{"id":111384,"date":"2025-02-26T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/real-estate\/tiktok-shines-in-a-struggling-office-market-despite-possible-ban\/"},"modified":"2025-02-26T15:00:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T15:00:50","slug":"tiktok-shines-in-a-struggling-office-market-despite-possible-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=111384","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Shines in a Struggling Office Market Despite Possible Ban"},"content":{"rendered":"


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What will happen to TikTok if it is banned in the U.S.? It seems everyone is asking that question, not just the younger folks worried about their feed. The question is particularly important for office real estate, as TikTok has been one of the few tech companies aggressively investing in office space. The Senate recently passed a bill forcing its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell or ban it. President Biden signed the bill into law. What happens next will be a complicated process that could drag on for months or even years. The law allows TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. if ByteDance sells it within 270 days, which the president could extend to a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Congress passed the bill because of national security concerns about TikTok\u2019s Chinese ties. Lawmakers have cited the risks that the Chinese government could access sensitive data from ByteDance belonging to its 170 million American users or spread propaganda. While the messy fight over the ban continues, the popular app will likely continue functioning for U.S. consumers.<\/p>\n

ByteDance has vowed to challenge the law in court, and the Chinese-owned company hasn\u2019t backed down in the ongoing tussle. During TikTok\u2019s recent annual spring pitch to marketers in Manhattan, a company official said TikTok considers the ban unconstitutional. \u201cWe believe the facts and the law are clearly on our side and that we will ultimately prevail,\u201d said<\/a> Blake Chandlee, TikTok\u2019s president of global business solutions. \u201cI want you to know we are not backing down.\u201d The company hasn\u2019t filed a lawsuit yet, but it\u2019s near-certain it will.<\/p>\n

Many American users of TikTok wonder what will happen to the app, but office landlords of spaces that TikTok occupies have their own questions. For a company with a precarious future in America, TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have not acted like they\u2019re about to be banned.<\/p>\n

While other tech firms shrink their office footprints, TikTok reportedly plans to rapidly grow theirs in the U.S. by hundreds of thousands of square feet. The company is discussing a lease in Nashville for over 100,000 square feet in one of the city\u2019s newest developments in the heart of Music Row. TikTok has leased space in a Nashville WeWork location for the past two years while it searches for more permanent space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The social media company is close to finalizing a deal that would double its existing space in Bellevue, a Seattle suburb. TikTok will lease about 132,000 square feet at the Lincoln Square North tower, vacated by American-based tech giant Microsoft. In San Jose, California, TikTok is working on a sublease agreement to expand its footprint there too. It currently subleases about 660,000 square feet from Roku and is looking for potentially more than 357,000 square feet of additional space. Elsewhere, TikTok leases office space in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, according to CoStar.<\/p>\n

TikTok hasn\u2019t finalized any of these deals, so they could still fall through. However, the company\u2019s intention to grow its office footprint is welcome news for landlords accustomed to tech tenants cutting space in recent years. After years of bolstering office footprints, big U.S.-based tech firms like Google, Meta, and Apple are drastically downsizing their office presence across the nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to CBRE, office space listed for sublease in 30 cities with a high concentration of tech tenants has risen to the highest levels in at least a decade. Tech firms that are renewing or adding new space also want less than before. CBRE reports the amount of new office space that tech companies leased decreased by almost half in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared with 2019. TikTok is a breath of fresh air in a struggling U.S. office market.<\/p>\n

A hardline approach to RTO<\/h2>\n

Unlike the big American-based tech firms, TikTok has plenty of room for growth. The company only employs about 7,000 people in the U.S., and its office footprint is far less than the bloated size of companies like Google and Meta. Meta has 62 offices across the U.S., while Google has 35 U.S. offices and retail locations. Apple boasts that it employs over two million Americans, primarily at its retail locations. Globally, Tiktok\u2019s parent company, ByteDance, employs more than 110,000 people, but its presence in the U.S. is much smaller than that of American-based tech giants.<\/p>\n

Another reason TikTok wants to expand its U.S. office presence is its aggressive return-to-work policy. Last fall, the company rolled out an app called MyRTO, which was built into its internal software to monitor employee badge swipes. It asks workers to explain absence on days they\u2019re supposed to be in the office. A dashboard with the tracking data is visible to workers, their supervisors, and human resources staff. TikTok told its employees that disregarding return-to-office policies may result in disciplinary action and affect performance reviews.<\/p>\n

Many U.S.-based companies have pushed for a return to the office, but TikTok\u2019s more authoritarian stance is rare. Google has asked most of its workers to be in the office three days a week and has said it will use badge swipes to identify prolonged absences. Google even indicated office absences could be incorporated into performance reviews. However, few American firms have created custom dashboards like TikTok that show daily logs of badge swipes.<\/p>\n

TikTok\u2019s attitude toward in-person work is likely influenced by its Chinese ownership. Data shows workers in the Asian-Pacific region have largely returned to the office, much more than American employees. \u201cFor companies, especially where they have leadership based in this region, they probably don\u2019t see what the big deal is because they\u2019ve been doing this for well over a year,\u201d said<\/a> Zach Dunn, the founder of hybrid work management company Robin. TikTok\u2019s hard-line stance on return to work is another plus for U.S. office owners. With a stricter push to get employees back to their desks, TikTok values office real estate perhaps more than rival American firms.<\/p>\n