To: Warpfactor who wrote (1818 ) 3/16/2001 8:59:00 PM From: thestockrider Read Replies (3) | Respond to My commute in Silicon Valley was light this morning, but usually I attribute light commute days to accidents upstream :) When the commute gets easier every day during the normal work and school periods of the year then I'll believe employment has dropped. Two articles on San Francisco Bay Area real estate were posted on the MDD thread a few days ago. One talked residential inventory increasing in February, and the other about commercial lease rates easing with vacancy rates of 15% to 50% in some south of market buildings already. Last year, >100% rate increases on office space lease renewals were not infrequent. Anecdotally I've heard that rates are levelling off, and as I drive around I count several mid-sized office buildings in the exposed girder stage of completion. Spieker Properties sold out at the peak of the market to some national REIT. There was some discussion on MDD about the price being slightly below market, but as with stock, if you want to move a block worth several billion dollars you may not get market price. The buyer is going to look good until lease renewal times down the road because not all these optical networking and software companies are going to survive. I don't know how many jobs I've considered where the business model just plain sucked. These last couple of years a lot of money from VCs, angel investors, and Indian investors was thrown at many software and tech ideas, pre-IPO companies that you've never heard of, each of which employed a few to a hundred people. If money gets more cautious, flights back to India, Russia, and other education centers around the world are going to be booked full. That gardener in Sunnyvale may actually get to buy a house within a half-hour commute of his work. A couple more RE notes: BEAS bought some land near highway 87 for $200 per square foot. MCOM has two nice new buildings also near 87. SGI quietly sold and leased back its properties in Mountain View to a division of Goldman Sachs for almost as much as BEAS paid.
