Tech titan lease renewals may spur Silicon Valley real estate rebound

Five big lease renewals top 1 million square feet of office space

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — Lease renewals by tech titans in multiple Silicon Valley cities provide some hope that the region’s battered office sector is beginning to stabilize.

According to commercial property databases and several real estate sources, Google, Amazon, and Apple are among the high-profile tech companies that have decided to renew their leases in large office buildings.

According to real estate databases, five known major lease renewals accounted for a total of 1.13 million square feet of office space.

Here are the specifics of the lease renewals involving major technology companies that have occurred this year:

— Google has agreed to renew a lease for 411,200 square feet at 1900 to 2000 Charleston Road in Mountain View. Peery/Arrillaga is the developer who owns the property.

— Amazon has renewed two leases in Sunnyvale totaling 581,000 square feet. Renewals for 350,700 square feet at 1100 Enterprise Way and 230,300 square feet at 1050 Enterprise Way are included. The buildings are owned by the Jay Paul Co. development firm.

— Apple has agreed to a 59,400-square-foot lease renewal at 5425 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino.

— Sony has agreed to renew a lease for 79,900 square feet at 1730 North First Street in San Jose.

These transactions, along with separate transactions involving purchases, provide a welcome diversion from the economic maladies that continue to plague the Bay Area’s feeble office market in the post-coronavirus era.

Lam Research paid $250 million for three Fremont buildings and two Livermore buildings on September 22. Lam had already been leasing the buildings, and the deal solidifies the semiconductor equipment manufacturer’s Bay Area presence.

On September 9, a Midwest investment group paid slightly less than $192.5 million for a five-building office and research campus in Milpitas. Western Digital, which sold the property to the real estate buyer, signed a lease to remain in the tech campus until 2039.

According to Colliers, a commercial real estate firm, the property purchases and lease renewals were among the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak third quarter for the Silicon Valley office market from July to September.