San Francisco: Just 49 square miles of hills, hugged by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, but packed with more soul, style, and inspiration than most cities ten times its size.
TenantSee Weekly: Someone Is Always Applying Pressure
Negotiating an office lease is not like most financial transactions. Outcomes aren’t dictated by a single metric—they’re shaped by a complex blend of variables: building class, age, views, landlord cost basis, loan structure, amenities, motivation profile, vacancy, and market dynamics. While experts can project a fair market value using comps from recent arms-length deals, real leverage—and real savings—only emerge through a thoughtful, iterative negotiation process that forces landlords to compete.
TenantSee Weekly: Short-Term Loan Extensions Don't Equal Stability
TenantSee Weekly: The Exclusive Right to Represent
At TenantSee, we only advise clients under a formal working agreement that clearly outlines our role as the exclusive representative, the scope of services, and how we are compensated. It’s a short, straightforward document—but a vital one. It establishes our fiduciary duty and marks the official beginning of our advisory relationship.
TenantSee Weekly: Is ChatGPT Better Than You (Me)?
If you’re a business professional—accountant, lawyer, engineer, or even (gulp) an office broker—you’ve probably wondered: Can AI do my job better than me?
As a broker who advises office tenants, I tested ChatGPT in a domain I know well. I asked it for average Class A office rents in downtown San Francisco over the last 30 years, including supply and demand dynamics. In less than a minute, it delivered a surprisingly accurate answer.
TenantSee Weekly: What Tenants See Impacts Tenancy
Most of what tenants need to see in order to make smart leasing decisions is not immediately visible. It must be uncovered through strategic discovery and analysis. That’s the mission of TenantSee: to provide the process and resources that bring hidden factors to light. We don’t make decisions for our clients—we make their decisions better.
TenantSee Weekly: What Really Matters
In the business of advising office tenants on leasing space, services are provided by a wide range of firms—from solo practitioners to global public companies with thousands of employees. As in any competitive industry, each firm tries to differentiate itself by highlighting its strengths while casting doubt on the competition.
TenantSee Weekly: AirOffice
For many companies, office space is among a variety of resources they make available to employees to help facilitate work. Other primary resources include technology. In fact, today, technology arguably contributes more to how work is done than the physical office. The diminished role of the office in facilitating work has resulted in changes in how companies look to use office space. One manifestation of this change is in flexible offices, or coworking spaces. This product segment, having grown considerably over the past decade, is tangible proof of shifting consumer sentiment.
TenantSee Weekly: When the Landlord Isn't (the Value of Options)
We’ve written a lot over the past few years about the capital stack, the equity and debt structures that commonly define ownership of office assets. We’ve talked about “broken” capital stacks, situations in which the original equity is wiped out and some portion of the debt may also be under water. We’ve noted it’s very challenging to transact in these assets because the financial partners would need to invest more capital on transactions that would generate negative returns. In other words, good money after bad.
TenantSee Weekly: What Will We Do?
TenantSee Weekly: Buy Services, Not Fear
Fear sells. But that doesn’t mean you should buy it. So called “tenant only” firms sell the idea that they, alone, offer tenants conflict-free advisory. To be clear, the potential for conflict does exist in commercial real estate advisory (more on that later). Yes, as a consumer of such services, it’s important to be aware of how conflict can manifest. However, the conflict narrative being peddled by the tenant only firms is more myth than reality. It’s a clever sleight of hand, designed to distract the consumer from realizing the big gaps in knowledge that limit the tenant only firm’s ability to properly advise, while simultaneously suggesting great risk in hiring a full-service competitor.
TenantSee Weekly: How a Building Sale Affects Lease Negotiations
The pace of investment sale activity in San Francisco is accelerating. This is the “Great Reset” about which we’ve written. It’s driven by capital partners (equity/lenders) deciding there is no viable pathway to own their way to an exit and choosing to sell (usually at a steep discount to what they paid and/or the value of the debt). Ultimately, these capital stack resets are healthy as they activate the asset, enabling new capital partners to transact at market.
TenantSee Weekly: Men's Fashion - A Random Commentary
In the 1990s, my pants fit more loosely. They were often pleated. Then, seemingly overnight, loose fitting, pleated pants were out of fashion. To be fashionable required an entirely new product, a new look. My now out of fashion, yet still perfectly serviceable, pleated trousers were initially (optimistically?) relegated to the back of the closet, ultimately to be unceremoniously delivered to Goodwill.
TenantSee Weekly: No Free Lunch
The office product offering is shifting to provide an array of hospitality-inspired experiences that, in some cases, rival those of a 5-Star hotel. San Francisco landlords have lagged other markets in providing such high-end amenities because in the 2 decades prior to the pandemic, the supply/demand dynamic favored landlords, making it easier to lease space (e.g., they didn’t have to). For the past several years, however, San Francisco landlords have begun to spend millions on targeted amenities. The typical playbook calls for some combination of health/fitness, conferencing and events, club/lounge/bar spaces, and specialty spaces, like golf simulator rooms and podcasting studios.
TenantSee Weekly: What Do You See?
TenantSee Weekly: How Investor Exit Options Affect the San Francisco Office Market
TenantSee Weekly: Middle Manager on the Shelf
Our young children, now 8 and 9, have formed a special bond with Lucy and Jack, two elves assigned by Santa to watch over them. For the past several years, Lucy and Jack have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to our family. They’ve traveled during the holidays, magically appearing at our vacation destinations. They’ve even stayed on after Christmas, despite being needed at the North Pole. Just the other day, I found one of our children covering them in cinnamon (apparently this helps them get their magic back after being touched by humans). To be sure, their presence has sharpened our children’s focus, causing them to think twice about being naughty, providing a welcome assist on the parental front.
TenantSee Weekly: What's the Rate
If you look at the quarterly market reports provided by all major real estate service firms (Cushman & Wakefield, included), you will find that rent data is typically expressed in terms of “Asking Rents”. Reports will cite the trend in Average Asking Rents by submarket, or by building class. This is a somewhat misleading indicator. Why? Because it does not reflect the rent after negotiations, which often includes reductions in rate from the Asking Rate and potentially significant landlord-funded concessions. In other words, Asking Rents reflect what landlords are asking, not what they’re getting.
TenantSee Weekly: Contradictions in Logic
These days, the resetting of capital stacks (the ownership structures for office buildings) is most often facilitated through selling the building. The current market sale dynamic typically involves one set of financial partners (equity, lenders) taking big losses to permit a new set of investors and lenders to “reset” the capital stack on economic terms that provide a pathway to success (e.g., a productive investment).
