Commercial/Industrial Real Estate

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is recommitting to Manhattan office space, after News Corp and Fox Corp. each signed long-term leases that will keep the two companies in midtown for another 20 years.  The two separate leases span more than 1.1 million square feet, or roughly equivalent to the company’s current footprint, according to Ivanhoe Cambridge, the Canadian real-estate firm that owns the…

The suit against Twitter alleges breach of contract and was filed in California Superior Court in San Francisco. Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press…

WeWork Inc. is trying to turn a profit before its once formidable cash reserves run out. The Federal Reserve’s efforts to fight inflation have made that harder.Recession fears and tech-industry job cuts are weighing on demand for co-working desks. Meanwhile, money-losing companies such as WeWork are squeezed by higher interest rates, which have made debt harder to come by and the promise of future profit less appealing to investors.  WeWork, saddled with expensive long-term leases and more…

The big technology companies that drove U.S. office demand for years as they expanded their empires are now canceling leases and flooding business districts with office space as they downsize. Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc., Lyft Inc., Salesforce. com Inc. and other tech companies are shedding millions of square feet of office space in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Austin, Texas, and elsewhere. Amazon.com…

The office-sharing company WeWork is closing dozens of locations in the U.S. Photo: Mike Segar/REUTERS…

U.S. real-estate developers are delaying major office projects already under way or in the planning stages, discouraged by high vacancy rates and the reduction in workspace demand resulting from remote work. Some property developers view periods of economic uncertainty and weak office demand as good times to launch new projects. Because large-scale developments tend to take three to five years or longer, developers bet that tenants looking to trade up in office quality will be drawn to modern offices with lots of…

Exxon Mobil Corp. is considering leasing or selling unused office space at the sprawling Houston-area campus set to become its global headquarters next year, part of its ongoing effort to cut billions in structural costs.In recent months, the U.S. oil giant has found that on a typical day it uses less than 50% of the available space at its 385-acre campus, which is large enough to house more than 10,000 workers, according to an internal memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Exxon spokesman…

Hybrid work schedules for most companies mean splitting time between remote work and time in the office. For the startup Frontier Talent Inc., it also means rotating through the same office space with another company.Frontier employees head to their San Francisco office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. After two of those days, they pack their laptops, clean up their desks and throw away any trash so their work area will be clean when another company moves in for its turn using the space. Thousands of…

A pandemic-driven boom in warehousing demand is showing signs of slowing, as companies grow more cautious about leasing in an uncertain economy and look to pare back the big inventory stockpiles that have swamped storage space this year. Razor-thin vacancy rates have started to tick upward and one measure of leasing activity in the U.S. fell back in the third quarter to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic. Warehouse space remains tight, with some companies still storing…

General Motors Co. GM -3.96% is starting an energy business to sell power-storage units and services to homeowners and commercial clients, an offshoot of the auto maker’s battery-development work for electric vehicles. GM said the new division, called GM Energy, will help customers transfer electricity from an EV or battery-storage box to a home or building, as a way to protect against power outages and transfer electricity to the grid…