The past almost-four months of the Iran war has injected some amount of business uncertainty into the commercial real estate arena. While we are in no way out of the woods yet, if this cease fire holds and both sides work torwards a mutually-benificial resololution  the war has had and will continue to have an…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→

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→

  Two years ago at our annual Northern California SIOR Chapter event at the San Francisco Ferry Building, where major industrial developers forecast what they think this industry segment will be doing over the next year…I remember a consistent comments that their pencils were put away and that new Bay Area industrial development for the…Read More→

Bisnow July 19, 2024, had a string of very positive commercial real estate headlines. At the top was “Goldman Sacs Reports Gains in Real Estate Investments’ and when I dug into the article, it turns out they got ahead of the curve last year and wrote off a ton of poor investments, and now they…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→

If California were a country, it would be the 5th largest economy in the world, more productive than Inda and the United Kingdom. In the annual Business Facilities Rankings Report (July/August 2023),for our fifty states California ranked #1 in  MedTech Devices, Healthcare Jobs, Food Processing, EV Charging infrastructure,  and Agribusiness, #2 in Aerospace/Defense, and Life…Read More→

“Back in April, Dropbox announced it was cutting 500 employees. In May, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas let go of almost 4,000 people. And in July, the founder of an e-commerce startup said he laid off 90% of his support team. The common reason cited? You guessed it: artificial intelligence. Goldman Sachs economists have estimated that 300 million full-time…Read More→

  Barclays Capital, Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and possibly other major lenders are reportedly looking to sell office building loans in major cities like New York to reduce their exposure. Bisnow on November 11, 2022 said “Lenders are reportedly focused on unloading office loans in their portfolio because they have been hit hardest by the pandemic and…Read More→

Sara Bloomberg in the SF Business Times Nov. 4, 2022 reported that according to Pitchfork, Stanford University and UC Berkeley are the top producers of startup founders om the world.  Harvard and MIT were next at #3 and #4.  This is reassuring as a future source of new companies requiring Bay Area office space!

Between 2018 and 2021, 352 Corporate headquarters have left California. The three top relocation destinations were Texas, Tennesee and Nevada. The main reasons given for thir exodus include California’s high taxes, the cost of living, the heavy regulations and the legal environment. Of the 153 that left just last year, 80 dwere from Los Angeles,…Read More→

  According to a recent Colliers Capital Markets report, multi-family and industrial cap rates may be negative as they relate to the currently rising interest rates. Cap rates have yet to increase in transactions. Sellers will likely hold onto their assets unless they need liquidity. My opinion, up until a few months ago it was…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→

Colliers just released a bullet list for August of a few  of the very positive news clips out. Blackstone, one of the biggest commercial real estate investment companies in the world, just raised 24.1 billion for its latest real estate fund, ‘the largest fundraise on record’. “July’s job report marks the return of full-pre-pandemic employment…Read More→

Amazon has increased its footprint from 97 million square feet at the end of 2016 to over 457 million square feet by the end of this year. This is an increase of 360 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space and in turn has created huge shortages and price increases in a number of…Read More→

For years I have subscribed to Business Facilities, in which many of our country’s states tout how wonderful their economic climate is, their economic development departments incentive programs, and where major real estate deals have taken place around the United States. In the past I have felt a smugness about California’s place in our country,…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→

If the San Francisco Bay Area were it’s own country, it would be ranked #19 in the world in terms of largest economy.  Recent major corporate expansions in this region have bolstered this well-deserved reputation. LinkedIn just expanded its Sunnyvale headquarters by committing to a number of new office buildings to be developed. Meta, formerly…Read More→

  39% of Small Business Owners Said They Would Fire Employees Who Refuse to Come Back to the Office, and in the same survey 39% said they would not. In an article in the San Francisco Business Times July 8, 2021, Digital.com surveyed 1,500 small business owners. ‘But about 47% of business owners who say…Read More→

On the one hand we are hearing about major tech companies announcing a phased return-to-the-office,  with announcements by most of the big boys like Facebook, Salesforce and Google. On the other hand, Airbnb just announced today it was expanding its sublease inventory to 438,000 square feet,  which adds 287,000 square feet to its previous space…Read More→

One of the country’s largest owner of office buildings is Boston Properties, and today they announced that this Labor Day, September 6, 2021 will mark the official day when the office market will  turn around. Boston Properties has 195 properties with more than 51 million square feet, and it is ready to take advantage of…Read More→

  Even though some of you think California is losing all our major corporations and tons of our residents, and yes, we are letting a few out of this paradise of high taxes, high utilities,  and sometimes challenging politics, but the San Francisco Business Times reported on today’s Time Magazine 100 Most Influential Company list…Read More→

The highways in the Bay Area seemed to be back to grid-lock during commute periods, and part of this can be attributed to workers avoiding public transportation and driving to work. As of April 21, 2021 Bart ridership was down 86% from its baseline. Out in the suburbs the majority of office building parking lots…Read More→

In today’s East Bay Times a recent poll of Bay Area residents concluded that 20% of those surveyed felt working in the office was ‘very unsafe’ and 33% felt it was ‘somewhat unsafe’ in a poll of 1,000 registered voters for the Bay Area Council.  This means more than half polled  did not feel safe…Read More→

In the SF Business Times April 1, 2021, John McNellis, who is one of the top Retail industry gurus, reflected on what retail types thrived during the past years pandemic, and which didn’t. Home Depot and others in that category had a great year as those stuck at home worked on remodeling projects. Netflix did…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→

Retail deals are happening in a number of regions. Restaurants might be getting extensive up-front free rent from the landlords to get them through the pandemic months, and in turn landlords may be going to their lenders to try to get loan restructures commensurate with these concessions. I’ve seen national retail reports stating both that…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→

Colliers just sent out a brief report on the current state of the national retail market. The good news is Q4 showed signs of recovery, with positive absorption and retail rent collections up to 86%, a huge uptick since the heart of the pandemic. The bad news, 27.6 million square feet of negative absorption in…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→

AtlantaRetail just reported in Bisnow that the 560,000 square foot Town Center at Cobb mall was foreclosed by Deutsche Bank Feb. 2, 2021, receiving no bids at the foreclosure auction. The mall was valued at $322 million in 2012, but dropped to only $120 million at time of foreclosure. The Cobb Country Commissioner, JoAnn Birrell…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→

  It is bad enough that San Francisco Bay Area corporations are putting leased space on the sublease market, packing up and moving part of their operations to Texas or elsewhere, but when major companies begin putting their office campuses on the ‘for sale’ market this is a much more serious sign of what might…Read More→

  In case you weren’t aware I have been writing and publishing a newsletter, Corporate Office Perspectives, for the past 43 years and it goes out to tens of thousands of subscribers every other month. If you would like a free subscription just go to www.officetimes.com to sign up. In my February 2020 was the…Read More→

In a survey of 150 C-suite executives conducted by the firm West Monroe, 29% are considering relocating their operations out of state or out of the country due to the high cost of living and high tax burdens. The top relocation is Texas, and the largest region of where these companies will be relocated from…Read More→

  Colliers just completed a study Implications of COVID-19 on the Workplace with data from more than 5,000 global respondents.  76% reported same or improved levels of productivity. 74% felt connected to their team even though not physically with them  67% experienced improvement in work-life balance, and 83% wanted to work from home at least…Read More→

  Cynthia Milota of Ware Malcomb and Sally Augustin, Design With Science, wrote an article for Corenet Global discussing working from home vs returning to the office. “Organizations are re-imagining their mobility profiles. W1ill they be remote first with come in-office presence, or will the model largely be in-office first while allowing for remote work?…Read More→

I’ve been researching just how safe elevators are during a pandemic, and while the risk factor might be low, you are still better off not having to ride in one. Is the cab small, limited to just one or two people, or  is it a larger elevator cab that can hold 4 standing 6 feet…Read More→

Maya Donnon, Sven Schroeter of KSS Architects (among other co-authors) in a Corenet Global article titled ‘Why Workplace’ discuss the paradox corporate America is going through. They cite Facebook who has committed remote work as a permanent option for its employees while at the same time committing to millions of feet of new office space….Read More→

BISNOW Oct. 30, 2020 reports that real estate companies think they’ll need less office space. “More than any other industry, real estate has a vested interest in making sure office occupiers don’t cut their real estate footprint. Office is the largest of the real estate asset classes, and a reduction in demand would lead to…Read More→