A shiny new office in the middle of a tech mecca will certainly help any company in the battle for top talent, but it won’t come cheap. That’s the takeaway from a recent study by commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group.
The group looked at the top 30 U.S. tech markets and found that companies there on average paid an 11 percent premium for office space. Things just go up from there if you’re aiming for one of the hottest neighborhoods, hoping to poach talent from nearby tech superstars.
Boston’s East Cambridge neighborhood — right next to Harvard’s campus — came in at No. 1 for North America, with an average office rent premium of 87 percent. Santa Monica, Calif. — which companies like Hulu call home — came in at No. 2 with 85 percent and Google’s Mountain View, Calif. took third at 73 percent.
In Seattle, rents have been climbing everywhere, but nowhere as much as around Lake Union, where Amazon is buying up space and building out its empire. Office rents grew by 32 percent in that area, which includes the Eastlake, Westlake and South Lake Union neighborhoods, between 2013 and 2015. That’s more than triple the growth of the entire Seattle market.
At the end of Q2 2015, companies in South Lake Union were paying a 30 percent premium on office space.
Here are the top 10 tech markets ranked by of rent growth, according to CBRE Group.
