Merrill Lynch is leaving the building it has occupied in San Francisco for two decades.
The Wall Street brokerage firm, which was acquired by Bank of America Corp. in 2009, will vacate its space at 101 California Street and move into Bank of America’s offices at 555 California Street, the San Francisco Business Times reported.
Merrill had occupied more than 102,300 square feet across five floors in the 48-story tower at 101 California Street. That space will be marketed for direct leasing and in shell condition and will be available in November.
“Large blocks of space like this will continue to hit the market on a direct basis competing with the flooded sublease market and rents are going to drop,” said Tony Zucker, executive vice president at real estate firm Dunhill Partners West. “It’s a game of chicken to see who drops first.”
The space joins a crowded market of large office blocks available for lease in San Francisco as companies such as Slack and Autodesk have been reducing their office space. Slack recently announced that it would list all of the 208,460 square feet it occupied at 45 Fremont Street for sublease. Autodesk announced in January that it would close its 117,000-square-foot office at 300 Mission Street, only eight months after doubling its San Francisco footprint.
By the end of 2021, more than 7.5 million square feet was available for sublease in San Francisco, according to real estate services firm JLL. Despite the high number, the city’s sublease inventory has actually dropped from the historically high amount that was available at the beginning of the pandemic, which some estimated to be more than 10 million square feet.
JLL estimates that about 30 large blocks of office space totaling more than 100,000 square feet are available for lease today. At the beginning of 2021, that number was only 17.
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San Francisco
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