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→

“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→

GlobeSt.com 1/22/22 reported that new office building construction was getting a 65% rent premium over average Class A rents, according to a study just out by Cushman & Wakefield. Peter Curry, real estate partner with Farrell Fritz, told GlobeSt that “front and center will be state-of-the-art air filtration systems, energy savings infrastructure, and a retreat…Read More→

  There appears to be a number of apps out that can allow employees to upload their e vaccination status, employment information that then allows a touchless building access through the lobby without having to check in with security. These apps allow you to control the elevator to get you to your specific floor, and…Read More→

An article in the San Francisco Business Times today listed the three main factors impacting the return to the office. #1, Covid uncertainty…companies have announced, tehn cancelled, then announced again only to cancel again plans to bring employees back to the office. “Experts say they fully expect additional variants to follow Omicron, which is keeping…Read More→

  Yesterday Slack’s CEO called ‘Return to Work a Doomed Approach’ and put 208,000 square feet of space on the San Francisco sublet market. The SF Registry reported on Slack, “Communication software firm Slack has decided that the future of work is not necessarily in the office and has placed 208,460 square feet of space…Read More→

  This is my 45th year representing corporations in the sale and leasing of Northern California office space. I may be sticking my neck out, but that is the privilege I have in writing this blog. I believe that we are finally at the low point in the office leasing cycle, and that while we…Read More→

As reported in the San Francisco Business Times yesterday, “The announcement that consulting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers will allow tens of thousands of its employees to work from home sent shockwaves through the business world. But it could be the start of an even larger wave…it will allow 40,000 of its 55,000 workers to work remotely anywhere…Read More→

Every year the Business Facilities magazine publishes It’s National Rankings of States  for 27 different categories including Health Care Jobs,, Tech Talent Pipeline,  Aerospace/Defense and while California did terrible in the Best Business Tax Climate category, of the 27 categories California ranked #1 9 times and was in the top 10  17 times. Very impressive,…Read More→

I mentioned in a recent blog that Boston Properties is planning for downtown San Jose, California, will feature 1.4 million square feet of office space. Kilroy Realty is in the approval process for 676,801 square feet of new office space at the SoMa Flower Mart project in San Francisco. Amazon just purchased 304 acres in…Read More→

In an article titled “Abandoning Office Space Creates Lease Accounting Headaches” published in Bloomberg Tax, “In some cases, companies that shrink their office space have to book one-time impairment charges, or hits to earnings, to convey how the value of their leased real estate declined.. Mobile game developer Zynga, which makes Farmville and Words With…Read More→

  WeWork lost $3.2 billion dollars In 2020 due to rapid expansion hitting the Covid-19 shutdown. It lost $2.1 billion and more than one in four of its customers during the first quarter 2021, according the Financial Times. However, there have been a number of positive press releases in recent months. GSA, the largest office…Read More→

It was great for almost all corporations for the announcement that companies employing 100 or more must either have their employees fully vaccinated or take weekly tests. This may accelerate the return to the office, which most companies who had hoped to have most employees back by September 2021 have pushed reentry back to early…Read More→

How to solve two problems at the same time…too much vacant office space, and not enough industrial inventory so tear down suburban office buildings to create space for new, high-demand industrial product!  In Bisnow August 12, 2021, ‘Developers, including some of the industry’s biggest players, have started buying under-performing, underutilized office and flex buildings to…Read More→

“According to a new survey of more than 500 Chicagoland brokers, investors, corporate real estate executives and others by the Real Estate Center at DePaul University, 56% said they think office users should be fully vaccinated before returning.”  Bisnow August 10, 2021.  Because the survey was taking in June, well before the Delta Variant began…Read More→

  In the past having attractive office space with decent amenities was a recruiting and retention tool. It set the tone for corporate culture. Over the past ten years we heard of suburban office parks with bocce ball, basketball courts, outdoor grill areas, and in both suburban and urban offices buildings rooftop garden and lounge…Read More→

In Wired August 2021, titled The Rise Of The Zoom Town, “A CityLab analysis found that 84% of the people who abandoned the country’s 50 largest cities between March 2020 and February 2021 stayed within the same metro area. Eighteen percent of those who moved out of San Francisco in 2020 landed in Alameda County,…Read More→

  In the first quarter of 2021 California attracted 48% of all venture capital raised in the United States. Compare this with 2% raised in Texas and 2% raised in Florida. To see the entire article please go to https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-studies-contrary-popular-belief-residents-are-not-fleeing-california  

Bisnow reported today on a Stanford and Hoover Institution working paper titled ‘Why Working From Home Will Stick’ ‘that the amount of work undertaken from home in the U.S. will rise from about 5% before the pandemic to about 20% after the pandemic. They surveyed 30,000 U.S. workers multiple times and asked them to report…Read More→

A report just out from Colliers has the I.S. office vacancy rate at 14.2%, with 45 million square feet of negative absorption during the first quarter of 2021, and a record 200,000,000 square feet of available sublease space. Ouch! “Recovery in the office market is set to lag, record levels of sublease space and negative…Read More→

Great webinar yesterday with a panel of some of the largest San Francisco office landlords.  Here are a few of the highlights; There is a flight to quality, which does not necessarily mean Class A space. Sublease space is growing exponentially. How healthy buildings are during this Pandemic is imperative. Activity is coming back. Ground…Read More→

I’ve been reading report after report documenting and predicting the dire budget strife due to the impact of the Pandemic on business closures, tax revenues severely decreased, and costs relating to vaccination, testing, school readiness during the Pandemic and other costly issues which have stressed government entities across the U.S. San Francisco, 400 million shortfall,…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→

At a recent SIOR National Conference a few tidbits on the future of office usage in the United States. There appears to be long-term significant compression of how much office space a number of major corporations are planning for. An overall 25% reduction in office usage due to long-term partial remote workers not needing to…Read More→

  A number of large office users have delayed the return to their offices until mid-2021, while others have told their employees they can work remotely permanently. Facebook and other major players have allowed their employees to relocate to lower-cost regions, some taking a pay cut but still saving substantially over their previous San Francisco…Read More→

The downtown San Jose Google 79-acre development currently in planning stages will have 5,900 residential ‘dwelling units’, 500,000 square feet of retail stores, restaurants and cultural buildings, and 7.3 million square feet of office space. In the old days this might translate to 35-45,000 employees, and after Covid is gone may again be at this…Read More→

Bloomberg News reported September 25, 2020 that Deutsche Bank AG is considering a hybrid model of allowing staff to split work between office and home, although a Morgan Chase spokesperson warned that staff productivity might slip if they work remotely too long, and a UBS Group spokesperson commented that working from home makes it harder…Read More→

According to SocketSite, which tracks the San Francisco rental market, year-over-year apartment rents were down 20S%. The Bay Area regional planning agency, The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, is considering a mandate that large Bay Area employers have 6-% of their work force permanently work from home. Reported in today’s  East Bay Times, ‘Significant increases in available…Read More→

  A report just out by the California Economic Forecast predicts more doom and gloom than I would have liked to have read. “The economy however is not back to the pre-crisis status. During most of Calendar 2020 and in much of the first half of 2021, ongoing economic restrictions will have resulted in millions…Read More→

A report just released by Colliers International on the top 25 US Metro Office Markets, show Atlanta on top with 2,055,717 sf of YTD positive net absorption, while New York (Manhattan) had a negative net absorption of 3,375248 sf and San Francisco had a negative net absorption of 3,004,410 sf. Other notables was Seattle with…Read More→

  Something for employers to caution employees who are thinking of moving to a lower-cost state but continuing to work remotely. In an article in the New York Times, there are some states that will tax your income based on where you did the work, and others based on your residence, and it is possible…Read More→

On the day Pinterest announced paying $89.5 million dollars to cancel a 490,000 square foot office lease they had previously signed for a project that was going to be built in San Francisco’s South of Market, due to a change of where employees would be located, developer Jay Paul announced it is going ahead with…Read More→