Green Shoots? Silicon Valley office space at 20.5% vacancy rate

[c1ue]

Originally found via www.patrick.net

http://www.businessinsider.com/alask...-towns-2009-10

Silicon Valley's booms set fire to the local real estate market and new construction followed. But after a year or so of recession, south bay is littered with ghost buildings and empty office complexes.

At 20.5%, vacancy rates are the highest they've been in the Valley since 2003. Vacancy in research and developments spaces is at 18.9%, according to CB Richard Ellis. In Sunnyvale, more than half of the available offices are empty.
Combined, a total of 41.7 million square feet of R&D and office space lay bare in Silicon Valley. That's twice the size of Monaco.

I can't find any historical data (yet) on total Silicon Valley R & D + office space figures for 2003, but certainly anecdotally there has been a significant amount of building.

[don]

Re: Green Shoots? Silicon Valley office space at 20.5% vacancy rate

Originally found via www.patrick.net

http://www.businessinsider.com/alask...-towns-2009-10



I can't find any historical data (yet) on total Silicon Valley R & D + office space figures for 2003, but certainly anecdotally there has been a significant amount of building.

This has been exacerbated by the falling economy, not created by it. R&D and production were being removed from Silicon Valley prior to the crash, as outsourcing took its toll here as well.

[don]

Re: Green Shoots? Silicon Valley office space at 20.5% vacancy rate

On the non-high tech side of the coin, a friend just called from Tampa to tell me his wife has all the work she wants at a car upholstery biz. Seems their business has doubled since the crash. :cool:

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Green Shoots? Silicon Valley office space at 20.5% vacancy rate

R&D and production were being removed from Silicon Valley prior to the crash, as outsourcing took its toll here as well.

I saw this in the chip fabrication business. All the major equipment (tool) makers in 2007 and 2008 were explicitly requiring their tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers to outsource all functions, including engineering, to low-cost regions. Same in Austin TX.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Green Shoots? Silicon Valley office space at 20.5% vacancy rate

I can't find any historical data (yet) on total Silicon Valley R & D + office space figures for 2003, but certainly anecdotally there has been a significant amount of building.

When I left Silicon Valley in late 2007, there was a massive amount of new office space, newly built tilt-ups in freshly made office parks. Most of it was empty; one could see right through the buildings as one drove by. The excess space had been obvious and getting worse for a year or two, as best as I recall.

Some locations didn't even bother to put up a sign saying that the space was available for lease or sale, as "that would have been a waste of a few good 2x4's" (quoting my own quip from the time) for there was no hope of finding tenants. My commute drive down 880 through Milpitas and across 237 at the bottom of the Bay to Mountain View went by much such vacant office space.

I had figured after the excessive overbuilding and collapse in the previous decade (I forget just when) that the local realtors and spec builders would have had more sense and not done that again. For a while they did, only building when they had a pretty solid commitment from some prospective tenants. That prudence did not last.