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→

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→

Great webinar yesterday with a panel of some of the largest San Francisco office landlords.  Here are a few of the highlights; There is a flight to quality, which does not necessarily mean Class A space. Sublease space is growing exponentially. How healthy buildings are during this Pandemic is imperative. Activity is coming back. Ground…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→

Yesterday I was on a very enlightening Zoom call with my San Francisco Colliers associates. The office market is seeing landlords hold firm on their asking rents, and there are still Class A office leases happening in the $100/rsf annual price range, per square foot. The top ten buildings have less than 10% vacancy so…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→

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area a number of tech companies have recently announced that large portions or in some cases, all of their office facilities are on the sublease market. Work-from-home is here to stay for many reasons and this does not bode well for the overall health of the office market. However,…Read More→

Salesforce, the largest employer in San Francisco with over 2,000,000 square feet of office space, just announced that 65% of its employees can come into the office one to three days a week, and for employees that don’t live near an office or have roles that don’t require an office, can work remotely full-time. “The…Read More→

  The Society of Industrial and Office Realtors sent out a great short video that you can access at www.SIOR.com/snapshot. Here are the highlights: Industrial real estate confidence is high at 6.9 (out of 10), while office confidence is low at 4.7. “The pandemic continues to negatively affect almost all market sectors…and is expected to…Read More→

While this may not be the norm everywhere in the United States, here in San Francisco one day’s news release was another blow to not just the office market but much more significant in many ways. First, there was a SF Business Times article that Uber may be quietly shopping 300,000 square feet of its…Read More→

According to a recent report by CBRE, Silicon Valley will be one of the hottest markets, nationwide, for future office development. “The San Jose metro area, defined as Santa Clara County, is touted as the No. 1 market for future development of office space and is also seen as an excellent market for retail and…Read More→

  Even though in many regions in the United States there is a flood of office sublease space and there are reports that Corporate America may be giving up 25% of all their office space, long-term, due to partial or total remote working, there are still tens of millions of feet of new office projects…Read More→

Yelp just placed 14 stories at 140 new Montgomery St., San Francisco, totally 161,876 square feet, and plans to retain a HQ in San Francisco. “With more employees working remotely we’re reducing some of our footprint in San Francisco, but we will still maintain our HQ office there,” the Yelp spokesperson said, adding that the…Read More→

According to the East Bay Times reporter George Avalos, California lost 1.41 million jobs last year. Ouch! Michael Bernick, employment attorney with Duane Morris and former EDD Director, said “We are looking at a much more gradual recovery than first hoped, and a lot of jobs that were lost are going to be lost permanently,…Read More→

David Amsterdam, President of Colliers Capital Markets, just sent out a bulletin with the following bullet points: Q4 negative absorption of 40.9 million sf is second-highest on record…ten metros posted negative absorption of at least one million (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago)…Sublease space now a record 188 million sf. I have been doing…Read More→

But the real story is a number of reports predicting that Corporate America will be downsizing by 25% of its total office space. This means we may have 1,561,273,198 square feet of vacant office space as companies trend towards partial or total long-term work-from-home strategies, which means we have another 773 million square feet of…Read More→

Last week Oracle placed three of their Peninsula office buildings on the for-sale market, after announcing a few weeks ago they were moving their headquarters to Texas. Now NetApp just announced they will sell their 702,200 square foot Sunnyvale office campus. They have not announced leaving California…yet.  I started researching all the links to states…Read More→

At a recent webinar where I forecast what was going to happen in the various commercial real estate segments over the next few years we had several surveys. One was asking our audience, which included CPA’s, bankers, realtors and lawyers, when they thought the office market was going to return, and the overwhelming consensus was…Read More→