The Seller acquired this 24-story office building, built in 1988, back in 2005 for $314/rsf so the discount is not as bad as some of the other recent Class A office sales in San Francisco, where the original purchase back in 2018 or 2019 was in the $500-700/rsf range…still, just another sign that our market…Read More→

Two positive news releases just out regarding the San Francisco office market…the Transamerica Pyramid, which has gone through the first phase of a $250 million dollar renovation, just signed a 123,000 square foot long-term lease with the law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockus LLP.  This landmark office building is asking $300 per annual square foot…Read More→

There are a number of major factors that might prevent to return of a healthy office market. The pandemic showed corporations that they can be extremely profitable even with many of their employees working from home, and even though many companies now have RTO mandates ‘the toothpaste once out of the tube can be hard…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→

According to the San Francisco Business Tims February 28, 2025, “A majority of San Francisco business leaders said their companies have plans to expand their offices in the city as they both push for more in-person work and grow headcount, according to a survey by KPMG. Three-quarters of the 100 San Francisco-based executives surveyed by…Read More→

I have been writing and publishing the OfficeTimes Corporate Office Perspective for the past 45 years, and during this time I have made many industry predictions. Almost every one of them has come true, and this is documented if you want to check. It almost feels like we are at the office building bottom, but…Read More→

San Francisco and Oakland have been experiencing fire-sale pricing of office buildings over the past few years, with office properties that previously sold for $500-1000/rsf selling for $350-300/rsf/ Very recently we are beginning to hear of I-680 Corridor Class A, well-located office buildings and complexes potentially on the way to Trustee sales in the $100-200/rsf…Read More→

  It took DOGE only six days to terminate 22 Federal leases. GSA oversees the federal government’s 360 million square feet of owned and leased properties.  Landlords with GSA as a tenant may be worried as many leases have early termination clauses. As reported in a January 18, 2018 Colliers Insights report, “Investors and lenders…Read More→

“The commercial real estate office fundamentals have not changed and remain weak…we’re 18 months into seeing the losses materialize…we still have quarters to go. We expect the market for office space will remain challenging for several years…” according to Wells Fargo CEO Mike Santomassimo.  San Francisco Business Times 1/30/5 So tenants should take advantage of…Read More→

“Roughly 11% of office buildings tied to CMBS loans were delinquent, beating the previous high watermark of 10.7% set during the Great Recession in December 2012, according to Trepp, which began tracking the CMBS sector in 2000. More than $2B in office loans became freshly delinquent in December, causing a 63-basis-point increase in the overall delinquency rate,…Read More→

One of my colleagues gave me an article,’ Meet the People Who Refused to Go Back to the Office and Lost Their Jobs’. It references Amazon, UPS, Morgan Chase and Boeing mandating that their employees return to the office five days a week. The article quotes workers who were mandated to return, who didn’t and…Read More→

GSA has 78 million sf of office leases either expiring or can be terminated by end of 2028. While there appears to be a push to get all government employees back in the office five-days a week, The American Federation of Government Employees union just reached a deal with GSA to protect and extend hybrid…Read More→

Bisnow reported on Dec. 4, 2024 that Brookfield Properties 8 million square foot office portfolio is now being  powered by nuclear energy.  “It not only sets a new standard for how owners can purchase clean energy, but it’s also a very scalable model that other property owners can follow,” Brookfield Properties Senior Vice President of…Read More→

Snowflake just sublet from Meta 773,000 square feet of office space, and this is significant for several reasons. First, for the San Francisco Bay Area this is a huge office deal, but as importantly, Snowflake previously relocated its headquarters to Bozman, Montana. Like many companies seeking a less expensive place to do business than our…Read More→

I was at a recent broker event with specialists from different commercial real estate segments. Here are some interesting insights from this…the housing market has slowed down; less folks are buying homes and that may have dramatically impacted a number of other industries. Our industrial folks say the construction companies are downsizing, giving up warehouse…Read More→

  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→

According to a recent report by JLL, nationwide lab space availability is now 30% and this is expected to rise further. “The report predicts rents will continue dropping and that it could take years before the local markets work through their supply backlogs.”  This is sobering as this segment of the industry was previously a…Read More→

Bisnow National 9/13/24  had a number of article headlines, including “Business Leaders Look to Increase Real Esate Investments”, Brookfield Predicts Robust Office Recover Market Rebound”, Major Investors Return to the Market”, Commercial Real Estate Investors Ready to Get Back in the Market”…not bad for just one day’s headlines!!!  

Bisnow August 29, 2024, reported that 1 in 6 .S. office buildings are strong residential conversion candidates. On the one hand, it could be viewed as only 1 in 6, while a more optimistic slant would be 17% of U.S. office buildings may be residential conversion candidates.” Manhattan led U.S. markets with more than 53%…Read More→

There have been a number of estimates of the job displacement, current and future, due to AI (Artificial Intelligence) and yes, there will be some offset due to new job opportunities in Ai. “300 million jobs could be lost to AI…44% of companies using or planning on using AI believe it will result in layoffs…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→

Recently I wanted to find out first-hand what tenants were doing with and in their office space, so I picked up a clipboard and personally visited a number of office tenants in suburban Class A office buildings. One complex had a huge, 80% empty, parking lot, Class A, and well maintained. I went door-to-door, not…Read More→

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→

Google just renewed its lease at 215 Fremont Street in downtown San Franciso, downsizing from 140,000 sf to 64,000 sf. It could have been worse, they could have vacated entirely!  In the same Bisnow release, The Royal Bank of Canada appears to be taking back 82 San Francisco apartment buildings owned by Goldman Sachs and…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→

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→

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→

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→

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→

  “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→

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→

San Francisco’s office vacancy rate of 35%, the highest on record, is expected to climb further as corporations continue to give up office space as they ‘rightsized’. Pre-pandemic the vacancy rate was below 5%!  According to the San Francisco Business Times 12/5/23, “Salesforce which announced its plans tp lean out its real estate portfolio at…Read More→