San Francisco’s office market continues to roll along, with the vacancy rate dropping to 25% (I remember not too long ago when it was a reportedly 32%) with 3.7 million square feet of net absorption so far in 2026. Meanwhile across the Bay Block has just placed 361,000 square feet of office space on the…Read More→

In a 10/28/26 article by Chloe Gallivan in Bisnow, “The use of artificial intelligence is driving the world’s largest companies to reassess their workforce — and workspace — in the pursuit of efficiency. The technology is reshaping how employees work and collaborate, prompting employers to reevaluate their office layouts to promote more integrated workspaces, workplace…Read More→

Big Tech leasing dominates the Bay Area — Google renews 2.1MM SQFT across Moffett Place and Moffett Gateway in Sunnyvale, Amazon takes the entire 317,000 SQFT Moffett Towers building backfilling Google’s exit, Apple leases 125,800 SQFT from Peery Arrillaga, and Brex leases the full 200,000 SQFT at 270 Brannan Street in San Francisco.”  The Registry…Read More→

As I check out East Bay office buildings, I am still seeing many sparsely occupied parking lots…especially Mondays and Fridays but surprisingly, also mid-week.” In May 2026, data from WFH Research showed that about 28% of paid days were done from home in the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland metro area. That number is almost exactly the same as…Read More→

“The growth of artificial intelligence and changes in working practices mean businesses are also more susceptible to change”.  As soon as office occupiers get into their space they may find it doesn’t operate the way they thought on paper. One solution is to use modular offices and meeting rooms instead of traditional hard-walled construction. “These are the…Read More→

I think it depends on the type of individual, type of job function and a lot of other factors.. If I had to commute tone or wo hours each way to get to my office I would be depressed regardless. “Remote work has soared in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic. But, a new study suggests…Read More→

  If  I had relocated my home during Covid and have been working from home ever snce, and now was being forced to commute one or two hours a day each way to get to the office, how happy would I be? he Union of State Attorneys is claiming that forcing these employees back to…Read More→

Anne Cosgrove, Editorial Director for Business Facilities Magazine, wrote in the March/April 2026 issue wrote…”For site selectors and corporate leaders, location decisions are no longer about cost – they are about certainty, speed and long-term adaptability.  Communities that once competed primarily on incentives are now differentiating themselves through infrastructure readiness, energy capacity and workforce alignment….Read More→

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→

“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→

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→

Bisnow March 4, 2026 Amazon is planning to cut 49,000 desks from its office footprint in perhaps the biggest shift in its real estate strategy since it courted offers from cities and states for a second headquarters in 2017. Management told members of Amazon’s global real estate and facilities group on Feb. 3 that the company aims to…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→

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→

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→

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→

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→

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→