San Francisco Business Times is reporting that Dropbox is divesting itself of its China Basin office space. According to SFBT sources, the file-sharing service is looking to sublease 200,000 square feet of its headquarters at 185 Berry St., near AT&T Park. The report goes on to speculate what that means for Dropbox's future (they will be consolidating operations at 333 and 345 Brannan St., but perhaps the more interesting items are further down in the predictions about what this means for commercial space and tech companies in general. As the article points out, some real estate watchers who are closely monitoring a growing number of companies that are subletting space say this could be an early indicator of a market slowdown.
According to the article, sublease space in San Francisco is now close to 2 million square feet. A spike in commercial subleases could mean that some companies have bitten off more than they can chew, or it could just mean that they are growing somewhere else inside or outside of SF. Companies like Rocket Fuel, Twitter, and Lyft—all tech companies subletting office space for one reason or another—were held up as examples.
That said, real estate pros are still reporting a healthy demand for SF commercial space, albeit with some caution. As Eli Ceryak, a tenant broker and senior vice president at Cushman & Wakefield, told SFBT: "As long as the demand from the unicorn-type companies stays strong, it's probably a good thing for the market for there to be opportunity to lease space out there," Ceryak said. "But the fact that we're seeing some of the more high-profile companies put space out there is certainly a change over the last few months."
· Exclusive: Dropbox looks to shed China Basin HQ space [San Francisco Business Times]
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