San Francisco office market in collapse as tech workers stay home

As Silicon Valley businesses shutter offices, the city looks very different. But will the change outlast the coronavirus?

The pandemic has brought the commercial real estate market in San Francisco to a new low, with work-from-home policies and office closures slowing Silicon Valley-driven business expansion to numbers not seen in at least three decades.

New office-leasing activity in 2020 dropped a staggering 71% compared with the year before, according to the real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, from 7.7m to 2.2m sq ft - the lowest since the early 1990s. Tenant demand also halved during the pandemic, from 6.6m sq ft to 3.3m sq ft.