I’ve been predicting that the private industry and government mandates that office workers return to the office will boost occupancy from the current 50% to 60% but not bring back pre-Covid levels is being born out. BisNow reported on March 10, 2025, that the average office foot traffic is 64% of 2019 levels and average…Read More→

Bisnow headline, The retail apocalypse is back, Why It Seems Like All Of America’s Chains Are closing, then I opened my Morning Brief, “Party City Out Of Business After Nearly 40 Years”,  and the next headline, “The Container Store Files For Bankruptcy”

  Much of the United States office markets are still experiencing vacancy rates in around 20%, and in the San Francisco Bay Area even higher, with Oakland at 29% and San Francisco at 35%. I have mentioned previously that the Amazon announcement mandating five-day a week return to office may have a positive impact on…Read More→

  This was the 9/24/24 headline in Bisnow, based on a survey of 1,300 global CFO’s conducted by KPRG….83% said they expect their companies will shift back to requiring five days of office attendance sometime in the next three years. “Older CEOs are much more likely to predict a return to pre-pandemic work models, with…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→

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→

  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→

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→

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→

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→

Cities and states around the country are offering incentives to remote workers to move, with West Virginia offering $12,000 in relocation cash paid over two years, a $2,500 outdoor recreation package and free coworking space.  According to a recent San Francisco Business Times article, 272 people have taken advantage of these incentives. “West Virginia notes…Read More→

Gleb Tipursky in Entrepreneur referenced three recent reports, The Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report, The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics, and Inspace’s Returning For Good report. “Unispace finds that nearly half (42%) of companies that mandated office returns witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of…Read More→

There area large group of folks, including most office building owners, landlord leasing agents, and older executive heads of thousands of companies, who still hold a belief that at some point in the not-to-distant future office workers will return to the office in force. This will be a combination of executive mandate, the recognition that…Read More→

  Between 2029 and 2022, according to the SF Business Times, the share of workers living near its office locations fell, with the largest drop of 70% occurring in San Francisco,  followed by New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago falling by 67%, with the number of Yelp workers living in Florida and Texas going up…Read More→

  Janet Pogue McLaurin with Gensler, one of the nation’s gurus on predicting the future of corporate office layouts, functionality, and many other nuances of the office environment, wrote an article illustrating the key findings of a recent Gensler survey of CoreNet Global end users. ”Respondents rated the space effectiveness for each of the five…Read More→

At the Bisnow December 8, 2022 D.C. Region Finance and Deal-Makers Summit, major commercial real estate lenders discussed how they are dealing with the current turbulent times. “The pullback is happening across all asset classes, given how this year’s sharp rise in interest rates has dramatically altered the math for new deals. But Ekeroth, Regional Director with Northwestern…Read More→

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→

In a BisNow article published November 17, 2022, “Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed plan to improve or expand their existing occupancy, Many are also implementing new procedures or technologies to help manage the shifting flor of employees into the office. Although hybrid work schedules are now the norm for 70% of workers, only one-third of…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→

Credit for this statement goes to Jessica Pernicone, principal at JLL. “There is a certain amount of productivity you can get from being at home when you have heads-down deep work. However, if that’s not what your job requires all the time there are feelings of isolation and people start to feel disconnected from their…Read More→

Joseph Gordon with Bisnow wrote on November 8, 2022 that according to a number of sources, new office leases showed 18% fewer deals as compared to Q3 2021, and 15% less than Q3 2019. The average size of the deal also went down 16% in 2022 as compared to 2019. Leases are also getting shorter…Read More→

  THEREGISTRY November 4, 2022, Cresa reported that Bay Area leasing activity to date remains 50.2 percent below 2019 levels during the same timeframe and in the last year, 3.6 million square feet of direct space has been added to landlords availability.  There is demand for trophy office space in San Francisco, upper floors with…Read More→

  The CIM Group out of Los Angeles had plans for a 1.1 million square foot office tower in downtown Oakland, but is now proposing a 487 foot tower to build 600 residential units. This would be the tallest building in Oakland. According to CoStar News, “While to pivot is a boost of momentum for…Read More→

Published in the Fall 2022 SIOR Report,  was an article reported that GSA has established a goal to restrict new lease agreements to net-zero buildings by the year 2030. One big problem with this, according to John Robbins, CEO of Carpenter Robbins Commercial Real Estate in San Ramon (and a great friend of mine!) is…Read More→

San Francisco office vacancy, according to a number of reports, is in the22% range, but when you include occupied space that is available this figure increases to almost 30%. With two million square feet of office sublease space in leases that expire by the end of 2023, this space may go back to the landlords….Read More→

Editor: Jeffrey S. Weil, MCR.h, CCIM, SIOR Executive Vice President 1850 Mt. Diablo Blvd. Suite 200 Walnut Creek, CA 94596 Phone: +1 925 279 5590 Fax: +1 925 279 0450 Email: jeff.weil@colliers.com Blog: www.OfficeTimes.com   October 1, 2022 Issue: 254   If you know someone who would like to receive this newsletter, please send their…Read More→

  “Is San Francisco’s CRE Market On the Verge Of Collapse?   MyEListing.com, a Texas-based commercial real estate marketplace, has published a report based on San Francisco data, and it paints a picture of a seriously struggling office market. The pandemic-driven “work-from-home” model appears to be taking permanent hold in The City by the Bay. With…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→

Recent surveys have supported allowing pets in the office will increase workers returning to the office. about 71% of employees said their employer made changes to its workplace pet policies within the last year. Those sorts of changes can help employee retention and satisfaction, with about 86% of employees surveyed saying they would look forward…Read More→

vv This story encapsulates what is going on these days in the ‘back to the office’ vs hybrid vs remote work discussions on-going in today’s Corporate America.  In Bisnow August 19, 2022, Centene, a large healthcare company in North Carolina, was weeks away from completing it’s 800,000 square foot headquarters facility in Charlotte and stated…Read More→

I was at a recent commercial real estate brokers meeting where the topic touched on the high cost of converting big and medium retail boxes to accommodate smaller-sized retail tenants. Taking a former CVS or RiteAid building of 35,000 square feet and demising it to fit 2-3 smaller tenants could cost the landlord $100/sf or…Read More→

Today: Bulk of genetic testing company’s 1,000 layoffs will be in S. F.; Metromile’s new owner slashes dozens of San Francisco jobs; yesterday headlines, Twitter set to close parts of it’s SF1.7 SF Footprint. There have been a few bright spots but overall during the past six or more months folks may have left their…Read More→

One side of the coin is, Big Brother May Be Watching, while the other side of the coin touts the benefits to improving the workspace by tracking how employees use their office spaces and amenity areas. From an SIOR Article published June 16, 2022, “How Sensor Technology Is Helping Design the Workspace”, ‘temperature sensors from…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→

There are a number of costs in office leases and the office leasing industry that many might not be aware of.  Most full-service office leases, where the rental rate includes property taxes, property insurance, utilities, sewer, water, garbage, janitorial and building maintenance have an annual adjustment where the prorate increases over the base year are…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→

Who Is Kidding Whom?   Jim Gardner, Managing Editor of the San Francisco Business Times summed up the controversy over whether employees will be working in the office or working remotely. In his editorial titled “Back to the Office: Who’s Kidding Who?” Jim cited several surveys, and the bottom line appears to be, employers overwhelmingly…Read More→

Austin is leading the pack, with 53% of its workers back in the office. Los Angeles checks in at 40% and New York at 36%, but San Francisco is still at the bottom with only 31% of workers coming back to the office. This is having a negative impact on the City of San Francisco’s…Read More→

Yesterday I attended a commercial real estate major investor and developer panel put on by my Northern California SIOR chapter at San Francisco’s Ferry Building  Overall everyone was very optimistic about 2022 and 2023. Paul Single with City National Bank told us our economy was unbelievably strong and interest rates were already up 175 basis…Read More→