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San Francisco Office Brokerage Team

Walker | Vix Team
Contact

Jim Walker

Senior Vice President T 415.229.8910 LIC N° 01750435 jim.walker@kidder.com vCard View Profile

Scott Vix

Senior Vice President | Shareholder | CCIM, SIOR T 415.309.4015 LIC N° 01407761 scott.vix@kidder.com vCard View Profile

Martin Melbardis

Senior Vice President T 415.229.8912 LIC N° 01244511 martin.melbardis@kidder.com vCard View Profile

Kate Schmitz

Associate T 415.229.8905 LIC N° 01998222 kate.schmitz@kidder.com vCard View Profile

With more than 90 years of experience in the Bay Area, our veteran brokerage team of James Walker, Scott Vix, Martin Melbardis and Kate Schmitz specializes in landlord representation of historical low and mid-rise buildings and commercial sales in the San Francisco Union Square, Mid Market, Jackson Square, and North Financial District sub-markets. Our team has completed over 2,000 transactions with a total value in excess of 1.5 billion dollars.

 

team walker icons

 
Working as a team affords us distinct advantages over agents and brokers who work individually. We bring to the table a broad set of skills that allow us to provide not only cutting-edge marketing for our clients’ assets but also a deep understanding of the tenant pool, including requirements under 10,000 square feet, that fit their building.

Our Approach

We use a proactive marketing approach in identifying and securing new tenants for our clients. That approach includes the following:

1. We invest in our clients’ projects by providing cutting edge specific building branded websites, drone exterior and interior videos, professional photos, and 3D virtual tours to pre-qualify any potential tour candidates and provide maximum marketing exposure for the listing.

2. Leveraging the marketing over multiple platforms such a CoStar, LoopNet, Craigslist, Crexi, Tenx, etc.

3. Unlike other firms and leasing teams, we actively track tenants in market under 10,000 square feet and identify tenants either by preferred industries, similar square footage and/or buildout requirements as our listings in order to reach out to tenants on a direct basis.

4. We engage the brokerage community on a weekly basis with our marketing in the form of broker blasts and direct follow up concerning potential tenants they have in or coming to market.

5. Weekly reporting to our clients tracking both inbound inquiries, tours and direct tenant out-reach.

Kidder Mathews is the largest fully independent commercial real estate firm in the Western U.S., with over 900 real estate professionals and staff in 19 offices in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. We offer a complete range of brokerage, appraisal, asset services, consulting, and debt & equity finance services for all property types.

Meet the Team

jim walker team member headshot

Jim Walker is a licensed California real estate broker specializing in tenant and landlord on leasing matters with an emphasis on office requirements. With over 20 years of experience in the Bay Area market, Jim has successfully completed over 500 leasing transactions as a tenant specialist with companies ranging from small venture funded start-ups to publicly traded. This level of transaction experience allows him to advise his clients on market conditions and provide sound advice when approaching term and lease negotiations.
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scott vix team member headshot

Scott is a dedicated commercial real estate agent with 21 years of experience leasing and selling commercial buildings in San Francisco. He has successfully executed 500+ client transactions totaling more than 5,000,000 square feet. Scott is focused on representing small to midsized office and industrial buildings owned by individuals, families, and investment companies. He is a licensed California Real Estate Salesperson, Certified Commercial Investment Member CCIM, and a member of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors SIOR.
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Martin Melbardis has almost three decades of commercial real estate experience in San Francisco representing both building owners and tenants. Most of his work has been in the San Francisco Bay Area, although he has had several national and regional tenant representation assignments, leading to the completion of transactions across the country. Martin has represented office tenants ranging from early technology startups to Fortune 500 companies. Among building owners, Martin has represented prominent local landlords as well as several large institutional landlords.
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kate schmitz team headshot

Kate Schmitz joined Kidder Mathews in January of 2018. Working on the brokerage team, Kate represents a broad spectrum of industries throughout the Bay Area and specializes in industrial, retail, office and medical space.
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Team Stats

90+
Years of combined experience
1500+
transactions completed
$1.5B
Overall transaction total

Select Client List

  • 28 Geary Associates LLC
  • 450-466 Geary LLC
  • 944 Market LLC
  • Britphil & Co
  • Castle Global
  • Claudio Mariani
  • Folsom Properties
  • K&H California
  • M&E LLC
  • Mitsubishi International
  • Moore Investment Partners
  • Venice Beach Town Home
  • Westlake Realty
  • Wingsky LLC

Featured Properties

Available Properties

The team specializes in landlord representation of historical low and mid-rise buildings and commercial sales in the San Francisco Union Square and North Financial District sub-markets. See what properties we currently have available.

View Available Properties

Success Stories

 

Testimonials

John Ortesi

Property Manager, Wildis North America Corp.

Our real estate organization needs to always be prepared to navigate the ever-changing real estate market. Therefore, it is essential to have real estate professionals that can cater to our requirements by forecasting emerging trends, offer market insights, identify favorable opportunities or pitfalls and, most importantly, provide steady, sound and reliable advice.

In this regard, we are pleased to have a very good existing business relationship with Jim Walker and Scott Vix of Kidder Mathews who handles our office leasing at our property in San Francisco, CA. Through our interactions with both Jim and Scott, they have been responsive, responsible, dedicated and hard working. These good qualities and their ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with other real estate professionals, which is the outcome of their many years of experience and business connections in the real estate industry, resulted in our property attaining optimal rent and, most importantly, attaining 100% occupancy.

I would highly recommend Jim and Scott to any real estate organization that they might represent in the future. I am confident the said organization will receive the same good qualities, care and attention that we have experienced with them.

Katherine Bella

Chief Executive Officer, Mechanics’ Institute

The team at Kidder Mathews has been a delight to work with. We began our partnership as our organization began coming out of the pandemic, with many of our offices needing to be leased as a result of changing work patterns of Bay Area professionals. Through a comprehensive understanding of our institution, Class B historic buildings, the financial district neighborhood, and the changing factors in the market, Paul, Jim, Scott and Bruce have made a great impact for us. In a neighborhood that currently still carries a 60% occupancy rate, ours is at 80% and climbing. We have a building filled with happy and interesting tenants and a revenue stream that allows us to sustain and grow as a San Francisco nonprofit.

Marty Smith

President & Owner, Alhouse Deaton

I’ve worked with Jim for many years as the leasing broker for several of the properties that we manage in San Francisco. He and his team are really pros. They understand the market and more specifically the properties that are the direct competition to our buildings. Most important, they deliver results fast and keep our buildings full. Their attentiveness to our properties is greatly appreciated by our management team and the property owners. It’s great working with Jim. I would recommend Jim and his team to anyone.

Sandi Hyman

Folsom Properties

The words leasing broker can sometimes conjure up a sense of dread however, working with Scott Vix over the past 10 years has been an exception to the rule. Prior to Scott assisting our family real estate portfolio, assistance was pitiful. He has been the consummate professional from day one.

Not only did Scott take our occupancy from 75% to 100%, he did it with integrity and respect for all parties utilizing his exceptional verbal and written skills. Even after tenant transactions were complete, tenants always spoke highly of Scott's abilities.

In my experience, Scott has proven himself to be an honest and hard­working man who also happens to love his family. I trust him without hesitation and would highly recommend him.

Bay Area News & Recent Trend Articles

 

Bay Area Market Reports

San Francisco Office Report Newsletter

Q4 2024 Market Overview

The San Francisco office market recorded its first quarter of positive absorption since Q4 2019. Positive absorption for the quarter came in at a little over 300,000 square feet.

Tenants in market (TIM) requirements remained level at 6.5 million square feet, for Q4. This tenant activity is still at the highest level since 2021. Citywide vacancy rates decreased this quarter by 50 basis points and currently stand at 35%, while the market-wide availability rate continued to remain flat at 39%. The Kastle “back to work” barometer showed a recent four-week peak usage average of 48.2%.

Leasing activity for Q4 2024 totaled 2.0 million square feet, slightly up from the 1.60 million square feet leased in Q3. Total leasing activity for the year was 8 million square feet. Driven by tech, especially AI groups along with continued “flight to quality” especially for the North Financial, South Financial, and Jackson Square submarkets. The San Francisco office market continues to have a large block (spaces 50,000 square feet or larger) vacancy issue. This segment accounts for more than half the total vacancy in the market.

We continue to see a bifurcated market where the majority of leases (just under 70%) have been in Class A buildings. This is down from Q3 where Class A accounted for 87% of leasing activity. North Financial had another good quarter of leasing activity, accounting for over 150,000 square feet of Q4 positive net absorption. The bulk of leasing activity continues to be in the North & South Financial and Mission Bay/China Basin submarkets.

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For archived reports, please contact the team.

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