Built To Flip Companies Upsetting Real Estate Owners

from the there-goes-another-one dept

The buzz and the venture capital money may be back in Silicon Valley, but the commercial real estate market is still struggling, apparently. While there were reports of 40% vacancy rates during the post-bubble years, office space just isn't filling up as fast as many expected. The problem? All these companies that were built to flip. They rent small offices, and then move out as soon as a big company buys them, leaving the office space vacant. The big companies, of course, have plenty of unused space in their cubicle farms, from back when they were laying off everyone, to pass over to the new startups. Every once in a while, those companies need a big new building, but it's hardly the same thing as when brand new startups with hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital cash were growing like weeds and filling up every bit of office space available. Of course, given what many consider to be a tremendous residential housing bubble, maybe those commercial real estate owners should start offering up their office space for housing.
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  • identicon
    dorpus, 13 Jul 2005 @ 9:52am

    Homeless Prison Camps

    Since SF and East Bay are overrun with homeless, junkies, and other trash, why not export them to the Valley, so they can join the IT workers in their cubicle cells? Then the bay area can concentrate all its smelly programmers and homeless in one place, and concentrate beauty elsewhere.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DV Henkel-Wallace, 13 Jul 2005 @ 7:45pm

    Housing is starting to normalise

    ...maybe those commercial real estate owners should start offering up their office space for housing...
    That's starting to happen. It happened the last time around (e.g. the Old Mill complex in Palo Alto/Mountain View), and it's happening now (e.g. the Mayfield Way HP complex, the series of space on Fergeson in MV next to 237, PAMF space in downtown Palo Alto). The problem is hysteresis: zoning changes and construction take time.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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