Tag Archives: Kastle

2600 Office Buildings in 138 Cities…. Current Occupancy is Exactly 50% … Kastle Back to Work Barometer …. Likely the new norm?

Kastle a nationwide security provider….. obviously with their hands on some of the most interesting data:

Office Occupancy

With 2600 buildings in 138 cities…. the current occupancy rate is 50%!

Check out the 2020 Comps versus 2023 broken down by day of the week! WOW

Not sure what the future looks like, but likely not the same as a just a few years ago….

Have a Great “Back to Work Update” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Office Space Analysis – 1 Billion Feet (Wow) Empty Office Space and Kastle Back to Work Update …

Followers know we have been fascinated with the long term changes and effects from the lock down….

Virtual is the new Normal – Heck we have Zoom, Teams, GoToMeeting just to name a few, that we use constantly…

The following graphic is from our buds at Visual Capitalist – Note comments from the article after…

This from the article- with our highlights for emphasis

1 Billion Square Feet of Empty Office Space

In April, one of America’s largest office owners, Brookfield, defaulted on a $161 million loan.

The loan, covering 12 office buildings, was mainly concentrated in the Washington, D.C. market. Faced with low occupancy rates, it joined other office giants Blackstone and WeWork defaulting on office debt this year.

The above graphic shows nearly 1 billion square feet of empty office space in the U.S. based on data from JLL—and the wider implications of office towers standing empty.

Ranking U.S. Cities by Empty Office Space

At the end of the first quarter of 2023, a record 963 million square feet of office space was unoccupied in America. An estimated five to 10 office towers are at risk of defaulting each month according to Manus Clancy, senior managing director at Trepp.

And one of our all time favorite trackers, Kastle

Have a Great “Office Space Updated” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Kastle Back to Work… Stuck on Half Way! Effects beginning to be seen …

It has been a while since we previewed one of our favorite resources from the lock down. A chance article, below, rekindled our attention. We have added more observations.

Per the article:

A San Francisco office building was worth $300 million before the pandemic. Now, it could sell for only $60 million — a perfect example of why downtowns are in trouble

Kastle Systems Analysis and Barometer

Latest release

Publicly trade REIT – Real Estate Investment Trust – Actual Company withheld purposely (Public Venue) – Specializes in office space Assets

About a 75% drop in value. Not sure if the office headcount stays away, but certain office buildings are bearing the brunt!

Have a Great “Kastle Office Asset Analysis” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Kastle Back to Office Update – New Measuring Index – Week Days in the Office … Ah ha

One of our favorite finds over the last two years is the Kastle Index… now indexes

For those newbies, this security company has taken the information and made it into a very useful index since they have the data from their security systems…

With a request from the field for more granularity on the calculation, (hat tip MR) a new data set/Index has been created that shows interesting but not surprising work characteristics…

Kastle Back to Work Barometer

Holding steady just below 50% – with some outliers on either side ..

Kastle Over Time Occupancy Measurement

Another view of the leveling off of back to work characteristics near the right of the graph…

Kastle Weekly View

Here is the new view that brings some clarity to the overall back to work index….. Monday and Fridays are clearly work from home days still!

We have lessened our reviews of this type of information, but still find this worth a look, especially if there are new data series, such as this!

Have a Great “Back to Work more Clarified” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Kastle Back to Work Index Update …. Or the not going back to work Index ??? Friday… HOT HOT HOT

Another great find over the last two years and one we look very much to reviewing when we receive their update email…

Kastle Back to Work Index Update – Not Going to the Office?

One of our very favorite tracking sights, Kastle , continues to show that folks are not excited about going to the office….

So interesting to see this actually roll over a bit to lower levels!

Ahhh… today is a hot Friday here in Texas…. Stay hydrated, spend time with those important and talk next week!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Kastle Back to Work Update, but with a Neat New Comparison … Our 5 Year Office Renewal Experience …

Had planned on a review of some really great information that we have done with regards to the Newsletter but that can wait till next week …the following was just too good to pass up.

On a personal note, literally in about 2 hours we will be having what is likely our final review of the lease here at our office. Thinking that office space was abundant … imagine our surprise when we are told that we are going to need to digest a 15 to 25% increase in rent. What we missed, was the fact that our office size is as our broker says is Del Fuego, a massive influx of people to our location here in Dallas, and also a large group of bigger offices downsizing to smaller offices due to continued remote and out of the office working environments.

On a good news front, while the increase is a bit startling, our office space is of an appropriate size that the actual numbers are not too terrible, however giving up a newly charging very pricey monthly reserved parking … at least no one can park in the reserved spot now…. haha…. glass half full!!

In all likelihood we’ll ink the deal sometime this week for another five year period.. OK digressing…

Kastle Back to Work Index Update

Here is a quick link to about a dozen articles we’ve written on this subject and peripheral information!

For the possible newbies, or those that have maybe forgotten, this neat company called Kastle is basically a security company among other things, that pivoted during the lock down and began producing some of the neatest material we have seen with regards to office occupancy.

The email that hit our inbox this week not only had a review of the highest occupancy rates we have seen, although they’re still very very low, but a really neat view and chart of other non-office information for comparison purposes.

Hope you enjoy the hard work that these guys do as much as we do bring it to you, thanks Kastle very well done!

Do you think everyone was starving for in person sports, travel and food?

Or are we permanently adjusting to only about a 40% to 50% office return environment?

This is as high as we’ve seen the office occupation index, but still as you can see very well below getting even close to the halfway.

Maybe we should have shown these graphs too our landlord! Doubt it would have mattered, but Oh well we like our space anyway !

BTW- About 90% of this post was dictated… getting better at keeping it short…sorry to those that have received dictated emails…. working harder to keep it short!

Have a great “Kastle and In Personal” update day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Kastle Office Work Index Shows New Normal … Pivot Without the Blink of an Eye …

Had a much heavier post for today, but this hit the inbox early on in the week and my jaw dropped, so thought it worth sharing…

Kastle Back To Work Index – Fast Pivot

The Kastle Back To Work Index has been one of our favorite early finds, and is a fantastic idea of a mostly Security Monitoring service company using their resources for fantastic reporting…

So, looking back at last December (2020) there was a natural Holiday gravitation away from the office (Hat tip JH) …. but nothing like the fast pivot occurring most recently….

A smooth pivot to work from home and a slice down to half in two weeks…. amazing….

Kastle Barometer

Likely the world we live in from now on…. more of a mandatory progress…. but very interesting how fast society adapts….

Have a Great “Easy Pivoting” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Back to the Office? Not Yet, Kastle Back to Work Index Update

One of our first and favorite finds of interest over the last year and half, the Kastle Back To Work Index.

This index, created by Kastle an office security among other things company (what a clever way to use resources) references multiple city indexes as well as the average on all the cities they cover..

Great progress, with a bit of curving over as of late…. Not back to 50% yet on any of the areas they produce tracking data.

Total Average of just over 30% back at the office, again with some decreases of late. On a personal note, we have had multiple large industry related gatherings switch to virtual as of late!

Will be interesting to see how long it takes to get back to “Normal” and just what that looks like?

Have a Great “Back to Office Update” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Interesting Fleet (Boat) Monitoring Site MarineTraffic.com – The Worlds Water Transportation

We continue to find very neat websites that are great for monitoring various types of population and transit….

First it was the TSA its self….

Then a VP seeing our research showed us her company website that has fancy enhanced features at Fligence.com

Then we stumbled upon the Kastle back to work monitor

Then Indeed job openings indexes

Now another new tracker… but this time boats!

Marine Traffic – Marinetraffic.com

Last week on an Institutional Investor conference call, one of the presenters mentioned watching Marinetraffic.com

Music to our ears…. another cool way to review the Economy and world transit.

The following is from the website, but there is also a very neat downloadable cell app, that has most of the same features.

With a monthly subscription (certainly a Naval person’s must) you can slice and dice the worlds naval transit in almost any way one would want….

Without a subscription, our situation, there is still a TON of neat information— on the live site you can hover over each boat and get more information!

All Ships

Cargo Ships

Pattern is very interesting, looks like close to shore for protection?

Tankers – Oil, LNG and other similar commodity transportation

More direct and less shore line hugging- interesting – maybe they are bigger?

Fishing Boats – How neat is that!

Satellite tracks these guys …certainly in areas that would be expected- warm!

USA Coasts– Wow – Gulf of Mexico

Look for us to review this in the future….

Sure wished we would have known of this before, but better late than never!

Have a Great “Marine Traffic” Day!

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

TSA Latest Throughput (Corrected Graph), Indeed Job Listing, Kastle Back To Work Update … Trifecta Bundle … Friday

As mentioned on Wednesday’s Slow Moe Money Post, this was actually scheduled for the Hump Day, but was ousted due to our continued snail findings of overwhelmed financial institutions across every aspect of the financial world.

With that in mind, this is a bit of a heavier Friday, but all of these missed the Newsletter due, once again, to your great experiences and questions!

TSA Throughput Updates

While not knowing of this data prior to 2020, we have enjoyed monitoring it greatly….

Hat Tip JP and “The Brain” for noticing my bad data chart and repairing … now we are cooking!

While passenger count is gaining steam, especially notice Thanksgiving Holidays ….

We are still well behind 2019, “Normal” numbers!

Vaccine should help, end of year Holidays will be interesting… not to worry we are so enamored you will certainly see a review here!

Indeeds Job Posting Update – Global and Local

In another fascinating find, and once approved from the company for reproduction, we are just at the tip of the iceberg of this data, as there are well over 100 data bases …. as mentioned here, yep we have reviewed all and so far are just monitoring this Global…

This data comes from Indeed’s two research sites https://www.hiringlab.org/ and the raw data site https://github.com/hiring-lab/data , all of this is put together in our favorite St Louis Federal Reserve FRED website.

Go Australia, all the way back to flat or just above — Nice!

And our second favorite, our own back yard of Cities here in Texas!

Go San Antonio- you guys rock and are almost back to whole as well.

KASTLE Back to Work Barometer

Frist mentioned here, this fantastic tracker is from none other than a security company…what a great way to utilize your inside knowledge for the help of many!

Watch out if you are buying, renting or expanding the commercial footprint – this is no where near Indeed’s job posting bounce all the way back!

Here is a link to a more interactive Kastle graph that you can hover over for exact information.

Again, well done to all!

Heavy for a Friday, but sometimes that occurs….

Have a Good Weekend and Happy Holiday Season!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents