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→

CoStar November 30, 2025 reported on a study by MIT that artificial intelligence is now able to replace 11.7% of the U.S. labor market. This is The Project Iceberg Project Iceberg – Coordinating the Human-AI Future which focuses on 151 million working Americans and projects 13,741 workers apparently can or will be replaced by AI,…Read More→

According to a recent article by George Avalos in the East Bay Times, “An estimated 60% of the workforce physically located at Bishop Ranch has returned to the campus…by comparison, the turn-to-office rate was 49% for Silicon Valley and 41.8% for San Francisco, according to figures produced by Kastel Access Control System. Workers also appear…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→

When one or more sectors of the commercial real estate market head down, there are still positive sales and leasing occurring while the market heads into a slump.   The same phenomenon occurs when the market begins to improve. It isn’t like someone hits the switch and viola; we now have a healthy office (or other…Read More→

The good news is “The Brookings Institution published a report that confirms that the Ba Area is the epicenter of the AI race in the U.S. The report calls the San Franisco and san Jose areas a “superstar cluster”…While AI-related job postings only make up 2.5% of all job openings nationally,  the Bay Area has…Read More→

City, county and state governments…so these are captive users of office space, and right now there is an extended Prrime Day offce building sale going on where in many parts of the United States a government or non-profit entity can purchase a quality office building at a 70-80% discount. How come more municipalities aren’t doing…Read More→

One the one hand, “The half-decade push to bring employees back to the office after the onset of the pandemic has crossed a significant threshold, according to JLL: More than half of employees at Fortune 100 companies are now required to come in five days a week. July 23, 2025 “  ET Emily Wishingrad, Washington, D.C.  While…Read More→

I get caught up in my San Francisco East Bay region that I sometimes forget what is happening to our local office market may also be doing the same in other regions. The SF Business Times July 18, 2025, headlined “San Mateo’s Office Glut to Fuel Demolition Wave”, and describes how this 8 million square…Read More→

  June 10, 2025 I stuck my neck out and delcared that the officical ‘Bottom of the Office Market’ day…since then other corporations have added return-to-office mandates, but one of the strongest cases for the future return of the office was the announcement by Hines that they would like to build a 1,225 foot office…Read More→

You can go back to my newsletters and blogs over the past year, but I have repeated opinioned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is allowing corporations to do more work with less employees. I haven’t seen any documented studies yet, but asreported in Techspot June 27, 2025, “Salesforce CEO says 50% of company work is now…Read More→

Bisnow May 29, 205, according to a CBRE report, “Artificial intelligence (AI) development likely will be a sizable driver of U.S. office demand over the next decade considering the impact it is already having on the country’s tech epicenter of San Francisco. AI-related companies have leased more than 5 million sq. ft. of San Francisco…Read More→

  In an article written by Joe Gose and published in the New York Times 4/14/25, sales of office buildings across the country are up 21% from 2023. CBRE reported that in 2024, 6.5 million ore square feet of office space was leased than was vacated. In major higher-cost cities the average asking rate of…Read More→

As various building systems get more and more connected for office building operations there are increased risks of getting hacked, held for ransome or having systems disabled for various nepharious reasons. Buildings Magazone First Quarter 2025 had an aecellent article on how to reduce these risks. Here are the five steps to consider: Collaberate with…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→

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→

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 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→

  ”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→

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→

  This was the headline of a November 14, 2023, BisNow report. “Revenue at companies with flexible work-from-home policies grew four times faster than those with in-person requirements,  according to a new study by Scoop Technologies and Boston Consulting Group.”

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→

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→

According to the SF Business Times, ’San Francisco Sees Significant Jump in Return-To-Office Study’, with a 38% year-over-year increase in visits to office buildings in San Francisco. San Francisco foot traffic downtown remains down 56% from 2019. Ok, that was the good news.  On August 13, 2023   the U. S. Department of Health and Human…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→

Lyft recently mandated that all employees must work in the office Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with Tuesdays recommended. They will also be allowed to work remotely one month each year, and those living too far from offices are not required to come in. Many call centers have remote workers, and some have begun to make…Read More→

  SFGATE had an interesting comparison of the retail activity in Downtown Oakland as compared with Downtown San Francisco. Oakland wins hands-down with packed restaurants, crowds of people heading to clubs and concert venues, versus San Francisco’s downtown which is a ghost town. Oakland’s unemployment rate is 3.4%  at the end of 2022, ‘down from…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→

Bisnow Dumber 16, 2022  “More than 71% of corporate real estate professionals say they expect hybrid work to result in space demand reductions of at least 20%, according to a survey from Colliers and CoreNet Global. Almost 19% expect that demand to shrink by 40% or more, while just 7% believe that the move to…Read More→

Bisnow Dec. 16, 2022 “Hybrid work plans are starting to become set in stone across more of corporate America, and as more companies finalize their policies, how much office space they are going to cut from their footprints is becoming clearer. More than 71% of corporate real estate professionals say they expect hybrid work to result in…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→

Reported in the San Francisco Business Times 9/29/22,  the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Jamie Dimon suggested that those who come to the office every day will be getting the better assignments versus those who work remotely or only come in occasionally. But, “The Survey job site Monster found most workers would quit their…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→

In an article by Sougata Mukherjeee, Editor-in-Chief of the Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, he wirtes that GICPte  and Workspace Property Trust just spent $1.1 billion on purchasing 53 suburban office buildings  “That’s a bet that reflects institutional investors believe remote work is here to stay, and now office buildings near residential neighborhoods…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→