The onset of the coronavirus pandemic has damaged leasing activity across all major property types in Northern California’s Bay Area, with the population largely staying at home and job losses reaching unprecedented levels around the country, economic activity has come to a near standstill.

Office properties are largely empty, the current economic downturn has hit the retail sector particularly hard, and some apartment renters are struggling to make their payments. There is serious uncertainty facing the future progress of commercial businesses and the properties they occupy as the country faces continued economic uncertainty.

In addition, companies are reassessing future space needs and real estate expansion plans. Many firms are looking at vastly expanded work-from-home models. Tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft have announced plans to allow employees to work from home through much of 2020, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that many of his employees will be able to work from home permanently. While it remains to be seen just how prevalent adoption of work-from-home models could become, the trend does present a serious headwind for office demand.

But the relative winner through the current pandemic could be industrial properties. Consumers have had to accelerate their adoption of online shopping, as all but essential retailers have been closed. And those most at risk from the virus, or fearful of potential consequences, have moved to online shopping and delivery services for essential household goods and groceries. The expansion of e-commerce necessitates both additional warehouse space for holding goods, as well as logistics and last-mile distribution facilities to get orders out to consumers in a timely fashion.
Source: CoStar
Date: 5.15.20
By: Marco Cuguia

In the seven weeks since California’s shelter in place order went into effect on March 17, the Bay Area has averaged over 200,000 square feet weekly in new industrial leases. The figures are inclusive of seven Bay Area metropolitan areas, including San Francisco, San Jose, East Bay, Vallejo-Fairfield, Napa, Santa Rosa and San Rafael.

To put the average 200,000 square feet of weekly leasing into a better context, since the beginning of 2006, weekly leasing activity has averaged 370,000 square feet. This implies that the pandemic has certainly had a significant effect of industrial leasing, with average leasing activity pulling back over 40%. But with retail leasing down 70%, and office leasing pulled back 75% over the past seven weeks, the industrial sector looks like a point of strength.

Some of the largest leases signed since the beginning of March were by Amazon, which leased 250,000 square feet at the Victory Station project in Sonoma that was completed in late-2018, as well as 380,000 square feet at the under-construction Bridge Point Silicon Valley project in Milpitas. Other significant deals over the past several weeks included SuperMicro leasing 245,000 square feet at 48350 Fremont Blvd. in Fremont and U-Haul leasing over 100,000 square feet at 2391-2399 W. Winton Ave. in Hayward.

Link to Article: https://product.costar.com/home/news/shared/1135371921?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personalized&utm_content=p5

Source: CoStar News
By: Lou Hirsh
February 11, 2020

A new list of the federal government’s surplus properties targeted for disposal includes what brokers say is real estate that’s expected to be in high demand by developers of offices and housing in some posh West Coast locales where land is tight.

What’s more, the decades-old properties — most of them underused offices — could be revamped for new uses, ranging from distribution centers to high-end apartments, retail and other mixed-use combinations that could bring new life to the areas, brokers and analysts say.

On the list, which contains 12 underutilized properties nationwide that could bring in more than $750 million, is real estate in areas where development and business have been growing from Seattle to Silicon Valley. It includes an entire city block just three miles from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, that could soon be for sale.

“The Menlo Park property is located in one of the country’s strongest markets for tenant demand,” said Jesse Gundersheim, CoStar Group’s director of market analytics in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Sales activity in Silicon Valley and San Francisco is robust, and cap rates remain at historic lows which is indicative of strong investment interest.”

The surplus property list put forward last month by a federal advisory panel stems from a bipartisan 2016 law requiring the Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration to identify opportunities for the federal government to reduce its inventory of nonmilitary properties. The list is just the first round of potential sell-offs, with more rounds of recommendations expected in coming months, as the government looks to consolidate locations, maximize property values and revenue and trim down a real estate portfolio that includes roughly 77,000 underutilized properties.

Some that aren’t in their city’s downtown or prime office district could face the bulldozer, as developers put the land underneath them to more suitable uses demanded by the market, such as apartments and single-family homes — provided their projects get the blessing of local governments.

Take for instance the property at 1352 Lighthouse Ave. in coastal Pacific Grove, on the northern tip of central California’s Monterey Peninsula. The property, that CoStar data says was built in 1952 and spans 11,220 square feet on 4.4 acres, is a Department of Commerce fisheries science center.

Located just 5 miles north of the famed Pebble Beach Golf Course overlooking the Pacific Ocean, that federal facility sits in a city where the median home value is $902,528 and the median monthly apartment rent is $3,300, according to data firm Zillow.

“That location could be very sought-after for high-end housing,” said Cale Miller, senior vice president in the San Francisco office of commercial brokerage Hughes Marino, noting the neighborhood currently hosting the fisheries center is generally not known for offices or other heavy commercial uses.

The same generally goes for the 1 million-square-foot Chet Holifield Federal Building, built in 1971 at 24000 Avila Rd., about 8 miles from the Pacific Ocean in coastal Laguna Niguel. That city, in Southern California’s Orange County, has a median home value of $844,539 and median rent of $3,300, both well above regional averages.

Miller said housing or other mixed-use elements serving that neighborhood — rather than offices — would probably see the most practical demand going forward.

Coveted Silicon Valley

At the other end of the spectrum, brokers are expecting the listed property in Silicon Valley’s Menlo Park to see the greatest future demand on the office side. Washington, D.C., attorney David Winstead, who serves on the federal building advisory board, recently told CoStar News that the city block surrounding the Menlo Park Complex at 345 Middlefield Road “could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

With multiple major tech firms expanding their office footprints in the supply-constrained region, the location is a major draw. The Menlo Park federal complex, housing the operations of the U.S. Geological Survey among other tenants and spanning just more than 140,000 square feet, is 3 miles south of Facebook’s global headquarters and even closer to local office strongholds of companies such as Apple and Hewlett Packard.

“Menlo Park has been ground zero for tech expansion,” said Eric Luhrs, regional president in the San Jose office of brokerage Kidder Mathews. “That’s still a very strong market, and that’s a great location as well.”

Luhrs said he’s expecting the Menlo Park location to garner serious interest from multiple developers and future tenants, including the venture and financial firms that have thrived in Silicon Valley. It could also attract smaller nontechnology firms that have found it tough to find new space as the major tech giants, including Facebook and Google, have expanded throughout the region.

Gundersheim noted that, based on its size, more than a million square feet on a 100-acre lot, the Laguna Nigel property could prove more valuable on a pure sales-price basis than the Menlo Park site. However, the Menlo location could represent a rare investment opportunity slightly east of that city’s most active section, the downtown area where most developers are now focused on revitalization.

In Menlo and other office locations, Luhrs said changeovers to commercial uses will depend on how the government chooses to transition out of them — for instance, whether the GSA sells buildings and immediately clears out the agencies that occupy them or chooses to stay in them for a period under leaseback arrangements with the buyer.

In the Seattle area, where older federal buildings on the list are not located in what are currently deemed the hot office markets, other types of nonresidential buyers and tenants could still find strategic uses for the properties.

That includes the property currently known as the Federal Archives and Records Center, operated by the National Archives and Records Administration at 6125 Sand Point Way NE. The warehouse and office building was completed in 1945, spanning 184,251 square feet on 10 acres.

Owen Rice, executive vice president in Hughes Marino’s Seattle office, noted the area that grew up around that Seattle facility over the decades is primarily a residential neighborhood, known as Hawthorne Hills.

“That area has not really been a big hub for commercial offices in terms of demand,” Rice said. “It’s also a very constrained market in terms of supply.”

Alternate Seattle Scenarios

He said possible future nonresidential users of that government complex could include those in the fast-expanding healthcare industry. For instance, Seattle Children’s Hospital has existing operations next door to the Sand Point Way property and is known locally to be scouting sites for future expansion.

Rice said another vintage property on the federal list in Washington state, a government complex at 400 15th St. SW in Auburn, is located in an area just north of Tacoma that has become a popular regional hub for mostly small to mid-size industrial developers and tenants.

He said the 119,000-square-foot property, built in 1950 and last renovated in 2006, has good access to area ports and freeways but is in an area of the Kent Valley that has so far not become a hotbed for office expansion by major tech giants such as Amazon. The e-commerce giant has been expanding its corporate hometown operations primarily in and near downtown Seattle.

It could take several office tenants to fill up the space at the Auburn facility, based on the size of companies that are currently predominant in that area, leaving the possibility for industrial and other uses of the property if it is sold off by the government.

“It really depends on what the zoning would allow and what the developer would want to do with it,” Rice said. “It’s hard to imagine that someone would want to tear down a building that was just renovated in 2006, but that’s a possibility.”

Miller said other factors to watch include how fast the properties get sold off by the government and whether officials decide to sell them as one or two large portfolios, or instead choose to shed some individually in one-off deals.

In several locations, the government could get more for the properties by selling them separately, but finalizing several separate deals could also take longer to dispose of the assets and garner the revenue that the government is seeking.

“They’re going to be incentivized to sell these in a relatively short time frame, if they’re looking to capitalize while the market is still at its current peak,” Miller said.

Because some of the federal properties are older and not in neighborhoods deemed the hottest for offices, brokers said their future owners will probably require substantial financial resources to weather long transition periods in which the properties are being approved for significant renovations or repurposing.

That’s a potentially time-consuming prospect in states such as California, where projects must clear numerous environmental and other hurdles, especially in coastal locations.

“It’s going to take patient money, from experienced developers who are able to afford the carrying costs for a project that might take five years to approve,” Miller said.

These are the Western U.S. properties on the national list of locations recently targeted for potential sell-off by the GSA:

Sacramento Job Corps Center, excess land sale only, 3100 Meadowview Road, Sacramento, California, Department of Labor.
Southwest Fisheries Science Center, 1352 Lighthouse Ave., Pacific Grove, California, Department of Commerce.
Veterans Affairs Denver Medical Center, partial sale, 1055 Clermont St., Denver
Auburn Complex, 400 15th St. SW, Auburn, Washington, GSA.
Menlo Park Complex, 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, California, GSA.
Chet Holifield Federal Building, 24000 Avila Road, Laguna Niguel, California, GSA.
WestEd Office Building, 4665 Lampson Ave., Los Alamitos, California, Department of Education.
Federal Archives and Records Center, 6125 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, National Archives and Records Administration.

Link to article: Government Surplus Properties

4th Quarter 2019 Industrial Market Summary
-San Francisco & Peninsula

The reported industrial vacancy rates in San Francisco and surrounding Peninsula areas increased to 4.1% at the end of Q4 2019 (up from 3.5% in Q3 2019). The Bayshore Corridor of San Francisco vacancy rate increased to 3.3% in Q4 (up from .9% in Q3 2019). The San Francisco/Peninsula market reported a delivery of 34,200+/- square feet of new construction, and 2,772,511 square feet of product under construction, primarily in South San Francisco, Brisbane & Daly City. The industrial core of San Francisco (Bayshore / Potrero Hill / Dogpatch) reported 238,000+/- square feet of product under construction, with zero deliveries, or construction starts.

Q4 2019 ended with averaged over-all asking rents (industrial and flex) remaining at $2.26 per square foot, representing no change over the previous quarter. Comparatively, current average US industrial asking rents are reported as $.72 per square foot (no change from Q3 2019). Asking rents specific to warehouse product dipped slightly to $1.83 psf at the end of Q4 (down from $1.88 Q3). Quoted daily warehouse asking rents for the Bayshore Corridor at the end of Q4 increased to $2.10 psf from $2.04 psf at the end of Q3. Year-over-year market rents have increased by 2.7% for the San Francisco/Peninsula industrial/flex market.

Q4 2019 Industrial sale transactions are down from Q3 2019 with $174M in sales volume averaging $362 per square foot compared to $440M in sales averaging $360 per square foot in Q3 2019. CAP rates averaged 4.7% in Q4, representing no change over the previous quarter. National CAP rates have remained at 6.7% for Q1-Q4 2019.

Calco Commercial has leased and sold 1,505,690+/- square feet of industrial, flex, office and land in 2019 comprising 83 transactions, with 407,846+/- square feet and 24 transactions in Q4 alone. Following are the notable Q4 2019 transactions: 1000 25th Street, San Francisco (18,432 +/- sf industrial lease), 195 Bayshore Boulevard, San Francisco (21,000+/- sf industrial lease), and 415 E. Grand, South San Francisco (21,000/- sf industrial lease), and 464 9th Street, San Francisco (16,080+/- commercial/sale). Calco Commercial is a leading industrial & commercial real estate firm with decades of experience in Landlord /Owner representation, and repositioning assets into net leased properties with in-place income streams. Let us help make the most of your real estate properties and investments.

If you would like to discuss your real estate options, or would simply like more information related to current market conditions, please call our office a 415.970.0000, or directly contact one of our professionals.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REPORT: Q4 Industrial Market Report

Source: CoStar News
By: Mark Heschmeyer

The Treasury Department and IRS issued final regulations on the Trump administration’s opportunity zones program that expand options for real estate investors and clarify issues including the handling of multiple buildings as single property, when certain investments can be made, and the exclusion of gains for tax purposes.

The 544-page regulations provide additional guidance on issues raised by the commercial real estate industry after considering more than 300 formal comment letters and additional taxpayer feedback.

The opportunity zones program offers federal tax breaks to investors in areas deemed to be undercapitalized and serving low-income populations. But the program has been slow to roll out, with the Treasury Department not selecting census tracts for inclusion in the program until four months after it began. The final guidance released Thursday came two years after the program became law and just days before the Dec. 31 deadline for investors to be able to receive the maximum tax benefit under current regulations.

The lack of final clarity has been cited as one reason why capital raising for qualified opportunity funds has not rolled in as expected. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2018 the Treasury anticipated $100 billion in private capital. Funds formed to invest in opportunity zones report having raised nearly $4.5 billion, according to a new report in the past week from Novogradac & Co., an accounting, valuation and consulting service firm.

The new regulations include some notable rulings for the real estate industry.

The rules clarify that the 180-day investment period generally starts at the close of the shareholder’s tax year. This was an important clarification for real estate investment trust shareholders who typically receive quarterly dividends throughout the year but may not receive the designation that the dividend was a capital gain dividend until after the REIT’s taxable year has ended.

Another major clarification involved the sales of property by a “qualified opportunity zone business.” As previously written, an investor could only elect to exclude gains from the sale of a property sold by a “qualified opportunity fund” and not a business operating in an opportunity zone. The final regulations provide a qualified opportunity zone business held by such a qualified opportunity fund can exclude gains from the sale of a property if it was held for 10 years.

This is an important change for investment funds that intend to hold multiple properties, according to Craig Bernstein, principal of OPZ Bernstein, a Washington, D.C.-based qualified opportunity fund firm. If an investment group has a multi-asset fund, it now has a way to divest property one at a time.

OPZ Bernstein this month funded a $45 million ground-up mixed-use development in Charlottesville, Virginia, that’s expected to include 160 apartments, 20,000 square feet of preleased office space and 28 rental townhomes. The project is a joint venture with Christopher Cos., a Fairfax, Virginia- based developer.

Another major change Bernstein sees in the regulations is clarification on the aggregation of properties.

If an investor owns a site and it has two buildings, and one of them is an older building and the other a newer building, the investor does not have to double the basis of both buildings. All of the money can be invested in upgrades to the older building, Bernstein said.

Another example would be a site with multiple garden-style apartment buildings. If some of the properties have already been renovated, the owner would only have to upgrade the remainder.

Perhaps the biggest change for Bernstein is the reduction of an originally proposed five-year vacancy requirement. Previously, a property that had been vacant for five years was exempt from the requirement of doubling the value through new investment. A qualified fund could go in and lay down carpet, paint the walls and flip on the lights, and still qualify for capital gains tax incentives, Bernstein said.

That five-year period has now been reduced to three years or fewer years in some cases.

Other updates:

Provide a change to leasing provisions in the proposed regulations allowing state and local governments, as well as Indian tribal entities, to be exempt from the market-rate lease requirements.

Provide that both the land and structures in a so-called brownfield site redevelopment are considered to be original use property as long as investments are used to bring the site back to environmental standards. A brownfield site is a property previously used for industrial or commercial purposes with known or suspected pollution including soil contamination because of hazardous waste.

Link to article: Opportunity Zones

The reported industrial vacancy rates in San Francisco and surrounding Peninsula areas decreased to 3.5% at the end of Q3 2019 (down from 3.8% in Q2 2019). The Bayshore Corridor of San Francisco witnessed yet another decrease in vacancy to a sub 1% rate of .5% (down from .9% in Q2 2019). The San Francisco/Peninsula market reported a delivery of 21,807+/- square feet of new construction, and 2,568,754 square feet of product under construction, primarily in South San Francisco, Brisbane & Daly City. The industrial core of San Francisco (Bayshore / Potrero Hill / Dogpatch) reported 56,121 square feet of product under construction, with zero deliveries, or construction starts.

Q3 2019 ended with averaged over-all asking rents (industrial and flex) down from $2.30 per square foot to $2.26 per square foot, representing an 1.9% decrease over the previous quarter. Comparatively, current average US industrial asking rents are reported as $.72 per square foot (up from $.71 at the end of Q2 2019). Asking rents specific to warehouse product remained at $1.88 psf at the end of Q3 (no change from Q2). Quoted daily warehouse asking rents for the Bayshore Corridor at the end of Q3 decreased to $1.97 psf from $2.04 psf in Q2. Year-over-year market rents have decreased by 3.9% for the San Francisco/Peninsula industrial/flex market.

Q3 2019 Industrial sale transactions are up from Q2 2019 with $408M in sales volume averaging $334.00 per square foot compared to $308M in sales averaging $328.61 per square foot in Q2 2019. CAP rates averaged 4.9% in Q3 & Q2 2019, representing a minimal increase over Q1 2019 CAP rates of 4.85%. National CAP rates have remained at 6.7% for Q1-Q3 2009.

Calco Commercial has leased and sold 1,097,884+/- square feet of industrial, flex, office and land in 2019 comprising 59 transactions, with 179,124+/- square feet and 16 transactions in Q3 alone. Following are the notable Q3 2019 transactions: 253 Utah Avenue, South San Francisco (14,250 +/- sf industrial lease), 81 Dorman Avenue, San Francisco (12,500+/- sf industrial lease), and 3012 Spring Street, Redwood City (5,000/- sf commercial/sale), and 4870 Centennial Boulevard, Colorado Springs (50,000+/- commercial/sale). Calco Commercial is a leading industrial & commercial real estate firm with decades of experience in Landlord /Owner representation, and repositioning assets into net leased properties with in-place income streams. Let us help make the most of your real estate properties and investments.

If you would like to discuss your real estate options, or would simply like more information related to current market conditions, please call our office a 415.970.0000, or directly contact one of our professionals.

Click here for the full report: Q3 2019 Industrial Market Report

Source: CoStar
By: Jesse Gundersheim

While some investors are exploring secondary and even tertiary markets throughout the country in search for higher yields, coastal gateway cities continue to take home the lion’s share of capital investment.

As typical, New York outpaces all other U.S. markets by far. Next up is Boston, then Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Seattle. And while San Francisco and San Jose in California rank sixth and seventh, respectively, and the state’s East Bay rounds out the nation’s top 15, if all the Bay Area markets were combined they would outpace all but New York.

It’s further evidence of enduring demand generated by buyers attracted to the Bay Area’s expanding tech industry, along with several owner-user acquisitions, which has maintained downward pressure on capitalization rates, or the expected rate of return on investment, at premium asset pricing.

Combined, the three major Bay Area markets have seen $12.5 billion of office assets sell over the past 12 months, behind only New York’s $19.6 billion.

Sales volume in San Francisco alone, at $5.2 billion year to date, has already eclipsed the previous two year’s annual totals.

Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have each seen about $8 billion in office assets trade over the past year.

The reported industrial vacancy rates in San Francisco and surrounding Peninsula areas increased slightly to 3.8% at the end of Q2 2019 (up from 3.6% in Q1 2019). However, the Bayshore Corridor of San Francisco witnessed yet another decrease in vacancy to a sub 1% rate of .9% (down from 2.5% in Q1 2019). The San Francisco/Peninsula market reported a delivery of 233,576+/- square feet of new construction, and 741,368 square feet in construction starts, primarily in South San Francisco. The largest project currently underway is a flex R&D/biotech project in the South SF/East of 101 Freeway submarket totaling 512,000 square feet. The industrial core of San Francisco (Bayshore / Potrero Hill / Dogpatch) reported 56,100 square feet of product under construction, with zero deliveries, or construction starts specific to the Bayshore Corridor.

Q2 2019 ended with averaged over-all asking rents (industrial and flex) down from $2.49 per square foot to $2.30 per square foot, representing an 8% decrease over the previous quarter. Comparatively, current average US industrial asking rents are reported as $.71 per square foot (remained static from Q1 2019). Asking rents specific to warehouse product increased from $1.88 psf in Q1 2019 to $2.04 at the end Q2 2019. Quoted daily warehouse asking rents for the Bayshore Corridor as of June 30, 2019 remained static at $2.04 per square foot. Year-over-year market rents have grown by 4.8% for the San Francisco/Peninsula industrial/flex market.

Q2 2019 Industrial sale transactions are up from Q1 2019 with $308M in sales volume averaging $328.61 per square foot compared to $274M in sales averaging $323.46 per square foot in Q1 2019. CAP rates averaged 4.90% in Q2 2019, representing a minimal increase over Q1 2019 CAP rates of 4.85%. National CAP rates averaged 6.7% in both Q1 2019 and Q2 2019.

Calco Commercial has leased and sold 918,760+/- square feet of industrial, flex, office and land in 2019 comprising 43 transactions, with 510,590+/- square feet and 19 transactions in Q2 alone. Following are the notable Q2 2019 transactions: 1500 Tennessee Street-1475 Indiana Street, San Francisco (120,000 +/- sf – industrial portfolio/sale), 202 Littlefield Avenue, South San Francisco (63,700+/- sf industrial lease), 330 8th Street, San Francisco (22,500/- sf commercial/lease), and 30 Tanforan Avenue, South San Francisco (215,539+/- sf warehouse & land/lease). Calco Commercial is a leading industrial & commercial real estate firm with decades of experience in Landlord /Owner representation, and repositioning assets into net leased properties with in-place income streams. Let us help make the most of your real estate properties and investments.

If you would like to discuss your real estate options, or would simply like more information related to current market conditions, please call our office a 415.970.0000, or directly contact one of our professionals.

Click here for the full report: Q2 2019 Industrial Market Report – San Francisco & Peninsula

Source: CoStar News
By: Molly Armbrister

Life Science Industry Elbows Its Way Into Tight Bay Area Property Market
Rock-Bottom Vacancy Rates Pervade the San Francisco Peninsula

Like the organisms it studies, the life science industry in the San Francisco Bay is adapting to its changing surroundings.

Stiff competition from well-heeled tech giants such as Salesforce and Uber in areas such as downtown San Francisco is preventing the life sciences industry, which has had a foothold in the region for decades, from elbowing its way into commercial real estate around the city. So the life science industry has begun looking south, where developers are planning unprecedented ways to accommodate the industry, one of the fastest-growing in the United States, with the area’s first high-rise for science firms.

“There’s a confluence of industries that are booming all at the same time,” said Marc Pope, executive director at commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. “Life science, technology, automotive technology. In some ways, they’re competing for space. Elsewhere, traditional office is being bought and converted to lab space.”

The life science industry combines health care and technology into a field that seems in some ways recession-proof and requires large amounts of specialized real estate. Life science employment grew nationwide by 4.5% between 2010 and 2018, compared with total employment growth of 1.7%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since 2000, the life science sector has grown nearly five times as fast as the rest of the economy, adding 85,000 jobs, according to a Cushman report.

Organic growth stemming from an aging population that wants and needs new treatments for ailments, and expansion enabled by technological advances in the field, resulted in a growing share of life science space needed in several of the country’s biggest markets. The way different south Bay Area cities are dealing with the region’s industry growth could provide a window into how other top industry cities such as Boston and San Diego deal with the space crunch in coming years.

While San Francisco and the city of South San Francisco are both almost fully occupied, the cities are each handling the sector’s growth differently. Life science companies aren’t receiving much assistance in their competition with the major tech companies in San Francisco, but they are being welcomed with open arms by the adjacent city of South San Francisco and others eager to capture the spillover demand with new development, which could spur even more expansion in the future.

According to CoStar data, San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood property market, for example, is about as tight as it can get: The overall office vacancy rate in that neighborhood is 0.3%.

Mission Bay is part of an area in San Francisco that was targeted for life science companies by a 2008 plan passed by the City and County of San Francisco that created a life sciences and medical special use district.

But that overlay didn’t exclude other uses, and 10 years after it was put in place, the development capacity there is largely maxed out by the tech giants that have given the city its reputation, Pope said.

Among the biggest new tenants in Mission Bay is ride-hailing app maker Uber, which is planning to take up 1 million square feet of new development adjacent to Chase Center Arena, the $1.4 billion multi-purpose stadium and future home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors that is scheduled to open before the 2019-2020 season.

It reflects the way new development in San Francisco is getting scooped up by these major tech companies, who offer a cache — and sometimes a rental rate — that many life science companies don’t have, forcing the firms to look elsewhere if they want to expand.

Going Vertical

Contrast that with the city of South San Francisco, which in 1976 was dubbed the “Birthplace of Biotechnology” by Genentech, the bioscience company that was acquired by Roche Pharmaceuticals in 2009. There, developers are doing something unprecedented to find a home for life science companies: They’re going vertical.

A 20-story development called Genesis Towers has been taken over by life science companies looking for space. The two-building property was originally designed as office space and was supposed to be completed during the recession, but the economy got in the way, Pope said.

Now, it has been developed into two life science towers with a third planned. Shortly after the conversion was finished, the space was fully leased, according to Cole Speers, research analyst for Cushman & Wakefield in the Bay Area.

Going vertical on life science space is rare, as the properties have historically been low-slung, sprawling developments akin to industrial space.

Life science real estate, though, can include more than just office space, sometimes branching out into flex industrial and converted office spaces. Cushman’s numbers for Mission Bay life science property specifically show there is no vacancy in that neighborhood for life science real estate.

And because of its connection to the health care industry, which is largely viewed as a mostly recession-proof field because people will always need health care regardless of the economic outlook, life science is seen as a safe place to invest capital, whether that’s in new businesses or in real estate to house them.

Boston remains the U.S. life science capital, with companies there attracting $15.5 billion worth of venture capital funding from 2010 to 2018, but San Francisco and the peninsula are right behind, with $15 billion, according to venture capital tracking website PitchBook.

And while Boston has the lowest vacancy rate for life science of any market in the country at 0.7%, the biggest drop off in vacancy rate occurred in San Francisco, falling to 6.2% fourth quarter last year from 18.3% in the same quarter of 2008, according to data from Cushman.

The development activity and need for space is not expected to recede any time soon, either. And with the percentage of people aged 65 and older projected to rise to more than 20% by 2030, the industry is expected to grow even more, further increasing the need for real estate.

Link to article: Life Science Industry Elbows Its Way Into Tight Bay Area Property Market

Scott Mason of Calco Commercial has represented a multi-property sale in Potrero Hill including: 1400-1496 Minnesota Street, 1475 Indiana Street, 1050-1090 26th Street, 1501-1599 Tennessee Street, 2930-2990 3rd Street & 826 26th Street. Comprised of nearly two city blocks, and multiple units totaling 120,000+/- square feet, the properties recently sold for $47,750,000.

The subject properties are situated in a very desirable Potrero Hill/Dogpatch location near the 3rd Street corridor light-rail, I-280, restaurants, cafes and other specialty retail exclusive to San Francisco. The buildings include highly functional industrial units with high ceilings, concrete construction, dock-high and drive-in loading capabilities. The portfolio had been held by BIC Bisco for 45+ years, and was acquired by Terreno Realty Corporation.

Click here for the Sale Profile: 1400 Minnesota – 1501 Tennessee SOLD