Alpharetta office largest nationwide for E-Trade

“Our employees like being here. There’s affordable real estate, we’re near a major airport, the transportation network is great and the climate is great," said Smith, who lives in Milton. "People like being here and generally don’t like to leave.”

E-Trade, in fact, has its largest office in Alpharetta, where it employs 22 percent of its total work force, or 700 of 3,200 employees.

The New York-based, publicly traded company is known for its online brokerage and retail stores, such as the one on Peachtree Road in Buckhead.

The company also helps companies manage their stock option plans, E-Trade spokeswoman Alison Cahill said. That includes 20 percent of the companies on the S&P 500 and about 15 Atlanta-based companies.

E-Trade first moved to Alpharetta in 1998, Smith said, to build a data center and customer service operation.

Over time, the Alpharetta operations have grown to become E-Trade’s largest companywide, he said.

Economics played a role in renewing the lease now, Smith said, even though the contract for 131,000 square feet wasn’t up until 2012.

“The assumption is that real estate prices would go up between now and then and it would be more advantageous to re-up now,” Smith said.

E-Trade is committed to the location, in part, because it is across the street from a data center the company built in the late 1990s, he said.

Alpharetta, which is home to offices for the Coca-Cola Co., General Electric and Hewlett-Packard, has a high office vacancy rate, according to a third-quarter report by real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

The company reports that 20.5 percent of the north Fulton County city's 17.8 million square feet of office space was vacant at the end of the quarter.

Metro Atlanta’s vacancy rate was slightly higher, at 22.2 percent of 140.2 million square feet of office space.