How Lease Expirations are Impacting Used Office Furniture Supply...

In the past three days I have had the opportunity to look at more quality used office furniture then I've seen in the past three years. The two inventories I looked at shared a lot of characteristics:

• Both were in excess of 75 offices (combination of cubicles and private offices)
• Both had been purchased within the last five to seven years by Fortune 1000 corporations
• Both were located in the same East Bay city (in fact literally across the street from each other)
• Both were being liquidated due to corporate "consolidation"

These inventories were a sharp departure from the mortgage and residential real estate left-overs that have been filling up the local landfills for the past eight years. Interesting that everyone expects there to be an abundance of used office furniture available right now, but the fact is that the Bay Area in general, and the East Bay in particular ran on mortgage and residential real estate after the Dot-Com bust. These industries in general bought the cheapest products available, so there simply hasn't been a consistent supply of quality used office furniture since late 2004.

Now I'm wondering if all that is about to change...The companies that called me in to review their inventories are not distressed, they appear to be going through an orderly "wind-down" of these particular sites, which is clearly tied to their lease expiration. The products were all A-Grade, both in terms of design and the way the offices were planned. I'm thinking that we may see a rise in the quality and quantity of available used office furniture in the Bay Area, as we see the leases signed by large users in the 2000 to 2005 era expire.