KPMG to Downsize San Francisco Office With Relocation

KPMG will become the latest company in San Francisco to downsize its local offices.

The New York-based accounting firm has leased a 96,300-square-foot office in Foundry Square III at 505 Howard Street, in the South Financial District, the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Business Times reported.

The company expects to move from its 143,000-square-foot office at 55 Second Street in September 2026. The move represents a 32.6 percent reduction in footprint.

Terms of the “long-term lease” at the 10-story, 307,000-square-foot glass building two blocks south of its current digs were not disclosed.

The deal comes after KPMG in March moved to extend its lease until September 2026 at its office of 21 years on Second Street, where its name hangs on the building owned by Paramount Group and the Teachers Insurance Annuity Association, both based in New York.

The three floors KPMG will take at 505 Howard are now leased to IBM, which has advertised the offices for sublease through the end of its term in December 2025, according to the Business Times.

Foundry Square III, built in 2013, is owned by American Realty Advisors, based in Los Angeles. It’s one of four buildings at the mixed-use Foundry Square campus near Salesforce Park.

The occupancy of the building was not disclosed.

KPMG will join Intuit, a financial software firm that will move next year from its home in Union Square to Foundry Square III, according to the newspaper. The building has two lobby walls sprouting 12,500 plants, among the nation’s largest “living walls,” according to its website.

An unidentified KPMG spokesperson said that the company has a hybrid work model for its 1,000 San Francisco workers.

Since the pandemic, a broad shift to remote work has left 37 percent of offices across the city empty, among the highest vacancy rates in the U.S.

Artificial intelligence firms have since increased the size of their offices, with OpenAI last year inking the biggest lease since 2018. At the same time, most companies have reduced their office footprints in Downtown, according to the Chronicle.

In June, Virginia-based Capital One Financial announced it would move its operations to a newly leased 40,000-square-foot office at 100 California Street, shaving two-thirds off its local real estate footprint.

— Dana Bartholomew