Have and have not office building owners … up until now there weren’t many ‘deal breakers’ between smaller office buildings and their ownership and the larger office complexes.  Sure, some of the Class A office complexes offered conference facilities, workout rooms, on-site delis, roving security and other amenities but I now see one major issue arising which may force smaller owners to step up to the plate … I have run into more and more executives who have recently purchased the new Tesla Sedan, which is a 100 percent electric vehicle and these owners would prefer to have their car plugged in and getting charged during the day.  While increasing numbers of larger office buildings are providing electric pay charging systems, few of the smaller ‘mom & pop’ office building owners are following suit, and I can see the day where this one item alone may be the deciding factor on which building the company locates in.

California Energy Disclosure Bill 1103 goes into effect this July, and starts with buildings having gross floor areas in excess of 50,000 sf being required to use the no-cost online software tool, Energy Star Portfolio Manager at www.energystar.gov/istar/pmpam, which then performs the analysis and produces an energy rating on a scale of 1 to 100. On and after January 1, 2014 buildings with gross floor area of 10,000 sf have to join in, followed on July 1, 2014 by buildings with 5,000 sf and up. A minimum of 12 months of the most recent utility invoices are required to do this analysis, and this does not apply to residential buildings. More info, go to www.energy.ca.gov/ab1103/

Solano County (which is about 30 miles Northeast of San Francisco) industrial market is red-hot, with numerous warehouse and industrial buildings industrial market leasing after sitting vacant since 1989 … the vacancy rate in recent months has dropped from 17 percent down to 8 percent and developers are working on new project entitlements …

As of last week there were 51 tower cranes in San Francisco with millions of feet of new office and apartment development.  SalesForce reportedly has over 2 million square feet of office space in downtown San Francisco.

According to the EPA, 55.8 percent of all the office buildings in San Francisco are Energy Star certified, which makes this city #1 in the country by percentage … followed by Chicago, with 53.4 percent, Washington D.C. with 49 percent, Los Angeles with 44.4 percent, Denver at 39.6 percent, Houston at 37.1 percent and Atlanta with 32.8 percent.