Vacancy rates could inch up toward 30 percent by the end of the next fiscal quarter, he said, a trend that looks bad and feels worse for landlords. It's a far cry from last year, when you couldn't get a square foot there. With the dot-com bust, many technology companies that had gobbled up space are now giving it back, which, in turn, has also dramatically affected rental rates, Taylor said. As an aside, Oakland, too, is suffering from the dot-com doldrums, though on a lesser scale. However, high demand has the research company predicting only 1 percent vacancy in the Bay area by year's end, meaning prices are unlikely to fall sharply.
Offices are a different matter.
Real estate veterans look to buy Not every real estate professional is shedding tears over the recent market downturn. The real estate veterans have formed a new venture called Kipling Partners aimed at buying undervalued properties in the Bay Area, Southern California, Philadelphia and the Midwest. But, lately, not much of that money has been invested here. I think we're in a correction and there might be some very good buying opportunities. Rich Hake, founder of San Francisco-based Kipling Capital, is somewhat of a legend in investment circles.