Commercial real estate brokerage firm JLL has figured out a new way to show the strength of tech-related office space leasing in Orange County.
“Since the start of 2018, tech companies are responsible for leasing one quarter of office spaces 20,000 square feet and greater,” JLL said in a recent report. “These companies come from a wide spectrum of sectors, including but not limited to software, fintech, gaming, and electronics.”
Notable companies leasing large chunks of space in the area include Acorns, Allied Esports Entertainment (Nasdaq: AESE), Epson, and Skyworks Solutions Inc. (Nasdaq: SWKS), according to JLL.
It was the second such upbeat report about tech in a little less than a month from JLL. The firm said last month there had been five consecutive quarters of Orange County tech funding surpassing $100 million.Â
Large Announcement Looming?
Jason Lantgen, a JLL senior vice president, said that growth trend will likely continue as his company remains “very strong and very bullish on Orange County as a marketplace across the board.”
Orange County is “effectively in the epicenter of where there’s more engineering output for the entire country based in Southern California, from a university standpoint,” he told the Business Journal on Aug. 15.
“You think about STEM graduates from San Diego to Santa Barbara, and basically you’re looking at Orange County as being the center of this.”
“As relates to the technology sector and the medical technology sector, in those industries, that is really where the growth is going to be transpiring,” Lantgen said. “What you’ll see cascading around it will be the supplemental and supporting industries.”
“Technology, software firms, software industries, as well as the medical technology space, I think that’s where we’ll continue to see tremendous growth here,” he said, looking ahead to the next six to 12 months.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a couple big announcements coming up in the next three to four months on some large expansion investments being made here in the region,” Lantgen said of the tech and med-tech sectors.
Airport Area Dominates
Seventy percent of the recent tech leasing activity since the start of 2018 occurred near the John Wayne Airport, while 50% of the overall large block leasing took place there, the JLL report said.
“This isn’t your parents’ Orange County … tech leads all in large block leasing activity,” according to JLL’s report.
