Two tech companies put SF offices on sublease market

Two tech companies have put offices up for sublease in San Francisco, adding to the available inventory pool after exiting firms have left a gaping hole in the market.

Chime, a fintech company based in the city, has listed two of its six floors at 101 California Street in the Financial District, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Cloudera, a software company based in Palo Alto, has listed 40,000 square feet on two floors at 525 Market Street.

The New York Times just named San Francisco’s central business district “the most empty downtown in America.”

Office buildings are at 40 percent of their pre-pandemic occupancy, while the vacancy rate has jumped to 24 percent from 5 percent since 2019. Occupancy in San Francisco offices is 7 percent less than the average major U.S. city, according to Kastle, a building security firm.

Chime signed the biggest San Francisco lease last year in Downtown, with 200,000 square feet heralding a sign of hope for the city’s beleaguered office market, according to the Business Times.

But as remote work remains popular, the company now looks to offload space. A listing on CoStar suggests it’s shedding 35,500 square feet. More than 375,000 square feet is now available at the 1.2-million-square-foot landmark office building owned by Hines.

A Chime spokesperson said its office space was secured “opportunistically” based on company growth and expectations. Last month, Chime laid off 150 of its 1,300-employee workforce.

“We’ve seen Chimers embrace working collaboratively in our office and, by subleasing a portion of our space, we are allowing for the optionality to flex and grow our physical space as needed,” the spokesperson told the newspaper.

Cloudera has listed the 30th and 31st floors at 525 Market Street. It’s not clear how many offices it occupies. The building is owned by Knickerbocker Properties, an affiliate of New York State Teachers’ Retirement System.

— Dana Bartholomew

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