Had a great meeting today with the folks at the Presidio Trust.  We appreciate their participation with Rofo.  Leasing Presidio office space is unique in several ways.  The setting is unique and one-of-a-kind.  Not only are most of the buildings historic but the restoration of the spaces has been really well done.  One of the newer spaces for lease is 1806 Belles Street.  These are executive suites Presidio style.  The building is located just inside the 15th Avenue gates.  Extremely close to Park Presidio so easy to get to.  Its also surrounded by hiking and running trails and the onsite shower doesn’t give you any reason not to get out there on your lunch break.

I’m writing about the San Francisco Bay Area real estate market but you could probably insert any city name.  I’m asked often these days, “What is really happening in the commercial real estate markets?” There’s certainly been a lot of news coverage on the macro level so I thought I’d offer up some specific anecdotes and try to piece it together with some conversations I had this week.

Institutional Landlord: “We do not anticipate signing any new leases through the end of the year.”

Top Broker: “Business is dead.  We’re trying to renew deals that are 18 months out.”

REIT: “If you’re a sizable credit tenant we’d give you just about anything you ask for.  And, if you’ve invested in our fund you’re probably not very happy with us.”

Tech Company: “We just cut our staff in half, froze capital spending and preserving cash.”

Broker: “I heard Myspace and Microsoft are both in the market for significant expansion space.”

Angel Investor: “Due diligence on investment deals is taking twice as long.”

Large Developer: “2009 looks a lot worse than 2008.  And we’re flat lining now. It will be a great year to buy on the cheap.”

So what does this all mean?  Well capitalized landlords and developers will take advantage of a down market in which tenants with credit and good visibility will dictate the leasing terms.

The team over at Alltop has added our blog to their virtual magazine rack of real estate blogs

The site is a very good resource for easily finding the top content in many categories.  I’m personally a fan of real estate and small business.

We have to thank our friends at Officesnapshots.com who recently visited Rofo’s office to photograph our space. We have a sublease in which we’re sharing space with a couple of other internet companies. Beyond the typical benefits of subleasing office space - furniture, data and phone service, and shorter term flexibility - there are some softer benefits with many sublease/shared space arrangements. For us, we ended up in a large open area. This usually means more light and less of a claustrophobic space. Another benefit is the shared resources like conference rooms, a large break room and an employee lounge. Finally, if you’re lucky, you may end up in a space where you can exchange knowledge and ideas with another business/entrepreneur.

Rofo was picked up by Techcrunch this Monday. We were pleased with the story - not only the attention brought to our service but also their review of the site. Here’s an excerpt:

The story generated some heated discussion about the value of a site like Rofo. As with anything, the value will always be influenced by your perspective. Our perspective, as former commercial real estate brokers and as entrepreneurs, is that there’s demand from all stakeholders to have a better way to connect the demand and supply.

Ever wonder what it looks like inside the Facebook HQ? How about Flickr and Google? Maybe you haven’t. But the guys at Office Snapshots have assembled a great portfolio of tech company office spaces.

The Craigslist bathroom was probably the most original…

and then there’s the Google slide…I believe this is their San Francisco office which they now plan to occupy through 2015 according to the Business Times.

Let us know if you’ve seen better.

We’re always looking out for the best and cheapest ways to improve an office space. The folks at Wetpaint.com have come come up with a top ten list (Top 10 Ways to Give Your Office a Web 2.0 Makeover) that, based on my calculations, would cost you about 1400 bucks.

I’m into the white boards - www.whiteboardsetc.com is a good source. Cheap, convenient and, like conference rooms, you can never have enough.

If you’ve been through the move process you’ve undoubtedly asked this question and have looked at a few of these:

As an entrepreneur, and depending on your company, right-sizing your space will be an ongoing challenge. There are some general metrics used by brokers and larger companies that can be a helpful guideline. A common one is usable square feet per employee. The usable square feet vs. rentable square feet topic is a lengthy discussion and worthy of a separate entry.

Guy Kawasaki published a great article on Redfin detailing their startup costs and budget including their office space estimates:

Redfin Model: $250. Actual Redfin Cost (Last Month): $336

Our actual costs are high because we just moved last month into an office with room to grow, which seems to happen every eighteen months. When people were sitting in hallways at the old space, we were paying about $200 per employee, per month. Class B space on well-traveled mass transit lines is roughly $20 per square foot per year in Seattle, $30 in the Bay Area. You need 165-200 square feet per person or more.

At the extremes, Adobe supposedly allocates 435 square feet per person while Yahoo! allocates 220 square feet per person. The startup cult of cramming people into small spaces is counter-productive: people are what’s really expensive, not space. The cost Redfin really didn’t anticipate was for tenant improvements which you mostly have to fund yourself when signing sub-three-year leases. In September, we spent more than $100,000 to add private offices for our engineers on the hope that our current office will last us longer. It was probably too much money.

If you’ve come across any other stats or tricks for planning your current and on-going space needs please let me know. Our Q&A section at www.rofo.com is always a good place to check for other ideas and resources.

As a startup (read small user of office space with a budget) it was a challenge to find good office space. We find it an even bigger challenge to manage our ongoing space needs. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to other entrepreneurs and found that most everyone struggled with the same process. I came across a great blog entry Xobni’s office space from the guys at Xobni detailing their search for space, their criteria and recommendations, and the lessons learned. I don’t think their overall process was unique. But they’re very unique to have documented and shared it. This is a huge value add for anyone just beginning their search. I’m always interested in hearing more stories to share with our readers. If you have one let us know.