California · Market Intelligence
California Feasibility Studies
An independent, lender-grade feasibility practice for California across SBA 7(a) and 504, USDA Rural Development, EB-5, and conventional capital. This page is our standing, sourced read on where California markets are oversupplied, how deals actually get funded by region, and where California feasibility studies fail review.
A statewide California number is indefensible.
California rewards feasibility work and punishes shortcuts. It is the world's fourth-largest economy, yet it is not one market but six non-substitutable mega-economies: the San Francisco Bay Area, Greater Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, San Diego, the Central Valley and Sacramento, and the rural North State.2 The signature divergence is that the same asset class behaves in opposite directions across them. Class-A industrial is digesting oversupply in the Inland Empire, where vacancy rose to about 7.8 percent in Q1 2026, while infill Los Angeles and Orange County run below 3 percent; multifamily is recovering in San Francisco on AI-led return-to-office while digesting a supply wave in the Inland Empire.713 A single statewide capture rate misprices nearly every deal.
The state is vast and unevenly settled. California reached 39,529,000 residents as of January 1, 2025, a third consecutive year of growth driven by international migration even as net domestic out-migration hit 288,600 in 2025.1 The defining demographic fact is coastal-to-inland migration: Los Angeles County lost about 64,000 residents in 2025 on the wildfires and out-migration while Sacramento led all counties at roughly plus 9,000.1 Los Angeles is not the Inland Empire; San Francisco is not the Central Valley; neither resembles San Diego's biotech coast. We underwrite California region-by-region, against the current pipeline, the regional funding channel, and the California-specific factors most studies miss.
What follows is organized as a working desk: a live oversupply monitor, a funding-routing map, the review failures that sink California studies, the regulatory edges that decide outcomes — the no-CON healthcare market with its HCAI seismic mandate, the nation's most acute wildfire-insurance crisis, and the AB 1482 rent regime alongside the 2025 CEQA reform — and a per-region demand fingerprint. Every figure is dated and attributed in the sources below.
Where California markets stand, region by region.
A supply-pressure read for each region and asset class, refreshed each quarter from named primary sources. A dash means we hold no current tracked reading, not that the market is balanced. Regional reads are Q1 2026 unless noted; data current to Q2 2026.
| Region | Multifamily | Self-Storage | Industrial | Office | Hotel Pipeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SF Bay Area | BalancedSF/SV tightening, AI RTO | Undersuppliedhigh land cost | Balancedtighter than IE | Recovering29.2% avail., AI-led | Recoveringled US RevPAR growth |
| Los Angeles | Balancedfire-pressure tightening | UndersuppliedSan Gabriel <2 sf/capita | Undersuppliedinfill sub-3% | OversuppliedDTLA ~34%; Century City tight | Balanced2028 Olympics upside |
| Orange County | Balancedmixed 2025 deliveries | Undersupplied | Undersuppliedavail. sub-3%, $1.75–2.10 | No read | BalancedDisneyland ~72% occ. |
| Inland Empire | Digesting95.4% occ., supply wave | Undersuppliedwatch new dev. | Digesting7.8–8.6% vac. | No read | No read |
| San Diego | Balancedsupply-constrained coast | Undersupplied | Balanced | Oversuppliedlab vac. 14.3% | Balanced73.9% occ., highest in CA |
| Sacramento | Balancedled CA counties +9,000 | Undersupplied | Balancedemerging distribution | No read | No read |
| Central Valley | Balancedaffordability growth | Undersupplied | Balancedemerging affordable box | No read | No read |
Readings compiled from sources 3–18 below. Vendor vacancy estimates for the same market can differ; each figure is attributed at its point of use.
Industrial: the Inland Empire is digesting a historic supply wave
The Inland Empire is the second-largest industrial market in the United States at roughly 756.9 million square feet, and after booming to near-zero vacancy in 2020–2022 it is now digesting.9 Q1 2026 vacancy reads diverge by vendor — CBRE put its Inland Empire Core direct vacancy at 7.8 percent with taking rents of $1.08 triple-net; Cushman & Wakefield reported 8.6 percent at $1.02 average asking; Kidder Mathews showed 7.2 percent direct vacancy and 12.7 percent availability with asking rents near $1.00 triple-net, down 10.7 percent year over year and leasing down 49 percent.789 Sublease space near 20 percent of availability is keeping rents soft with concessions. Infill Los Angeles and Orange County run the opposite way: Orange County availability sits below 3 percent at $1.75 to $2.10 triple-net, and Chino direct vacancy was about 3.2 percent at $1.26.13 The Central Valley is emerging as the affordable distribution alternative as the Inland Empire filled up. Underwriting either the Inland Empire on its 2021 near-zero vacancy or infill Southern California on the Inland Empire's digestion is a failure mode.
Ports and tariffs: the dominant industrial risk variable
The San Pedro Bay complex, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and the demand engine behind California logistics. Long Beach set an all-time record of 9.9 million TEUs in 2025, and Los Angeles moved a record 1,019,837 TEUs in July 2025 on tariff frontloading before volumes fell in September, Los Angeles down 7.5 percent and Long Beach down 3.9 percent year over year.11 China's share of Long Beach cargo slipped from about 70 percent in 2019 to roughly 60 percent in 2025 as sourcing shifted to Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, and the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates projected January 2026 national volume down 16.1 percent year over year.12 Tariff and trade whipsaw is the dominant risk variable for any California industrial pro forma.
Office: San Francisco's AI recovery, Los Angeles's bifurcated distress
San Francisco office has inflected from the post-2020 "doom loop" to an AI-led recovery, but remains structurally distressed. Availability fell from 35.6 percent in Q1 2025 to 29.2 percent in Q1 2026, the largest year-over-year improvement in the nation, on 3.8 million square feet of Q1 2026 leasing, the strongest quarter since 2014.3 Kidder Mathews put overall vacancy at 28.0 percent with net absorption of positive 855,000 square feet and asking rent of $48.70 full-service gross.4 AI firms drove about 30 percent of leasing since 2023 and more than 75 percent of net absorption, now occupying roughly 7 million square feet, about 12 percent of occupied office.5 San Francisco-metro startups raised $152.5 billion in venture capital in 2025, 65 percent above the prior record, with San Francisco plus Silicon Valley accounting for 52.3 percent of all U.S. venture dollars.6 Downtown Los Angeles moves the opposite way, with overall vacancy near 34 percent against about 14 percent in 2019, while Century City runs 12 to 12.3 percent at the region's highest rents around $7.67 per square foot — a flight-to-quality bifurcation, not a uniform recovery or a uniform collapse.14
Multifamily: coastal recovery, inland digestion, one rent regime
Multifamily divides on the same coastal-versus-inland line. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are tightening on AI return-to-office; Los Angeles reads balanced with underlying pressure toward undersupply after roughly 11,160 units were lost to the Eaton and Palisades fires; and the Inland Empire is digesting a supply wave, with occupancy down three straight quarters to 95.4 percent and average rent at $2,320, though 2026 deliveries are projected near 2,900 units, down 27 percent from 2025.110 The statewide overlay is the rent regime: AB 1482 caps annual increases at 5 percent plus regional CPI, to a maximum of 10 percent, on most housing older than 15 years, with the cap running 6.3 to 7.7 percent for August 2025 through July 2026, and stricter local ordinances override it in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, and elsewhere under Costa-Hawkins. Proposition 33, the third attempt to repeal Costa-Hawkins, failed 62 to 38 percent in November 2024.22
Life sciences: the overbuilt lab correction
California is the largest U.S. life-sciences market — South San Francisco, the birthplace of biotech, and San Diego's Torrey Pines and UTC clusters — and the 2021–2022 lab boom overbuilt. National lab vacancy reached 23.2 percent in Q1 2026 with 1.1 million square feet of negative net absorption and a fifth straight quarterly rent decline to about $67 per square foot.15 San Diego lab vacancy jumped from 5.7 to 14.3 percent year over year with average asking rents down 7.2 percent to $6.02, and Bay Area landlords are now pursuing conversions rather than holding for lab demand.16 Combined with a healthcare market that carries no Certificate of Need and the HCAI seismic mandate, California life-science and medical real estate needs the most careful segmentation in this series.
Self-storage, student housing, and hotels: the undersupplied cases
Not everything in California is oversupplied. Self-storage is generally undersupplied against the roughly 7.0-square-foot national benchmark, running about 6.5 square feet per capita statewide with 78 percent of California cities below the line and the San Gabriel Valley under 2, a function of high land costs and restrictive zoning.17 Student housing is acutely undersupplied: the University of California and California State University systems carry more than 30,000 students on housing waitlists annually, UC Berkeley houses only about 20 percent of students and CSU roughly 10 percent.18 Hotels are stabilizing, with statewide room revenue projected up 5.2 percent in 2026 to $28.2 billion at an average daily rate near $196; San Diego holds the highest California occupancy at about 73.9 percent, and Los Angeles carries strong medium-term upside into the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.2627
How a California deal actually gets funded.
Feasibility work exists to satisfy a specific reviewer. Knowing which district and channel funds your asset in your region is half the battle. This is the routing most feasibility pages never publish.
| District office | Region covered |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles | Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties |
| San Francisco | 14 Northern California counties, Santa Cruz to the Oregon border |
| San Diego | San Diego and Imperial counties |
| Orange County / Inland Empire (Santa Ana) | Orange County plus Riverside and San Bernardino |
| Sacramento (Citrus Heights) | 21 northeastern California counties |
| Fresno | San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast, 15 counties |
On the 504 side, California is served by statewide Certified Development Companies led by TMC Financing, the nation's number-one SBA 504 lender for five consecutive years, which approved 548 loans and $2.4 billion in total project financing in fiscal 2025, and CDC Small Business Finance, now part of Momentus Capital, one of the largest mission-based 504 lenders with more than $20 billion cumulative; Capital Access Group and Southland Economic Development Corporation are also active, and competing claims to be the largest are self-reported and unresolved without the SBA data file.29 On the 7(a) side, Live Oak Bank was the number-one lender in California at roughly $381.9 million across 326 loans and the number-one lender nationally at about $1.8 billion in fiscal 2025, with Newtek, U.S. Bank, Celtic Bank, and Los Angeles-based Lendistry among the leaders, and California-headquartered banks such as East West Bank, Bank of Hope, Hanmi, Cathay, and Preferred concentrating on Asian-American business lending.30 California is the number-one SBA state in the nation, at roughly $4.8 billion across about 9,700 loans in calendar 2025.30 For rural credits, USDA Business and Industry guaranteed loans route through the California Rural Development state office in Davis, and despite the state's urban population, vast areas of the Central Valley, North State, and deserts are USDA-eligible.32 The decisive new tool is the July 4, 2026 decoupling of the 7(a) and 504 caps to $10 million combined, the highest in agency history.31
- Coastal high-cost owner-user CRE in SF, Silicon Valley, or San DiegoSBA 504 via TMC Financing (NorCal) or CDC Small Business Finance (SoCal), first mortgage via East West Bank, Wells Fargo, or Bank of Hope.
- Inland Empire logistics or industrial owner-userOrange County/Inland Empire District Office; 504 via CDC Small Business Finance or TMC; conventional or CMBS for larger boxes.
- Central Valley agriculture or food processingUSDA Rural Development (Davis) Business & Industry and REAP, paired with the Fresno District Office for 7(a).
- Korean-American or Asian-American-focused deals in LA, SF, or San DiegoBank of Hope, Hanmi, Cathay, Preferred, or East West Bank.
- A business acquisition plus real estate on one deal, after July 4, 2026Stack a 7(a) up to $5M and a 504 up to $5M for $10M combined; sequence the 7(a) first.
How California feasibility studies fail review.
Each failure below is tied to a real California number. These are the recurring reasons a California study loses credibility with a lender or agency, engineered out of our deliverables before they ship.
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Statewide-average error
Underwriting a "California average" fails everywhere: the state is six non-substitutable mega-economies, and in 2025 Los Angeles County lost about 64,000 residents while Sacramento led all counties at roughly plus 9,000. A single capture rate cannot span tech Bay Area, entertainment and logistics Los Angeles, logistics Inland Empire, biotech San Diego, and the ag Central Valley.1
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Office doom-loop misread
Underwriting California office on pre-2020 assumptions is catastrophic — San Francisco reached about 35 percent availability and downtown Los Angeles about 34 percent — but the AI-driven San Francisco recovery to 29.2 percent means underwriting a uniform collapse is now also wrong. Nuance between trophy and commodity product is mandatory.314
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Wildfire and insurance mispricing
The January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed 19,918 structures, and the FAIR Plan grew to 610,179 policies and $649.4 billion of exposure by June 2025, paying more than $2.7 billion and levying a $1 billion assessment; State Farm took an emergency 22 percent rate increase. Any California pro forma that omits extreme, rising insurance cost and availability is not defensible.192021
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Industrial oversupply blindness
Citing California logistics strength while ignoring the Inland Empire digestion — vacancy at 7.8 to 8.6 percent, taking rents off roughly 10.7 percent year over year, leasing down 49 percent — produces lease-up curves the market will not support. The ports' tariff frontloading and subsequent volume declines compound the risk.79
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Life-science over-optimism
Modeling lab or biotech absorption to the 2021 boom ignores a hard correction: U.S. lab vacancy hit 23.2 percent in Q1 2026, and San Diego jumped from 5.7 to 14.3 percent year over year with asking rents down 7.2 percent. South San Francisco and San Diego are oversupplied, not tight.1516
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No-CON and HCAI seismic error
Assuming California has a Certificate of Need process is simply wrong — the state repealed CON in 1987, so hospitals, ASCs, imaging, and skilled-nursing beds are market-driven and carry elevated oversupply risk. The real hospital-supply constraint is the HCAI January 1, 2030 seismic mandate, which a study that treats California like a CON state will miss entirely.2425
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Entitlement and cost-structure error
Underwriting timelines without both the CEQA gauntlet and the 2025 AB 130/SB 131 infill exemption misprices the schedule in both directions, and ignoring Measure ULA's 4-to-5.5-percent Los Angeles transfer tax or Prop 13's carrying-cost lock-in misstates the capital stack and exit.233334
The California rules that decide feasibility outcomes.
Four regulatory realities separate a California study that survives review from one that does not. The first is the one competitors most often state wrong.
No Certificate of Need, but the HCAI 2030 seismic mandate
California has no Certificate of Need program — it repealed CON in 1987 — so hospitals, hospital and skilled-nursing beds, ambulatory surgery centers, and imaging are not permit-gated, and healthcare-facility supply is market-driven, producing elevated oversupply and competition risk. This is the opposite of the CON states in this series, and more complete than Texas because there is no nursing-bed carve-out.24 Competitors who assume a California CON process are simply wrong. The real constraint is the HCAI seismic mandate: under the Alfred E. Alquist Hospital Facilities Seismic Safety Act and SB 1953, hospital buildings must be capable of remaining operational after a major earthquake by January 1, 2030, or cease patient services. A 2019 RAND study estimated statewide compliance cost at $34 billion to $143 billion, and only about 45 percent of buildings were on track as of early 2025. In September 2025 the Governor vetoed a blanket five-year extension and signed AB 869, allowing only small, rural, or distressed hospitals a delay of up to three years.25
The wildfire-insurance crisis after January 2025
California property insurance is the signature underwriting factor, worsened by the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, which destroyed 19,918 structures with insured losses estimated at $35 billion to $45 billion by CoreLogic/Cotality and $28 billion to $35 billion by Verisk.19 The FAIR Plan, the insurer of last resort, grew to 610,179 policies and $649.4 billion of exposure by June 2025, up 42 percent in nine months, paid more than $2.7 billion on the Palisades and Altadena fires, and drew a $1 billion assessment on member insurers in February 2025, of which $500 million may be passed to policyholders.20 Seven of the twelve largest insurers limited new policies and State Farm took an emergency 22 percent increase; the Commissioner's Sustainable Insurance Strategy now allows catastrophe models and reinsurance costs in rates in exchange for wildfire-area coverage, and the Governor signed a FAIR Plan stabilization package in October 2025.21 Modeling extreme, rising premiums and availability is mandatory on any California deal.
Rent control, Measure ULA, and the Prop 13 tax structure
AB 1482 caps annual rent increases statewide at 5 percent plus regional CPI, to a maximum of 10 percent, on most housing older than 15 years, with just-cause eviction, and stricter local ordinances override it in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Berkeley, and Santa Monica under Costa-Hawkins; Proposition 33 failed 62 to 38 percent in November 2024.22 On the tax side, Proposition 13 caps property tax at 1 percent of assessed value with 2-percent annual increases and reassessment on sale, keeping carrying costs low for long-held assets while creating transaction lock-in; the top marginal income-tax rate is about 13.3 percent, the highest in the nation.33 In the city of Los Angeles, Measure ULA imposes a 4-percent transfer tax on sales of $5 million to $10 million and 5.5 percent above $10 million, and UCLA and RAND found it cut affected transactions 30 to 50 percent and roughly 1,910 apartments a year — a deal-structure-altering levy.34
Tailwinds in the sponsor's favor
Three recent changes cut the other way. AB 130 and SB 131, signed June 30, 2025, created a statutory CEQA exemption for urban infill housing on sites up to 20 acres with a 30-to-60-day approval shot-clock — the most significant entitlement change in decades;23 AB 132, signed June 27, 2025, expanded the Film and TV Tax Credit to $750 million a year with a 35-percent base credit, refundable for the first time;35 and the SBA raised its combined 7(a)-plus-504 ceiling to $10 million effective July 4, 2026, materially enlarging bankable deal size.31
Eight California markets, eight demand fingerprints.
Each region carries its own economic base and its own supply position. These are the units of analysis for a California study, and each anchors a dedicated market page.
San Francisco Bay Area
Global AI and venture capital, biotech, and finance. San Francisco startups raised $152.5 billion in venture capital in 2025, and office is recovering as availability fell to 29.2 percent — the nation's #2 office investment target, but still structurally distressed.36
Los Angeles
Entertainment, the San Pedro Bay ports, aerospace, and tourism across a market near 12.8 million. Los Angeles County lost about 64,000 residents in 2025 on the wildfires and out-migration; downtown office is distressed near 34 percent while the 2028 Olympics anchor the hotel upside.11427
Inland Empire (Riverside–San Bernardino)
The West's logistics backbone and the second-largest U.S. industrial market at about 756.9 million square feet. Now digesting a historic supply wave: industrial vacancy 7.8 to 8.6 percent and multifamily occupancy down to 95.4 percent, powered by coastal in-migration.910
San Diego
Life-science, Navy and defense, the border, and tourism across roughly 3.3 million residents. The lab-oversupply story is acute — vacancy jumped from 5.7 to 14.3 percent year over year — while hotels hold the highest occupancy in the state near 73.9 percent.1626
Orange County
High-cost coastal housing and supply-constrained infill industrial, with availability below 3 percent at $1.75 to $2.10 triple-net. Anaheim hospitality runs near 72 percent occupancy on Disneyland demand, well above the national line.1326
Sacramento
State government and the affordability-growth capital of California, boomed on coastal out-migration and led all counties at about plus 9,000 residents in 2025. Multifamily reads balanced and industrial is an emerging distribution alternative.1
Central Valley (Fresno / Bakersfield)
The most productive U.S. agricultural region and an emerging affordable distribution alternative as the Inland Empire filled up. USDA Business & Industry and REAP are central here, and SGMA groundwater limits tie ag-industrial demand to water availability.32
Silicon Valley / San Jose
Technology, data centers, and life-science. Silicon Valley led all U.S. markets with 9.7 million square feet of tech leasing in 2025, but Santa Clara data centers are power-gated — two newly built centers sit idle awaiting grid power.536
California feasibility studies by asset class.
Each asset class carries its own California demand drivers, from the Inland Empire logistics cycle to wildfire insurance to the no-CON healthcare market. Explore the analytical approach by property type.
- Industrial & Warehouse Feasibility Studies
- Multifamily Feasibility Studies in California
- Hotel Feasibility Studies in California
- Self-Storage Feasibility Studies in California
- Medical Office & ASC Feasibility Studies
- Assisted Living Feasibility Studies
- Cold Storage Feasibility Studies in California
- Express Car Wash Feasibility Studies
- Retail Feasibility Studies in California
- Event & Wedding Venue Feasibility Studies
California feasibility study questions.
Does California require a feasibility study for an SBA loan?
Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, a feasibility study is discretionary rather than universally mandated, and lenders commonly require one for special-purpose properties and startup or ground-up projects that lack operating history. California is the nation's largest SBA market, with a heavy concentration of special-purpose and owner-user collateral, so feasibility analysis is frequently expected on California SBA credits.
Does California have a Certificate of Need law?
No. California repealed its Certificate of Need program in 1987, so hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging, and skilled-nursing beds are not CON-gated and supply is market-driven, which raises oversupply and competition risk relative to CON states. The real hospital-supply constraint is the HCAI seismic mandate under the Alquist Act and SB 1953: the January 1, 2030 deadline for hospital buildings to remain operational after a major earthquake. In September 2025 the Governor vetoed a blanket five-year extension and signed AB 869, allowing only small, rural, or distressed hospitals a delay of up to three years.
Which California real estate markets are oversupplied right now?
As of Q1 2026, Inland Empire industrial is digesting a historic supply wave with vacancy near 7.8 to 8.6 percent by vendor and rents off roughly 10.7 percent year over year, and life-science lab space is oversupplied in South San Francisco and San Diego, where San Diego lab vacancy jumped from 5.7 to 14.3 percent. Downtown Los Angeles office is oversupplied near 34 percent vacancy. San Francisco office is recovering, not balanced, with availability down from 35.6 to 29.2 percent on AI leasing, while self-storage is broadly undersupplied statewide.
How does California's wildfire-insurance crisis affect feasibility?
The January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed 19,918 structures with insured losses estimated at $35 billion to $45 billion, and the California FAIR Plan grew to 610,179 policies and $649.4 billion of exposure by June 2025, up 42 percent in nine months, paying more than $2.7 billion on those fires and levying a $1 billion assessment on member insurers. Seven of the twelve largest insurers limited new policies and State Farm took an emergency 22 percent rate increase. Modeling extreme, rising insurance cost and availability is mandatory for any California deal, especially in the wildland-urban interface.
Who funds SBA and USDA loans in California?
California has six SBA district offices, the most of any state: Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County/Inland Empire, Sacramento, and Fresno. SBA 504 credits route through statewide Certified Development Companies led by TMC Financing, the nation's number-one 504 lender for five consecutive years, and CDC Small Business Finance. Live Oak Bank led both California and national 7(a) dollar volume in fiscal 2025, and California ranks first nationally for SBA lending. USDA Business and Industry loans route through the California Rural Development state office in Davis.
How is a California feasibility study different from a national one?
California is not one market but six non-substitutable mega-economies, more internally divergent than any state, so the same asset class is digesting oversupply in the Inland Empire while supply-constrained in infill Los Angeles and Orange County, and recovering in San Francisco office while distressed in downtown Los Angeles. A defensible California study is built region-by-region against the current pipeline, the SBA district channel, and California-specific factors most studies miss: the no-CON healthcare market with the HCAI 2030 seismic mandate, the wildfire-insurance crisis, the AB 1482 rent regime, and the 2025 CEQA reform.
Underwriting a California project? Start with the market read.
Feasibility Study Company prepares independent California feasibility and market studies, built to the standard your lender or agency applies. A methodology briefing walks through the analytical framework, the deliverable composition, and the current California market data for your region and asset class — including the wildfire-insurance, seismic, and entitlement factors that decide California outcomes.
Request a methodology briefingData sources and dates.
Every figure on this page traces to a named authority. Real-estate readings are point-in-time and vendor-dependent; where vendors disagree, the range is shown and each is attributed at its point of use.
- California Department of Finance, Report E-1 (population 39,529,000 as of January 1, 2025; county population change; approximately 11,160 units lost to the Eaton and Palisades fires; net domestic out-migration 288,600 in 2025), released 2025–2026.
- International Monetary Fund, via the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom (California the world's fourth-largest economy, April 2025); Public Policy Institute of California, domestic migration (2025).
- Savills, San Francisco office market report (availability 35.6% in Q1 2025 to 29.2% in Q1 2026; Q1 2026 leasing 3.8M sf).
- Kidder Mathews, San Francisco office market report (Q1 2026 overall vacancy 28.0%, net absorption +855,000 sf, asking rent $48.70 FSG).
- CBRE, San Francisco office and AI-leasing analysis, via Bloomberg (Q1 2026; AI ~30% of leasing since 2023, >75% of net absorption, ~7M sf occupied); Silicon Valley tech leasing 9.7M sf in 2025.
- PitchBook–NVCA Venture Monitor, via San Francisco Examiner (January 2026; $152.5B venture capital in 2025; San Francisco plus Silicon Valley 52.3% of U.S. venture dollars).
- CBRE, Inland Empire industrial report, IE Core (Q1 2026; direct vacancy 7.8%, taking rents $1.08 NNN).
- Cushman & Wakefield, Inland Empire industrial report (Q1 2026; 8.6% vacancy, $1.02 average asking).
- Kidder Mathews, Inland Empire industrial report (Q1 2026; 7.2% direct vacancy, 12.7% availability, asking ~$1.00 NNN, down 10.7% YoY, leasing down 49%); market size ~756.9M sf via socalcrepros (April 2026).
- CBRE, Inland Empire multifamily report (Q1 2026; occupancy 95.4%, average rent $2,320); Northmarq, Inland Empire 2026 supply forecast (~2,900 units, down 27%).
- Port of Long Beach, State of the Port (January 2026; record 9.9M TEUs in 2025); Port of Los Angeles monthly volumes (record 1,019,837 TEUs, July 2025; Los Angeles −7.5% and Long Beach −3.9% in September 2025 YoY).
- National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates, Global Port Tracker (January 2026 national volume down 16.1% YoY; China share of Long Beach cargo ~70% in 2019 to ~60% in 2025).
- CBRE, Orange County and Los Angeles infill industrial (2025; Orange County availability sub-3%, rents $1.75–$2.10 NNN); DAUM Commercial, Chino industrial (Q1 2026; 3.2% direct vacancy, $1.26 asking).
- CBRE, downtown Los Angeles office (~34% vacancy, up from ~14% in 2019); Savills, Century City office (Q2 2026; 12–12.3% vacancy, $7.67/sf); Bank of America Plaza and One California Plaza distressed trades.
- CBRE, U.S. life-science lab report, via Bisnow (Q1 2026; lab vacancy 23.2%, 1.1M sf negative net absorption, rent ~$67/sf).
- JLL, San Diego life-science report (Q1 2025; lab vacancy 5.7% to 14.3% YoY, asking rent down 7.2% to $6.02/sf); Bisnow, Bay Area lab conversions (June 2026).
- US Storage Centers, California self-storage per-capita analysis (2025; ~6.5 sf/capita statewide vs. ~7.0 national, 78% of cities below benchmark, San Gabriel Valley under 2 sf/capita).
- CoStar, University of California and California State University student-housing shortage (October 2025; 30,000+ annual waitlist; UC Berkeley ~20% housed, CSU ~10%); California AB 893 (2025).
- CoreLogic/Cotality, January 2025 Los Angeles wildfire loss estimates (January 16, 2025; 19,918 structures destroyed, insured losses $35B–$45B); Verisk ($28B–$35B) and Moody's ($20B–$30B) estimates.
- California FAIR Plan data, via AM Best and Digital Insurance (July 2025; 610,179 policies and $649.4B exposure in June 2025, up 42% since September 2024; more than $2.7B paid on the Palisades and Altadena fires; $1B member assessment, February 2025).
- Independent Institute, California insurance-market analysis (May 2025; seven of the twelve largest insurers limited new policies; State Farm emergency 22% rate increase; surplus $4B in 2016 to $1.04B at year-end 2024); Governor's FAIR Plan stabilization package, AB 226 and AB 1 (October 6, 2025).
- California AB 1482 (Tenant Protection Act of 2019, Civil Code §§1946.2 and 1947.12); caps via the California Apartment Association calculator (6.3%–7.7% for August 2025–July 2026); Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act (1995); Proposition 33 failed 62%–38%, via KQED (November 2024).
- California AB 130 and SB 131 (signed June 30, 2025; CEQA infill exemption, Public Resources Code §21080.66); SB 158 cleanup (October 11, 2025).
- National Conference of State Legislatures, Certificate of Need State Laws (California repealed CON in 1987; a non-CON state).
- California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI); Alfred E. Alquist Hospital Facilities Seismic Safety Act (1983) and SB 1953 (1994); January 1, 2030 operational deadline; AB 869 (signed September 2025); HCAI Program Information Notice 80 (March 2025); KFF and HealthLeaders (October 2025); RAND compliance-cost study (2019, $34B–$143B); HCO News (February 2025).
- Tourism Economics and Visit California, 2026 travel forecast (May 2026; statewide room revenue +5.2% to $28.2B, ADR +2.9% to $196; San Francisco RevPAR ~$142); CoStar hotel occupancy (San Diego 73.9% 12-month through April 2025; Anaheim ~72%); Blackstone acquisition of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco ($279M, June 2026).
- LA28 and the Los Angeles mega-event calendar (2026 FIFA World Cup, 2028 Summer Olympics); LAX capital program (~$20B); Los Angeles hotel-worker minimum wage phasing toward $30/hr by 2028.
- U.S. Small Business Administration, California district office directory (2026; six district offices, the most of any state).
- TMC Financing, via PR Newswire (October 2, 2025; the nation's #1 SBA 504 lender for five consecutive years, FY2025 548 loans and $2.4B in total project financing); CDC Small Business Finance / Momentus Capital ($20B+ cumulative); Southland Economic Development Corporation.
- SBA 7(a) lender activity, calendar-2025 FOIA data via GoSBA/PeerSense (Live Oak Bank #1 in California ~$381.9M/326 loans and national #1 ~$1.8B in FY2025; Newtek, U.S. Bank, Celtic Bank, Lendistry, East West Bank, Bank of Hope); California #1 nationally, ~$4.8B across ~9,700 loans.
- SBA Policy Notice 5000-879058 (combined 7(a)-plus-504 cap of $10 million, effective July 4, 2026); FY2025 program totals via Bankrate (February 2026).
- USDA Rural Development, California state office, Davis (State Director Bryan Anguiano, appointed May 19, 2025); USDA land-eligibility summary.
- California Proposition 13 (1978), 1% assessed-value cap with 2% annual increases and reassessment on sale; Proposition 15 split-roll failed (2020); California income tax top rate ~13.3% and corporate rate 8.84%.
- Measure ULA, City of Los Angeles transfer tax (4% on sales $5M–$10M, 5.5% above $10M; effective April 2023); UCLA Lewis Center and RAND analysis (April 2025; affected transactions down 30–50%, ~1,910 fewer apartments per year); Los Angeles City Council action (July 2026).
- California AB 132 (signed June 27, 2025; Film and TV Tax Credit expanded to $750M per year, base credit raised to 35%, refundable for the first time).
- City of Santa Clara data-center White Paper (May 2025); idle newly built Santa Clara capacity awaiting grid power, via Bloomberg and Tom's Hardware (November 2025).