This is a story that has become commonplace in large tech companies in San Francisco in recent months – first a business announces a work-from-home strategy, then comes the download of office space in San Francisco. But this agreement is a big factor.
The file-hosting service Dropbox’s headquarters in Mission Bay – a complex with four buildings in 1800 Owens Street – sold for $ 1.08 billion, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
The sale, which is expected to close before April, will be the second largest transaction for a single property in the city’s history, and it only falls behind the $ 1.2 billion sale in 1998, a much larger complex of the Embarcadero Center.
The 750,000-square-foot property, known as The Exchange, is being scrapped at $ 1,440 per square foot, breaking the San Francisco record per square foot. The buyer is still unknown.
The astonishing sale is another big tech firm that is withdrawing office space in San Francisco while the work of the home becomes the new normal. In October, Dropbox announced that the office-to-home shift is permanent.
“We believe the data shows that the shift to remote work, although sudden, was generally successful,” the company said in a blog post at the time. “… In our internal surveys, most employees say that they can be productive at home (almost 90%) and do not want to return to a rigid five-day work week.”
In February, it came to light that Uber wanted to unload a large amount of office space, also in Mission Bay, before they first moved in.
Salesforce, which employs more than 9,000 people in the Bay Area, announced its “Work From Anywhere” strategy in February, estimating that more than 65% of employees will apply the new system, based on a business survey .
In January, Digital Realty – a technical support company employing approximately 1,500 people worldwide – announced the relocation of its headquarters to Austin, the technical capital of Texas.
Yelp’s headquarters in San Francisco in New Montgomery St. 140 is now for rent. “With more employees working remotely, we are reducing part of our footprint in San Francisco, but we will continue to maintain our headquarters there,” the crowd-pleasing company said in a statement.
Last year, Pinterest, the social site popular for recipes, inspiration at home, and more, canceled its $ 89.5 million contract lease in San Francisco.
In another sector, Gap Inc. recently announced to employees that it would close its Old Navy offices in Mission Bay and consolidate the workers in the parent company’s Embarcadero office building.
Dropbox did not respond to a request for comment during publication.
(SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst, but operate independently.)