupancy gain in more than six years.” Derrick Daniels, Regional Research Director for Colliers International shared with me his latest findings. Currently ter ear 227 companies looking for over 7,500,000 square feet of San…Read More→

Headlines from just one page of the San Francisco Business Times April 16, 2026 read as follows: Harvey AI doubles Space in Headquarters; Howard Street is Site of Anthropic Leasing Spree; Large Office Tenants Circle San Francisco Market Again…it appears there are dozens of 100,000 sf plus office prospects currently looking for San Francisco office…Read More→

April 6, 2026  By Roger Vincent  Los Angeles Times  “Capital Group declined to confirm the reported $ 210 million sale price for the Bank of America Plaza, but the building was last appraised in late 2024 at $212.5 million, down from $605 million 10 years earlier, according to Bloomberg. Capital Group paid about $150 per…Read More→

Silicon Valley helped put the San Francisco/Bay Area including Silicon Valley on the map back in the 1970’s, and South San Francisco is the 2nd biggest Biotech center after Boston-Cambridge. Genetech just unveiled its $5 billion dollar plan to overhaul its 225-acre campus in South San Francisco. Last year the San Francisco Bay Area had…Read More→

  The Registry reported that Newmark has identified 390 active requrements totaling 9 million square feet of San Francisco office demand. Half of this is AI. In one of my recent blogs, I reported that real estate consulting firm VTS predict if AI companies will lease 13 million square feet of office space in San…Read More→

A few weeks ago, Anthropic leased 400,000 sf of office space in San Francisco, and this week OpenAI did a ten-year lease for 439,000 sf in Mountain View a 350 and 380 Ellis Street. Then on March 1, 2026, Bay Area News Group said this: “Nearly 410,000 jobs in the region (our Bay Area region)…Read More→

SF Business Times 1/20/26 “The tech industry’s embrace of stricter return-to-office policies will help fuel a 15% increase in San Francisco office leasing this year, real estate software company VTS said. The city’s fast-growing AI companies also will help ease almost 13 million square feet of San Francisco office space this year, VTS predicted.” I…Read More→

First, Anthropic just leased 480,000 square feet of Class A office space at 300 Howard Street in downtown San Francisco for a 13-year lease term. Next, Roblox leased 325,000 square feet at San Mateo’s Bay Meadows and will have a total of 1 million square feet of office space. Thirdly, Tiger Global Management just signed…Read More→

“According to a survey of nearly 1,000 business leaders by Resume Builder, three in 10 companies plan to fully eliminate remote work in 2026 and have employees back in the office five days a week. Many companies have already taken that step in 2025, with a host of corporate titans and tech heavy-weights eliminating or…Read More→

Basically, there has been little news over the past month. AI continues to lease space in San Francisco, tech companies have been purchasing  office buildings in Silicon Valley, foreclosures and discounted commercial property debt continue, there is a lot of capital looking for solid investments, the $1-5 million dollar mom & pop retail and warehouse…Read More→

Yes, it is apples and watermelons, so this blog does not intend to compare one commercial sale with another, but only to point out we are seeing interesting pricing differentials depending on where in the Bay Area, what type of property and who the buyer is. As an example, Apple just paid$216 million, or  $811/sf…Read More→

CoStar November 30, 2025 reported on a study by MIT that artificial intelligence is now able to replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market. This is The Project Iceberg Project Iceberg – Coordinating the Human-AI Future which focuses on 151 million working Americans and projects 13,741 workers apparently can or will be replaced by AI,…Read More→

There has been so much positive news about new lease signings, some of them very signficant, and mostly fueled by the AI explosion which fortunately has been centered in San Francisco. Billions of dollars in new fundings and millions of feet of office space leased during the past year by this one industry category. However,…Read More→

  Office building sales continue to experience at times significant discounts as compared to pre-Covid values, and as a recent case in point 2001 Broadway in Oakland, California, a 56,000 square foot office building just closed escrow in October at a 76% price drop as compared to what it was purchased for in 1016.  $19.5…Read More→

According to a recent article by George Avalos in the East Bay Times, “An estimated 60% of the workforce physically located at Bishop Ranch has returned to the campus…by comparison, the turn-to-office rate was 49% for Silicon Valley and 41.8% for San Francisco, according to figures produced by Kastel Access Control System. Workers also appear…Read More→

FastCompany 10/28/25 reporting on Amazon announcing 14,000 layoffs, citing AI innovation, “While the memo makes clear that artificial intelligence is ushering in rapid changes that will result in leaner operations, an Amazon source said that AI was not behind the vast majority of the layoffs.”  These are not warehouse layoffs but ’corporate workforce’ employees who…Read More→

Nigel Hughes, Senior Director of Market Analytics for CoStar gave an excellent presentation yesterday on the state of the East Bay market. A lot of sobering facts…Healthcare is one of the sectors increasing their office and medical space, as is AI, while most of the other more traditional components of office leasing  (financial, law, services)…Read More→

Databricks is looking for 200,000 sf in Sunnyvale, another AI company making the news. Neuralink just took 144,000 sf at 499 Forbes Blvd. in South San Francisco. Pump.co leased 36,000 sf at 455 Market Street, AI Startup Abridge leased 80,000 sf at 208 Utah St., Anthropic took 104,000sf at Foundry Square III, Resolve I leased…Read More→

In a recent poll, 63% say they worked fully in person in 2025 as compared with 46% who worked fulltime in the office in2024. “Demand for office space will probably not return to pre-pandemic levels, said Santa Clara County Assessor Gret Monteverde, since working from home “seems to be at some level something that is…Read More→

I have been participating in several AI/Commercial Real Estate programs and just learned something most of you may already know. Make sure you understand the terms of use of whatever Ai Chatbot program you are using, with the paid programs perhaps less problematic than the free ones. Some folks are downloading their leases for almost-instantly…Read More→

About to close escrow, according to TheRegistry-9/18/25, 201 California Street, San Francisco, a 272,000 square foot office property which was purchased in December 2019 for $239 million, $878/sf, may be going now for$57 million, $250/sf and a 75% discount…

According to Derek Daniels, Regional Research Director for Colliers International, “In terms of the latest on tenant touring demand, “There are close to 7 million square feet of active office tenant requirements in San Francisco. This includes large blocks requirements seeking to expand. Ai and related industries are driving growth in the San Francisco office…Read More→

Tech companies have placed 373 office spaces on the market for sublease, with tech companies responsible for 82% of this. Some of the larger spaces include: XCorp 468,855 rsf; One Tenth 313,229 rsf; Cruise 333,345 rsf; Meta 265,088 rsf, Charles Schwab 259,977 rsf Dropbox 196,425 rsf Xynga 185,118 rsf, Airbnb 150,656 rsf; Salesforce 148,910 rsf,…Read More→

I recently attended a presentation by Ken Larson, President of  Blueline Associates, Inc., a commercial construction company based in Pleasanton in business for over thirty years. I had asked Ken to address how we real estate brokers can assist our clients, both from the tenant as well as landlord side, in keeping tenant improvement costs…Read More→

I have been hearing the rumors for several months, and there is still no official confirmation but yet another Class A major office complex out in the suburbs of San Ramon, California may be headed for demolition. I tried to tour an office client through 2000 Canyon Place which has a twin to tallying 320,000…Read More→

When one or more sectors of the commercial real estate market head down, there are still positive sales and leasing occurring while the market heads into a slump.   The same phenomenon occurs when the market begins to improve. It isn’t like someone hits the switch and viola; we now have a healthy office (or other…Read More→

East Bay Times reporter George Avalos cited statistics from Cushman Wakefield that San Jose’s vacancy rate is 28.9%, improving from 30.9% during the first quarter, while Downtown Oakland’s office vacancy is at 37.2% and San Francisco at 34.8%…ouch ouch and ouch!  Meanwhile in San Ramon the Canyon Place, a four-building office complex is now slated…Read More→

According to articles from CBS and Sacramento Bee (8/12/25), “A new audit found that the State of California could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year by not enforcing return-to-office orders for state workers. The audit comes amid the saga for state workers and the political debate between remote versus in-person work. It found that…Read More→

“In 2025, twenty percent of $4.8 trillion of outstanding commercial mortgages held by lenders and investors will mature, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Among loans backed by industrial properties, 22 percent will come due in 2025, as will 24 percent of office loans. In recent years, lenders have allowed extensions when loans come due,…Read More→

The good news is “The Brookings Institution published a report that confirms that the Ba Area is the epicenter of the AI race in the U.S. The report calls the San Franisco and san Jose areas a “superstar cluster”…While AI-related job postings only make up 2.5% of all job openings nationally,  the Bay Area has…Read More→

One the one hand, “The half-decade push to bring employees back to the office after the onset of the pandemic has crossed a significant threshold, according to JLL: More than half of employees at Fortune 100 companies are now required to come in five days a week. July 23, 2025 “  ET Emily Wishingrad, Washington, D.C.  While…Read More→

I get caught up in my San Francisco East Bay region that I sometimes forget what is happening to our local office market may also be doing the same in other regions. The SF Business Times July 18, 2025, headlined “San Mateo’s Office Glut to Fuel Demolition Wave”, and describes how this 8 million square…Read More→

  June 10, 2025 I stuck my neck out and delcared that the officical ‘Bottom of the Office Market’ day…since then other corporations have added return-to-office mandates, but one of the strongest cases for the future return of the office was the announcement by Hines that they would like to build a 1,225 foot office…Read More→

The Guardian July 13, 2025 “With financial districts struggling to bounce back to full capacity post-Covid, and the nightlife industry facing an existential crisis, there are suggestions clubs could move into deserted office blocks at evenings and weekends. In its annual eccentric report on the future of leisure, the creative studio Bompas and Parr says…Read More→

You can go back to my newsletters and blogs over the past year, but I have repeated opinioned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is allowing corporations to do more work with less employees. I haven’t seen any documented studies yet, but asreported in Techspot June 27, 2025, “Salesforce CEO says 50% of company work is now…Read More→

Lawrence Stone , Santa Clara County Assessor, Always Has Great Insights!   My favorite County Assessor in the entire Country has been Lawrence Stone, who is retiring from Santa Clara County Assessor after over three decades in this role and 47 years as a public servant. His Annual Report is superb, loaded with facts and…Read More→

Over my past 45 years of predicting where we are in the office market, and my published and printed newsletters sent out every other month will attest to how lucky and accurate I have been so far…well, I hereby declare June 10, 2025 as the official bottom of the office market…I am seeing more and…Read More→

The good news is that more people are coming to work in downtown San Francisco in 2025. “Office badge-swipe data compiled by the security company Kastle from select buildings in the San Francisco area continue to show weekly office-occupancy numbers compared to pre-COVID attendance being among the lowest of 10 metropolitan areas. For the week ending…Read More→

Bisnow May 29, 205, according to a CBRE report, “Artificial intelligence (AI) development likely will be a sizable driver of U.S. office demand over the next decade considering the impact it is already having on the country’s tech epicenter of San Francisco. AI-related companies have leased more than 5 million sq. ft. of San Francisco…Read More→

Just this week’s headlines….Machine Investment Group Acquires Distressed San Jose Luxury Condominium Development; Lener Takes Back 541-Room Signia by Hilton in San Jose Deal; Peninsula Land & Capital Buys 210,000 SQFT Class A Office Property in Walnut Creek for $22.5MM ($107/rsf, versus the $66 million-$314/sf)  the former owners paid for the property in 2017).  So…Read More→

  45 Fremont Street, San Francisco, a 620,000 square foot Class A office property owned by Shorenstein and Blackstone, goes back to market at direction of  lender Bank of America. With a loan value of $347 million this puts the debt at $560/SF, which pre-covid would make sense but in today’s office sale market with…Read More→

  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→