Is Wells Fargo Poised to Take a Stage Out of San Francisco?

The Wells Fargo stage coach may be greasing its wheels in San Francisco.

The locally based bank that has called San Francisco home for 172 years has slashed its real estate portfolio by more than half, fueling speculation it will pack its headquarters out of the city, the San Francisco Business Times reported.

This week, news broke that the bank had put its 409,000-square-foot headquarters at 420 Montgomery Street up for sale, while shutting down its last history museum after its C-suite decamped to New York. The asking price of the building was not disclosed.

It’s not clear what will befall the Wells Fargo stage coach in its ground-floor window. For now, Wells Fargo said it will mark its official headquarters at 333 Market Street, where it occupies 620,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, its leadership has an aversion to San Francisco.

None of the bank’s 17-member senior leadership team is based in San Francisco, according to the Business Times. Its CEO, Charlie Scharf, is based in New York with core executives, while a handful of leaders are based in Charlotte, N.C., the bank’s largest employment center.

An unidentified spokesperson said the firm has “no plans” to spirit its hub from the city.

Well’s Fargo’s local real estate moves, however, may show less commitment — with bank offices taking up less than half the workplaces before the pandemic, according to the Business Times.

Five years ago, Wells Fargo owned or leased 1.5 million square feet in Downtown San Francisco.

Its holdings included its 409,000-square-foot headquarters at 420 Montgomery Street and a 350,000-square-foot office tower at 550 California Street. Its leases included 620,000 square feet at 333 Market Street and 106,000 square feet at 45 Fremont Street.

The bank also has 15,000 square feet of offices at 343 Sansome Street, while Wells Fargo Advisors, its investing and brokerage arm, leases 46,000 square feet at 555 California Street.

Since then, the bank has ditched, or is poised to sell, a combined 865,000 square feet on Montgomery, California and Fremont streets. That leaves the bank with 696,000 square feet, a 54 percent reduction in its office footprint.

The bank’s total portfolio in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley region was 2.4 million square feet at the end of last year, down from 3.2 million square feet at the end of 2022, a 25 percent reduction, according to regulatory filing.

That’s twice the rate of Wells Fargo real estate cuts across the U.S. Between 2021 and last year, the bank shed 13 percent of its national portfolio, from 68.6 million square feet to 59.6 million square feet.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo plans to open an 850,000-square-foot new office campus in Irving, outside of Dallas, which has stoked buzz about a possible headquarters move from San Francisco.

The bank’s 13-story headquarters in San Francisco, which it has occupied since the 1960s on the site of its founding in 1852, will likely be listed this month. But for how much?

Two unidentified people familiar with the building told the Business Times it was likely to be worth somewhere in the low- to mid-$200 per square foot range, or in the high double-digit millions. It would then require significant investment to make it attractive for office tenants.

— Dana Bartholomew