All right. Good morning, everyone. This is Jamie Feldman. I'm Bank of America's Senior Office REIT Analyst. I am very pleased to have with us the team from Kilroy Realty. This will be an audio-only session, but we do have the management team on live. Joining us today are John Kilroy, Chairman and CEO, Tyler Rose, President, Rob Paratte, Executive Vice President, Leasing and Business Development, and Michelle Ngo, Chief Financial Officer. We do want this to be interactive, so if you have questions, please feel free to add them to the Veracast system, and I'll be tracking that throughout the call. To get us started, maybe I'll just turn it over to John or to the Kilroy team, I should say. If you want to provide a brief overview of the company and any updates you wanted to provide at the conference.
By the way, I do think you win the award for most press releases before your session. We appreciate that. Thank you for being busy ahead of our conference.
Well, this is John, thanks for everybody being on the call. Jamie, thanks for hosting this. As Rob said before we all hooked up with the industry community, it'd be nice to have this in person next year, hopefully that'll be the case. Rob and I are in our San Francisco office at First and Mission, I can tell you that the lobbies in the office buildings are filled with people. There's people walking around the streets. There aren't any parking places available. Driving into the city this morning, it's a lot cleaner, a lot more folks running and walking and at the coffee places and so forth. That's the first time I've seen that really in over a year and a half.
We were in Seattle yesterday, you see people everywhere enjoying themselves at the coffee shops and [whatnot], at the restaurants, a lot of vitality. Of course, San Diego, I was there last week, I don't know that they noticed that COVID has happened. I'm saying that a little bit kiddingly. They adhere to the policies and whatnot, but the retail there is booming. We're now 100% leased in San Diego. Everything except for the new building, 2100 Kettner, that is just being completed. We're 99% leased in Seattle. Rob will give the stats on the other markets. We're seeing a noticeable improvement in the mood and tone and activity level, which is good.
Kilroy, I think everybody knows this, but just real quickly, we think of ourselves as the premier U.S. landlord and developer in owning, developing, and acquiring and managing particularly life science, mixed-use properties along the coastal regions of Seattle, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Diego, and now Austin. We're a $12 billion investment-grade enterprise and a member of the S&P MidCap 400 Index. Our portfolio consists of 15 million sq ft of stabilized projects that are now 94% leased. We have a substantial value of creating development pipeline, just over 10 million sq ft under construction or near-term and future, which is approximately 50% life science and diversified across our markets. Three key messages for us this morning. We're an experienced capital allocator. In 2021, we've transacted over $2 billion of dispositions and acquisitions. All five acquisition deals were off-market. They were all in pretty exciting markets.
You saw the announcement yesterday of the entire block at the front door of Amazon's 5 million sq ft world headquarters campus in the Denny Regrade area of downtown Seattle. We think we have a tremendous amount of upside in the company, where our share price is at is a far cry from what we feel the value is. We also have about 15%-20% mark-to-market across the portfolio. I should point out that we're seeing record rental rates and record lack of availability in San Diego and in Bellevue, Washington. We're seeing very strong rental growth in those markets, and we're seeing strong rental growth in downtown Seattle as well. Rob is going to talk a little bit about Austin.
As far as leasing momentum goes, again, Rob can answer questions, but with various life science leasing deals that we announced yesterday, we're on track to do over a million sq ft of leasing this year. That's off a very anemic 2020, of course. As I mentioned, rent growth is strong. We've seen a 40% roll-up in cash rents on recent deals. With that, I think we can just go into Q and A, Jamie, and you fire away.
All right, great. Thanks for the overview. I guess maybe just to get things started and talk about the most recent, can you talk about the Seattle acquisition?
Sure
Just what your thoughts are on returns there as that plays out?
Yeah. The building has rents that are 35%, 40% below market. Amazon is 70% of the leased space. The building is 100% leased. Their lease, Rob, rolls in-
23
Is it August 23?
Yeah.
We think that there's some big upside in the rent there, and we underwrote that based upon one of two scenarios. One is that Amazon stays, and the other that Amazon goes. We had a call this morning from a major company that is interested, and they want to know if that space could be made available for them, the entirety of the space that Amazon now occupies, which is approximately 370,000 [Rob].
Yeah.
Yeah. We think we have a real winner there, Jamie. Initial yields aren't that high because of the low in-place rents, but we think we're going to be up in the six-ish range when it's released here, and then move up from there based upon annual adjustments.
Okay, thank you. Maybe to talk more about the life science leasing you mentioned you put out the press release on as well.
Yeah. Rob, you want to cover that?
Sure. We did three deals in San Diego in two different sub-markets there. Our assets are located in probably the two hottest markets in San Diego County when it comes to technology and life science. We did a deal in UTC, which is about a 52,000 sq ft deal, life science, and then the other two are in Del Mar. I think it's very consistent with what John has talked about in past earnings calls and investor calls, where we're seeing not only continued demand and expansion where possible within UTC, we're seeing that migration into our assets in Del Mar. We think there's more of that ahead. We're very pleased with what we have in Del Mar in terms of just offerings, and expect to do more of that.
We also think that, Jamie, I guess, to add a little more color, that migration will continue from Del Mar into the I-56 corridor, where we have our Sabre Springs campus, as an example, plus another 500,000 sq ft- 600,000 sq ft development that we can do up in Santa Fe Summit. Kilroy is poised really well to accommodate expanding life science.
Maybe to put that in context, if you look at your next round of potential development starts, what's the magnitude of what we may see over the next year or so?
Okay. Well, let's start with what we've got. As you know, we started earlier this year at what we call Kilroy Oyster Point, which is our 3 million sq ft development on 50 acres in the city of South San Francisco. You'll recall that we started the first phase, which was roughly 670,000 sq ft, two years ago, and leased it up within about six months of starting construction. Then we started earlier this year, I think, two quarters ago, on phase two, which is 900,000 sq ft in three buildings. We have very strong activity there at record-breaking rental rates for that market, we're real enthused. In terms of starts beyond that, in San Diego, we have three different development life science projects that we are likely to start at least two of them before the end of the year or early next year.
One is a 70,000 ft, 75,000 ft building in the UTC sub-market. We're in lease negotiations right now on that transaction with a high-credit tenant. The other two are phases two and three of what we call Santa Fe Summit, which is located east of Del Mar on the 56 freeway. What's going on, as Rob mentioned, there's a 500,000 sq ft life science transaction that's in final lease negotiation on the 56, sort of in between Del Mar and our Santa Fe Summit property. At Santa Fe Summit, we have two phases, each are 300,000 sq ft, each are fully entitled. We intend to process the building permits for both phases concurrently. We should, as I say, be able to start construction on one of those two phases or both, sometime within the next six months or thereabout.
We have, in round numbers, 700,000 ft of development in life science in terrific areas with brand-new, best-in-class product that we should be able to get underway with within the next year or earlier. Collectively, with KOP, we'll have 900,000 ft underway here and another anywhere from four to 700,000 sq ft underway in San Diego. It's just a question of whether we do Santa Fe Summit in two phases or one.
How do you think about the impact on yields of?
I'm sorry, you cut out, Jamie.
I'm just wondering how do you think about yields on those new starts, given we've seen a rise in construction costs and a rise in labor?
Yeah, I think we're going to be in that same bandwidth that we've always said we were, and we've always beat it, but sort of in the seven-ish, plus or minus. Going in yields with longer leases, and we generally get 3%-3.5% random bumps. That includes the increase in construction cost. Fortunately, we've done better than those projections on most of the deals we've done, and I hope we will continue to do that.
John, I've just watched you develop throughout cycles throughout my career. I'm just curious, when you think about the pandemic and the impact on real estate and the local economies in your markets, what do you think the key lesson was from this, and how do you think it'll impact what Kilroy does going forward on the development front?
Yeah, I think that we've already made some tweaks to a few things. By and large, Jamie, in an audience, Kilroy's portfolios averages a little less than 10 years in age. I think we've probably done more to change our portfolio than just about anybody we know in terms of providing the kinds of facilities that people really were in demand for before the pandemic. Now as a result of the pandemic, they're increasingly wanting the kinds of facilities that we're building. That's the same with our One Paseo retail, which people are coming to study like this is the way retail should be done. With our One Paseo Living, with the apartments there that are all extra wide corridors, extra high corridors, natural ventilation. You couldn't ask for a better design, given what we've all been going through.
In the office space, lots of decks, lots of rooftops, lots of plazas, lots of ceiling height, better systems, bigger floor plates, more room for people to meet inside and outside. Real emphasis on outside meeting areas. We had somebody that is one of the bigger life science companies in South San Francisco meet with our folks, and we asked them, "What would you do differently than what you've done? You have a big campus there." Their point was, with the outside is where everybody wants to be. We don't even allow their student body to meet inside in meetings. They have to have all their meetings outside. Anything you can do to provide more outside meeting space, both where smaller groups as well as large groups. That's exactly what we've created at KOP. We have 50 acres.
We have more outside meeting spaces that can accommodate several hundred people or smaller groups throughout the campus with grab and go and all that sort of stuff that the modern tenant wants. I think whether it was just luck, I think it was maybe a little bit more than luck. We certainly didn't plan for a pandemic. I think our portfolio is standing up very well. We're seeing that Rob and I were up in Seattle yesterday, going through with our team where we are on various lease negotiations and where various tenants are. I can tell you that areas where we've bought buildings and developed buildings there in the South Lake Union area, and in the Denny Regrade, and that's where we just bought West 8th. That is the environment, the kind of buildings that people want to be in.
They get the highest rent. It's been the highest absorption. It is exactly the location and the kind of facilities and amenities that the modern user wants. There's been a big shift in the city northward, a significant shift, in Seattle, just as there was a shift if you think about San Francisco from the north side of Market to the Soma side. You're seeing that shift now as a result of a lack of availability and lack of development land in some of the markets down in San Diego, where it's moving right into the Del Mar area and then moving up to 56. I'm pretty happy with the way we're positioned. We're very focused on, we talk all the time. Eliott Trencher sends his regards. He has a holiday today that he couldn't make this conference call for.
As he points out, we've really spent a lot of time and energy culling the portfolio and selling off the things that are either non-strategic or that we feel won't comport well with the needs of the modern user now or in the future. We're all about the future.
Okay, that's helpful. You talked about a lot of very healthy sub-markets with very visible drivers of demand, San Diego with life science, Bellevue. How would you characterize the health of [sublease] San Francisco right now? I know there's been a little bit of a pickup in leasing. There's been some pretty aggressive rent prints down on sublease space. What's your view on that market today?
Yeah. Well, I'm going to let Rob speak to that. Before he does, on some of the sublease things, I was talking with a CFO yesterday with regard to their sublease thing, and what they said was basically, and this wasn't one of our buildings. What they said was, "Look, this isn't the real estate people, this is the financial people. We've got an obligation. We have rethought our real estate. Anything we do to get it off the books is good. We're not looking to make the last dollar on subleasing. We're looking to just close it off our books, either through creating a direct relationship or a sublease relationship." Rob, you want to go more in detail?
Sure, Jamie. San Francisco, and I want to be careful about this because we are starting to see some positive signs, and I hope, and it feels like they will continue to trend upward. I think probably the most significant piece of information is that sublease space 90 days ago was over 9 million sq ft, and that number is now down to about 7.2 million sq ft. Undoubtedly, we still have sublease space to tackle, but it is coming off the books, and the fact that it's almost 2 million sq ft that came off, I think is really important. I think the sublease space, the thing to really note on that sublease space that's being absorbed is, once again, the flight to quality. It's the triple Class A, really well-located, well-built-out space.
Some of that activity has been in the Macy's.com building, which actually was put on a little bit before the pandemic, but built out in a tech-friendly fashion. It's also located south of market where tech wants to be. You're seeing this flight to quality. You're seeing sublease space get absorbed. There's going to be some laggards in the sublease world that are just, frankly, buildings or floors or HVAC systems, things we've talked about before that are obsolete and will need to be dealt with. We don't view those as competitive to our world. I think another thing that, unfortunately, the press never picks this stuff up, but 95 firms in San Francisco received $100 million or more in VC funding, which takes the total this year to date to about $48 billion, which is the most in San Francisco history in a seven-month period.
We're seeing that translate. That VC funding, we are seeing translate into smaller size deals that are starting to surface in the market in the 15,000 ft-35,000 ft range. I would say, anecdotally, Seattle is seeing the same thing with VC-backed firms starting to look, and the smaller size firms starting to look for space. I think the VC funding and the VC pipeline is an important gauge to follow.
Thank you. I know you and your peers have been talking about that early stage company pipeline for a while. How meaningful is that pipeline in terms of total size or potential net absorption to the market?
It's really hard to gauge, Jamie. If you look back, dial back when, think how many companies that are no longer unicorns were unicorns, like Uber and others, and look at the space they absorb. It's early in the process, and I just feel like what it underscores to me is innovation is continuing, and with that innovation, these companies need people, and those people are going to need to be in office space.
That brings up the question of just office space usage. I know that a lot of your West Coast markets are farther behind in terms of bringing people back or fully reopening. What would you say, I guess, what would you say occupancy is across the portfolio today? Secondly, what are tenants saying in terms of how they're going to use space going forward?
Well, I think, again, before Delta took its uptick, occupancy was anywhere from 25%- 35% across our portfolio. I know in speaking with our competitors, that was about the same that they experienced, again, depending on the market. As we've said time and again, San Francisco has been the most restricted, shut down city in the country. As John said at the beginning of this panel, it's really wonderful to see. It's a beautiful fall day, and to see the number of people that are out and about and moving in and out of our 350 Mission project and other Salesforce, since we're kind of in the middle of Salesforce here. Seeing all that activity, which 45 days ago you didn't see.
The mood is really, I think when we talk to our clients, John speaks, as he mentioned, to a lot of the tech companies. Some are our tenants, some aren't. I do the same in different realms. People are planning to bring their tenants, their employees back to work, and we're seeing that in the conversations we're having. How do they make their space more fun? Fun is part of the draw to bring people back to the work. How do they make their space more collaborative? How or where can they have outdoor space so they can have meetings outdoors? All those conversations are happening now, and buildings that can accommodate those softer sides of the architecture or workspace are going to be the beneficiaries.
Jamie, it's interesting to note that over the course of the last, well, this year, there have been some notable expansions by some of the big tech companies. Then we've seen that in San Diego. I can't mention one of the companies by name, but they now have 5 million, 6 million sq ft down there, where they had less than 1 million sq ft, five years ago. Probably less than 500,000 ft. There's another big tech company that is going to be taking some substantial space down there. I was with one of the heads of real estate not long ago in a Zoom call, and they have five markets in the United States where they're expanding 250 to upwards of a million square feet is on their radar. A number of those are markets in which we are located.
You've seen the big expansions by Amazon and others up in Bellevue. You're going to see a bunch of big expansions in Seattle, which I think will be in the Denny Regrade, South Lake Union area. There's some things happening down in the valley here. Of course, Austin, we're seeing great activity on the building we recently bought there at Indeed Tower. Talking with a lot of folks about their expansion needs there in that greater market. The common theme with a lot of these folks is they want scalability, they want modern facility, and if it's old, it's got to be old and cool and big ceilings and all the rest, big floor plates. The old sort of financial district high-rise is not in favor with most tech companies. That doesn't mean they won't go into a high-rise.
Take a look at what's happened there at Hudson Yards and [so far]. Those are modern buildings and far different to the ones you might see in some of the other more traditional areas in New York City. That trend is massive, and I think we're very well positioned with our development pipeline, where it's located, and the kind of buildings that we build. It is going to be, as we've said for the last 18 months, it's going to be a game of fits and starts, and it is.
I do want to spend a little time on Austin. Maybe can you dig deeper into the demand for that space? What do you think is next for you guys there?
Well, you can talk about the space, Rob.
Yeah. I'll start with the space, Jamie. We have about 300,000 ft of space to lease. Indeed company is the anchor tenant in the upper portion of the building. What's been truly, I think Austin is such a great bellwether for the rest of the country, just in terms of tenant activity. The city's been more open than other cities across the country, and you see that daily when you're in Austin, when you're meeting with people, et cetera. People are back to work. The tech companies have those flex policies, so they're still needing to bring large numbers back. Demand is up. Brokers are basically feeling that tour activity as well as just demand is back to pre-pandemic levels, and that rents are starting to exceed pre-pandemic levels.
I think what's one of the most fun things about Austin is we have a lot of tech interest in the building, but we also have a lot of what I would call professional services, blue-chip name firms that are either looking to move to Austin, interestingly, or are expanding in Austin. It's a very vibrant situation right now. There's definitely, probably more than any city in the country, I'd say there's definitely a push of young people back into the city in Austin. I'll correct myself because San Francisco is seeing that same phenomenon where young people are moving back in and rents in San Francisco are month to month increasing, and there's a scarcity of apartments depending on the market, where you are in the city.
Back to Austin, we're busy, and we're really having a great time with it and expect to be announcing some things.
Yeah. The second part of that, Jamie, is what's our next steps, and I'm not going to get into anything specific, but we are rounding out our team there. We've had a really excellent group that have been the group working on that acquisition and working on the leasing and so forth. We're moving some of our people that are in California out there on the asset management and property management side. We're going to be rounding out that team with a regional leader that we have not yet identified yet. We're determining whether we move somebody from one of our other markets or whether we hire local and more to come on that. In terms of our strategy there, again, I don't want for competitive reasons to get into anything specific, but we didn't just buy Indeed Tower to buy Indeed Tower and say that's it.
For a number of years, I think the better part of five years, we looked at that market. We looked at companies that were available to buy that own properties in that market. We looked at specific assets in the market. Indeed Tower is by far away the best asset in the office sector in that marketplace. It truly is a 10. We just got, by the way I forget how they say it, I think it's v4 LEED Platinum. It's one of five buildings in the world, and the second largest in the world to have that designation. That's like the super-duper platinum. I can't talk sustainability. I can talk about everything we've won. I can't get into all the specifics of how the bells and whistles work, but we're very proud of that.
Trammell Crow, who developed the building, did a heck of a job in getting that accomplished. That resonates real well with people. We've got a great building. We're going to have a great team. We will be expanding. We don't have any timeline or dollar allocation fixation. We're going to be opportunistic. We're looking at a bunch of stuff. In terms of just a little bit about valuations, you saw what we bought that building for. There's another building that is just sold out in Domain with a very similar tenancy. It's a 12-year-old building, certainly not as high quality as the one we bought. It traded at a cap rate that was probably 60, 70 basis points lower than the implied cap rate on the building we just bought. We think we bought well, and we're going to do more.
What are potential tenants saying about the abortion ruling in Texas, and whether that slows down their expansion plans? I know I saw an article saying Salesforce is giving people the option to relocate out of Texas if they're not comfortable living there.
Yeah, I don't know specifically about Salesforce, but we're not hearing anything from the companies we're talking to about it. I think they steer clear of the topic.
Okay. Then a question just came in from the audience. Again, it's Salesforce again. I guess Salesforce is talking about putting secondary space on the market. Have you heard about other tenants doing the same thing, just more sublease space that we might start to see?
No. Salesforce has, in San Francisco, some sublease space on the market, but they just are entering into a sublease for 90,000 ft of it. They bought Tableau, so they may have space that they're not going to utilize with Tableau, but we're just not hearing anything new about Salesforce and more space on. In fact, like we've been saying this morning, their buildings seem pretty busy.
Okay. All right. With the Seattle acquisition, I assume this now takes any kind of special distribution off the table. Where do you stand in terms of your 1031 redeployment?
You want to cover that, Michelle?
Yes. Hi, Jamie. With the recent acquisition, we don't anticipate doing a special dividend this year.
Okay. Makes sense. Is there still capital to deploy, or you're pretty much set at this point?
We're set at this point. We've satisfied our 1031 exchange requirement.
Okay. Maybe just thinking big picture, if you look at the transaction market, we've seen mostly high-quality, well-leased assets trade, not a lot of value-add lease-up stories. How would you characterize the transaction market today, and where do you think it's heading in terms of for the value add type product?
Well, there's a lot of money. I get many calls over the course of a month from folks that run the private equity funds and so forth, the value adders. Will we sell anything? Will we do this? Will we do that? Unsolicited offers. We got an offer in the other day. It's on a small asset that we are going to probably transact on at a good value. Everybody, I think, at Kilroy in a senior position has people talking to them pretty much all the time with regard to would we sell something, would we sell this, would we sell that. I don't want to get into specific ones, but some of these things are multi-hundred million dollar buildings. The market has got a lot of money looking for product. We are seeing a number of transactions that we did not elect to bid on.
Here in San Francisco, you've got the old utility building just down from 350 Mission that sold to a well-known real estate entity that we figure that's going to stabilize around $1,100, and you've got an old building. It wasn't of interest to us. You've seen a lot of the big funds come in and try to buy things. I can tell you when we sold The Exchange, and that was at a record price, you'll recall, just under $1,500 a square foot. That's Dropbox headquarters. I had three different groups call me and say, "Hey, how come we didn't get a bid?" "If you sell something else or if you want to sell something else, we want to buy." Now, there is kind of two thoughts.
one is you buy the long-term leased stuff that doesn't have a lot of downside over the next several years, and that's in demand all day long. Now what we're seeing is people going out on the risk spectrum quite a bit further than they were willing to go a year ago, buy some stuff that we kind of shake our heads at, only because we don't think that when you spend all the money, you're going to end up with a prize that's truly a great building. You're going to end up with a much better building when you reposition it, but you're not going to end up with the building that we would want to own. Then you've seen, obviously, with a public company that's selling their assets, and I think you probably know where the implied values are on their San Francisco assets.
Again, I don't want to get into commenting too much on that. Up in Austin, you're going to see some deals, some Class B buildings that are in Class A locations that we looked at that we wouldn't have considered buying. They just physically did not meet the test that we put ourselves through. In other words, you could buy it. It could look like a decent price per pound, but it's only going to have great occupancy if there's a shortage of space in the market because it's not the kind of space that tenants really want to be in. You're going to see some of that stuff trade maybe in the $500 or $600 a square foot range, and they'll be in a couple hundred dollars north of that when they reposition.
At $700, $800 when we bought our building for roughly nine, whatever it was. We got best in class, the kind of place where everybody wants to be, not the old stuff that you can make better, but it's still not going to be up to modern standards. You got to look in our view at where the CBDs, the market migration of tenants, where the quality buildings are, where the environment is. It's all about the employ. It's all about that. We've been saying that for the last 10 years, that's becoming more predominant now as a result of the pandemic. It's all about the characteristics, the amenities, the outside areas, the big floor plates, mechanical systems, the big elevators, and all the other things that go into the calculus for the kind of space that people want.
All right. Thanks for your thoughts. I guess just quickly to wrap up, where would you say the mark to market is today on the portfolio and net effective rents versus the peak? Where do you think they stand?
I'll handle the mark to market, and Michelle, you can handle the former part.
Sure.
I would say in three of our five markets, Jamie, net effective rents are up. You could actually say in four of them, if you add the Oyster Point sub-market in the Bay Area. Seattle, net effective rents are up, particularly when you expand that to Bellevue. Oyster Point and the life science market there is just on fire. We've talked about San Diego as well, where you're seeing strong double-digit rent increases. Austin is also seeing net effective rent increases. I'd say every one of our markets has net effective rent growth. San Francisco CBD and L.A. are pretty static. It just depends on what sub-market you're in in those various cities. Like I've said before, you look at the deals that have been done where trophy Class A view space, where there's 5% vacancy right now, which is a really low number.
Those deals are at pre-pandemic rates, they're holding steady. You've heard us report on our leasing and our renewals during the pandemic, where we've either maintained pre-pandemic rates or rolled things up. Again, that's a high-level overview of net effective rents.
Yeah. On the mark to market, we said on our last quarter call that it was around the 15% across the portfolio. Given the recent leasing activity, hopefully that number continues to move up as we see strong rent growth.
Okay. Thank you. Rob, Seattle, Bellevue, Oyster Point, San Diego, and Austin are all higher today than they were late?
Yeah.
How much would you say CBD San Francisco is down?
Like I said, I think it's stable. If you compare a Kilroy product to what I just mentioned with trophy class A, whatever's available is probably in less than 5% range. I think rates are steady. Obviously, sublease space with two years left on the term, like John talked about earlier, that's not going to command a premium. That's just flexibility for a company that's kicking the can down the road until they're ready to take a bigger chunk of space. Sublease space is a just different breed of cat.
Okay. Got it. All right. Then we do have questions we're asking every management team at the end of our sessions. There's three questions. The first one is, which of the following is the greatest challenge facing U.S. public REITs today? A, Fed action and higher rates, B, supply chain issues, which include labor and logistics leading to higher costs, and C, flows to non-traded REITs.
I hate to say this, Jamie, but the first one kind of cut out, so I didn't hear A.
Oh, Fed action and higher rates.
They're all issues that could impact values, for sure. On the supplies, we got to pick one, huh? Michelle, you can pick.
Yeah. I think maybe directly, option number two.
Okay. The cost pressures?
Yeah.
All right. A second question. Over the next five years, which markets will outperform: urban, coastal, or Sun Belt?
Well, seeing how we're in all three, I hope they all do well.
Yeah, I was going to say, you got yourselves in a pickle with that Austin purchase. You have to answer.
Yeah. I don't know. I got to tell you that I think coastal California and up in the Seattle area are looking awfully strong for the future. I know there's a lot of room for debate on that with regard to crazy politics and back to work stuff and all the rest. I think they're going to recover nicely, and the growth we're seeing and demand we're seeing for good locations is pretty strong. I got to tell you, I love the fact that we're in Austin, but remember, it's a little market. It's not very big. It's growing. We thought it was important to put ourselves there so that we could respond to some of the interest we've had from our tech clients about being there and growing with them.
I think all those markets are going to do well, but it's going to be within those markets. You've got to be like, it's like a circle. Where do you want to be? Where's the place you want to be? In Seattle, I mentioned Denny Regrade and South Lake Union. That's where we want to be. We haven't bought anything else there. Of course, Bellevue is over on the other side. That's terrific. I think real estate is a very important, it's that location thing, but it's all about the asset and how it responds to the new user or what the new user's new requirements are. I think all the markets you mentioned are going to do well.
Where would you say cap rates are in Austin these days?
I'd say for a stabilized building, are going to be inside of five.
Okay. Final question. For your company's office plans post-pandemic, will you, A, have no change from pre-pandemic, B, leave it up to individual teams, C, offer hybrid, or D, go full remote?
We're sort of a hybrid. We've had a policy at Kilroy for the last 15 years, where supervisors can allow their people to work from home or give them time off for various things and so forth. It's all subject to performance. We don't have a specific model. During this pandemic, we've, of course, had times where you couldn't, because of law, come into work, or it was only essential workers, and we've had to deal with that. I think our policy that we've historically had, has been somewhat of a hybrid, and it's worked very well for us as a company.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Well, John, Tyler, Rob, Michelle, thanks so much for your time and your participation in the conference, good luck with the rest of your meetings.
Well, thanks very much, Jamie. Thanks for everybody listening. Appreciate it. Bye-bye.