08/24/2026
In-N-Out Just Made One of LA's Biggest Office Deals This Year. That Should Change How You Read the "California Exodus" Headlines.
Every few months another headline tells you California is bleeding companies to Texas and Tennessee. Sometimes it's true. Often it's a lot more complicated than the headline. This week's example is about as SoCal as it gets.
In-N-Out just leased an entire 98,000 square foot office building at San Dimas Corporate Park in LA County, about ten miles from the Baldwin Park drive-thru where the company was founded in 1948. It's the third-largest office lease signed in LA County over the past year. In-N-Out is moving its headquarters back to LA from Orange County, closing the loop on a relocation the company announced roughly a year ago and plans to fully complete by 2029.
Here's the twist that makes this worth paying attention to instead of just smiling at. In-N-Out is simultaneously opening a roughly 100,000 square foot office near Nashville to support its eastward expansion into the Southeast. Read a headline about that piece alone and you'd write "In-N-Out plants flag in Tennessee, California loses again." Read the whole story and it's the opposite. In-N-Out isn't leaving. It's growing in two directions at once, doubling down on its Southern California roots while it expands somewhere new. That's not flight. That's a company big enough to do both.
The timing matters too. This lease landed during one of the roughest stretches the LA office market has seen, tenants have given back about 1.9 million more square feet than they've leased over the past year, according to CoStar. A company making a generational, multi-decade real estate bet on LA County in the middle of that environment is a signal worth more than the vacancy stat itself.
This fits a pattern CBRE flagged in its 2026 headquarters relocation research. Intrametro moves, companies relocating within the same metro rather than leaving it, are rising nationally as businesses rethink how much space they actually need in a hybrid world. Locally, you can see it everywhere if you're watching for it. Targus relocated its Anaheim headquarters literally across the street, downsizing its office footprint from 200,000 square feet to 84,000 while upgrading its warehouse operations with taller ceilings and tighter racking to store more product in less space. UST just opened a new headquarters office in Aliso Viejo. Global law firm Goodwin is relocating its downtown LA office to the Arts District while simultaneously opening a new San Diego office this summer. Irvine-based Connected Dealer Services just relocated to a bigger headquarters in the same city.
None of these companies are leaving Southern California. They're all restructuring how much space they use and where within the region they use it, smaller, smarter, better located, more efficient. That's a fundamentally different story than the one the interstate relocation headlines tell, and it's the one that actually matters if you're trying to understand what's happening to the office market you occupy.
If you're a founder or executive evaluating your own footprint this year, the real question isn't whether to stay in Southern California. Almost nobody credible is asking that question. The real question is whether your current space still matches how your company actually operates, and whether a smarter intrametro move, like Targus, like In-N-Out, like Goodwin, could free up capital or improve your operations without uprooting your team or your client relationships.
Every few months another headline tells you California is bleeding companies to Texas and Tennessee. Sometimes it's true, although the reasons vary wildly. This is quite the opposite. In-N-Out just leased an entire 98,000 square foot office building at San Dimas Corporate Park in LA County, about
