Developer sentiment for office product is weakening throughout California. According to the latest Commercial Markets California sentiment survey from Allen Matkins and UCLA Anderson Forecast, which GlobeSt.com have received exclusively, office sentiment is both down compared to six months ago and negative, meaning that less than half of respondents have a positive three-year outlook of the market, in six California markets reviewed. Los Angeles and San Francisco faired best, with 49.79% and 48.89% of respondents holding a positive three-year outlook for office development.

“We have had an incredible run in office, but the sentiment has come down. When you look at the sentiment of our panelists, they think that vacancy is going to be higher in three years from now, and we have an uptick in inflation,” John M. Tipton, partner at Allen Matkins, tells GlobeSt.com. “Cap rates have also compressed about as far as they are going to compress. When you look three years down the road, the market may be a bit weaker than it is currently.” Watch the panelists comments here.

While the sentiment report was negative across markets, the panelists in the video above sound more hopeful, showing there is a gap between the current fundamentals and a more psychological sense of the years ahead. “People can't help but look at their past experience and project what they feel like might happen in the future,” says Tipton. “We have been approaching economic expansion now for 9 years. You have major tax cuts in 2017 that has trickled through the economy, and so there are some people saying that the cycle has to end; they don't go on forever.”

Recommended For You

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.

Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Kelsi Maree Borland

Kelsi Maree Borland is a freelance journalist and magazine writer based in Los Angeles, California. For more than 5 years, she has extensively reported on the commercial real estate industry, covering major deals across all commercial asset classes, investment strategy and capital markets trends, market commentary, economic trends and new technologies disrupting and revolutionizing the industry. Her work appears daily on GlobeSt.com and regularly in Real Estate Forum Magazine. As a magazine writer, she covers lifestyle and travel trends. Her work has appeared in Angeleno, Los Angeles Magazine, Travel and Leisure and more.