Silicon Valley's (increasingly empty) tech offices stand as ghostly monuments to pre-Covid era

The Wall Street Journal's Peter Grant reports that office vacancy rates are rising as the SV slides further away from the tech industry's early pandemic hiring boom—and as more residents are opting to skip the commute and work remotely. Now, companies like Google are increasingly interested in subleasing their office space, leaving landlords desperate and throwing incentives at anyone willing to rent.

Office-vacancy rates in Silicon Valley, which includes the Northern California communities of San Jose, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, were up to 17% in June from 11% in 2019, according to data firm CoStar Group. In some spots, such as Menlo Park and Mountain View, the rate surpassed 20% this spring, CoStar said.

The level of surplus office space remains below what is available just north in San Francisco, where the vacancy rate has more than tripled from 2019 to more than 25%. But some analysts and investors expect Silicon Valley will narrow the gap because tech companies are going through layoffs and are shedding unwanted floors.

“There’s not a lot of technology demand in the market today,” Douglas Linde, president of office owner Boston Properties, said on the company’s earnings call in April.

Leasing activity at the office tower his company is developing in San Jose has been practically nonexistent. “There are no conversations going on there,” he said on the call.

This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole thing here.

Read more on the Silicon Valley’s office vacancy problem—and what we can do about it—here, here, and here.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity

Image by Wikimedia Commons

Opp Now enthusiastically welcomes smart, thoughtful, fair-minded, well-written comments from our readers. But be advised: we have zero interest in posting rants, ad hominems, poorly-argued screeds, transparently partisan yack, or the hateful name-calling often seen on other local websites. So if you've got a great idea that will add to the conversation, please send it in. If you're trolling or shilling for a candidate or initiative, forget it.