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→

Bisnow July 19, 2024, had a string of very positive commercial real estate headlines. At the top was “Goldman Sacs Reports Gains in Real Estate Investments’ and when I dug into the article, it turns out they got ahead of the curve last year and wrote off a ton of poor investments, and now they…Read More→

A recent article in Bisnow July 8, 2024 cited San Francisco Class-A office vacancy increasing for the 10th consecutive quarter, “as more than a third of the city’s office buildings remain empty.  The vacancies, brought on by layoffs and hybrid work, are expected to remain elevated through the end of the year. Placer.ai’s monthly data…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→

Christopher Thornberg, founding partner and economist wit Beacon Economics, said at a recent presentation fo San Jose State ““How do you make housing more affordable? You build more housing… “You need to start taking down these office buildings and putting up apartments, However, Thornberg said he prefers “adaptive reuse” of existing office buildings rather than…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→

“For the first time since the financial crisis, investors in top-rated bonds backed by commercial real estate debt are getting hit with losses. Buyers of the AAA portion of a $308 million note backed by the mortgage on a building in midtown Manhattan got back less than three-quarters of their original investment after the loan was sold…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 Standard, April 24, 2024: “By the end of 2019, the 20 biggest tech employers had leased more than 16 million square feet of space, nearly a quarter of the city’s total office stock. Now, those same companies are holding onto only 8.3 million square feet, according to data from real estate firm CBRE. “We’ve just…Read More→

Christopher Aquilina, SIOR with tenant rep firm Spring 4 n the United Kingdom, , said “Tenants are increasingly understanding that if they want to woo their staff back from WFH (work from home), they need to offer best-in-class office space in a convenient location.” He goes on to say  “Developers need to be part of…Read More→

  HubbleHQ has more than 1,000 offices in 250 buildings in London where companies can just pay and use the office space two or three days a week if their employees aren’t coming in more than that.  There are lockers for the employees to secure their belongings on the days they aren’t there,  and even…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→

Amazon Slashing office space, will save $1.3 Billion in Costs. Will let leases expire and negotiate early lease terminations.  Starwood Capital paid almost $500 million in 2019 for three Downtown Oakland office buildings, and after just defaulting on a 364.5-million-dollar loan has given up ownership of 2100 Franklin, 2101 Webster and 1901 Harrison. San Francisco’s…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→

In Bisnow February 25, 2024, ”Paul Darrah, who is the chief workplace office for Citadel which has $92.46 billion under management, said he believes that the rest of the corporate world will eventually succeed in getting employees to show up. Citadel is leaning into in-office work as the hedge fund posts double-digit returns. It is planning billion-dollar office towers in Miami and…Read More→

According to Mortgage Bankers Association, it is 929 billion but close enough to the Big T…there were loan extensions from last year that increased this. According to Bisnow Feb. 13, 2024, “Prices on commercial properties have fallen 21% from an early 2022 peak. Office prices have dropped most precipitously, sinking 35%.”  This will make refinancing challenging in…Read More→

  “Office buildings across the country are starting to trade at significant markdowns, in many cases selling for less than the value of their loan. Those types of transactions, executed in concert with the buildings’ lenders, are known as short sales. Economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research estimate that about 44% of all office properties are underwater on…Read More→

Blackstone, the world’s largest owner of commercial real estate, owned 1740 Broadway, New York, an office building that was appraised in 2015 at $605 million, with a $308 million-dollar CMBS loan and the loan is now on the market for $150 million. As reported in Bisnow January 17, 2024, “Blackstone’s handling of 1740 Broadway is one of several…Read More→

San Francisco Business Times January 19, 2024 Various headlines from just this one issue: First page, ‘The Coming Debt Wave’, Page 6, ‘Another S.F. Property Could Be Headed for Default’  about 140 Second St. in SF, ‘S.F. Trophy Onwers Buy Some Time’ regarding the 1.6 million square foot One Market which had gone into special…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→

  The SF Business Times 12/8/23 summarized the numerous bargain office building sales over the past few months. Presidio Bay Ventures bought 160 Spear St for $260/sf, SKS Partners and Swig bought 350 California for $215/sf, Ridge Capital paid $255/sf for 180 Howard St., and Strada may be buying 201 Sper St. for under $300/rsf….Read More→

  Almost all of the predictiions I have made over the past 43 years which have been published in one of my 249 newsletters have come true, and since they are all in print you can check me out! Here is my current prediction.  The commercial real estate market in the United States, especially in…Read More→

  There appears to have been multiple offers on 115 Sansome St. in San Francisco, a 125,000 square foot 14-story office building that in 2016 sold for $83 million. Now the price was $25 million, and the seller received dozens of offers. This compares to another deep-discounted office building that didn’t generate the same multitude…Read More→

Walmart is subleasing 719,000 of office space in a four-building complex at Crossman Drive at Caribbean Drive in Sunnyvale, and OpenAi will be leasing 40,000 sf t 1455 and 1515 Third Street in San Francisco. Hooray!!

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→

89% defaulted ($672 million) and 11.1% ($83.7 million) were paid off during September 2023. None were extended or modified, according to Moody’s Analytics.  A new company, Arthroto, has a plan to make conversion of office to residential easier and cheaper by using factory-manufactured components that can be assembled floor by floor without disrupting other floor…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→

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→

Major brokerage companies report San Francisco office vacancy now almost 34%. And including s[ace for space that isn’t vacant over 37%. AI is the big new wonder leasing office space in the City, but for every new AI lease another existing tenant is downsizing. As of this week  national office occupancy is up just a…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→

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→

“Back in April, Dropbox announced it was cutting 500 employees. In May, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas let go of almost 4,000 people. And in July, the founder of an e-commerce startup said he laid off 90% of his support team. The common reason cited? You guessed it: artificial intelligence. Goldman Sachs economists have estimated that 300 million full-time…Read More→

Bisnow 8/23/23 Goldman Sachs is cracking down on making sure everyone comes back to the office full-time “though revenue-producing employees have for the most part returned full time, the publication reports that senior managers are frustrated by the reluctance of other staff, “constituting a significant chunk of its workforce,” to come back.   Google is…Read More→

  I was recently asked by a business reporter if, with suburban Class A office buildings like 2300 Clayton in Concord, California selling for as low as $110 a square foot, are we at the bottom of the cycle? This particular office building is one of my favorite, and back in 1985 I brought the…Read More→

The San Francisco Business Times August 29, 2023 reported that the latest Survey of Business Uncertainty (what a name!) from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, University of Chicago and Stanford University, which surveys 500 business executives each month, ‘Executives predicted that about 72.6% of their employees would be working full-time onsite in 2028, down slightly…Read More→