Uber Puts S.F. Building It Never Occupied Up For Sublease Again

Uber is marketing for sublease one full building — nearly 287K SF — in its four-building global headquarters in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood.

An Uber spokesperson confirmed the listing to CoStar. The spokesperson noted that Uber never moved into the property, part of a 1M SF development. The San Francisco Business Journal originally reported the sublease in 2021, citing anonymous sources.

“As one of our buildings is currently unoccupied, this will not change our footprint in the city or impact space available for employees," the spokesperson told CoStar. "We remain committed to our hybrid work approach, which emphasizes in-person collaboration, and continue to welcome employees to our Mission Bay campus.”

San Francisco's office vacancy is almost 30%, a sharp increase from the 4% vacancy in the city in the months before the coronavirus pandemic, according to CBRE. 

Uber employees have been working under a hybrid work schedule since the fall of 2022, according to a statement from the company at that time. 

Alexandria Real Estate Equities developed the property at 1725 Third St. in San Francisco for Uber. Uber has been paying rent of approximately $84 per SF for its headquarters since 2019, and it has invested an estimated $160M to build out the facilities for its workers. 

Uber isn't alone in putting six-figure blocks of space up for sublease in the city.

Last month, Salesforce said it would sublease the last 104K SF of office it occupied in one of the San Francisco towers named for it. In February, Slack, which is owned by Salesforce, put all of its headquarters — almost 200K SF — on the sublease market, the San Francisco Business Journal reported at the time. Sublease availability in San Francisco was 8.2M SF in the first quarter of this year, the second highest level on record, according to JLL.

UPDATE, MAY 18, 11:22 A.M. PT: This story has been updated to reflect that Uber first put this space up for sublease in 2021.