In 2011, Apple owned 584 acres of land.
As of this year, and according to the Financial Times, the company now owns about 7,376 acres.
Apple uses its “facilities and land for corporate functions, R&D and data centres.” The latter would include server farms for its various online services, such as iMessage, Apple Music, and the App Store.
It can be easy to think of “the cloud” and the online services we use every day as existing only in some ethereal world up in the sky or in a distant land.
But the reality is that these services have very real physical space requirements. The above chart begins to speak to that.
CBRE recently published this report looking at the impact of the “high-tech software/services industry” on the North American office market.
Here are a few highlights:
- Since 2010, tech has created ~1.1 million jobs in the US at an annual growth rate that is 3x the national average.
- Seattle currently has the fastest tech job growth in North America. This is the first time in 7 years that San Francisco hasn’t been at the top of their list.
In 2011, Apple owned 584 acres of land.
As of this year, and according to the Financial Times, the company now owns about 7,376 acres.
Apple uses its “facilities and land for corporate functions, R&D and data centres.” The latter would include server farms for its various online services, such as iMessage, Apple Music, and the App Store.
It can be easy to think of “the cloud” and the online services we use every day as existing only in some ethereal world up in the sky or in a distant land.
But the reality is that these services have very real physical space requirements. The above chart begins to speak to that.
CBRE recently published this report looking at the impact of the “high-tech software/services industry” on the North American office market.
Here are a few highlights:
- Since 2010, tech has created ~1.1 million jobs in the US at an annual growth rate that is 3x the national average.
- Seattle currently has the fastest tech job growth in North America. This is the first time in 7 years that San Francisco hasn’t been at the top of their list.
- Silicon Valley, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles all added more than 10,000 tech jobs from 2016 to 2017.
- The biggest “momentum markets”, relying on 2016 and 2017 data, are Montreal, St. Louis, and Seattle.
- Over the past two years (Q2-2016 to Q2-2018), Atlanta, Los Angeles, Orange County, Seattle, and Portland have all seen double-digit rent growth.
One figure that also stood out for me was this one here showing the relationship between US venture capital investment and the average asking rent for office space in San Francisco.
If you’d like to download the full report, click here. You’ll need to sign up for an account with CBRE, but it’s free to do that.
Bloomberg Businessweek just published a longish article about Vancouver and the Chinese capital that fuels it. It’s called, The City That Had Too Much Money.
Most of you are already familiar with this narrative, but here’s an excerpt that talks about the city’s economic base and its apparent dependency on foreign capital:
Change will be difficult and fraught. Vancouver has been closely connected to Asia since the late 19th century, when the first Chinese laborers arrived to help build the trans-Canada railway, and the city is proud of its record of integrating immigrants. Also, beyond real estate, Vancouver’s economic base is shallow. It’s not the business capital of western Canada—that’s Calgary—and it has few major corporate headquarters or large-scale manufacturing operations. “Asian capital has kept this economy alive, end of story,” says Ron Shon, a Chinese-Canadian venture capitalist who arrived as a teenager in the late 1960s. “You can see it in every aspect of our lives.”
One of the things I found particularly interesting were Chip Wilson’s comments around what is going on. Chip is the founder of Lululemon and is largely credited with pioneering the current “athleisure” trend.
Yet as Wilson explains, sitting in his office on the top floor of a century-old warehouse, these days he’s as interested in bricks and mortar as in quick-drying fabrics. “The global capital flowing out of China across the world, you’d have to be an idiot not to acknowledge it,” he says. “You know, we could just be at the cusp of that.”
To profit from the deluge, he’s been buying up land all over town, especially in False Creek Flats, a derelict industrial area that’s slated for redevelopment. He estimates that about a third of his holdings are now in real estate. British Columbia’s current government may succeed in slowing inflows temporarily, Wilson says, but China’s boom has created many multimillionaires who need a place to put their money. “So where do you go if you’re Chinese? Sydney, maybe. But nowhere, probably, is more friendly than Vancouver.” One way or another, he says, those funds will find their way to Canada.
That’s why, Wilson says, whenever he returns from a trip to Asia, his first thought is simple: “Buy land, Chip. Buy land.”
For the full article, click here.
Image: Jens Kristian Balle/The Forbes Collection/Contour/Getty Images (via Bloomberg)
- Silicon Valley, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles all added more than 10,000 tech jobs from 2016 to 2017.
- The biggest “momentum markets”, relying on 2016 and 2017 data, are Montreal, St. Louis, and Seattle.
- Over the past two years (Q2-2016 to Q2-2018), Atlanta, Los Angeles, Orange County, Seattle, and Portland have all seen double-digit rent growth.
One figure that also stood out for me was this one here showing the relationship between US venture capital investment and the average asking rent for office space in San Francisco.
If you’d like to download the full report, click here. You’ll need to sign up for an account with CBRE, but it’s free to do that.
Bloomberg Businessweek just published a longish article about Vancouver and the Chinese capital that fuels it. It’s called, The City That Had Too Much Money.
Most of you are already familiar with this narrative, but here’s an excerpt that talks about the city’s economic base and its apparent dependency on foreign capital:
Change will be difficult and fraught. Vancouver has been closely connected to Asia since the late 19th century, when the first Chinese laborers arrived to help build the trans-Canada railway, and the city is proud of its record of integrating immigrants. Also, beyond real estate, Vancouver’s economic base is shallow. It’s not the business capital of western Canada—that’s Calgary—and it has few major corporate headquarters or large-scale manufacturing operations. “Asian capital has kept this economy alive, end of story,” says Ron Shon, a Chinese-Canadian venture capitalist who arrived as a teenager in the late 1960s. “You can see it in every aspect of our lives.”
One of the things I found particularly interesting were Chip Wilson’s comments around what is going on. Chip is the founder of Lululemon and is largely credited with pioneering the current “athleisure” trend.
Yet as Wilson explains, sitting in his office on the top floor of a century-old warehouse, these days he’s as interested in bricks and mortar as in quick-drying fabrics. “The global capital flowing out of China across the world, you’d have to be an idiot not to acknowledge it,” he says. “You know, we could just be at the cusp of that.”
To profit from the deluge, he’s been buying up land all over town, especially in False Creek Flats, a derelict industrial area that’s slated for redevelopment. He estimates that about a third of his holdings are now in real estate. British Columbia’s current government may succeed in slowing inflows temporarily, Wilson says, but China’s boom has created many multimillionaires who need a place to put their money. “So where do you go if you’re Chinese? Sydney, maybe. But nowhere, probably, is more friendly than Vancouver.” One way or another, he says, those funds will find their way to Canada.
That’s why, Wilson says, whenever he returns from a trip to Asia, his first thought is simple: “Buy land, Chip. Buy land.”
For the full article, click here.
Image: Jens Kristian Balle/The Forbes Collection/Contour/Getty Images (via Bloomberg)
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