This is the real reason for companies wanting people back to the office.
All this talk about collaboration and team spirit is just the publicly given reason for wanting people back to the office.
The real reason is that now the owners of the buildings are losing money.
Cry me a river.
Let those banks burn. I could not care less. Let the commercial real estate market burn with em.
We don’t need them.
You do know if that sector fails, so does your pension, and probably a whole load of the economy.
Price of doing business. :)
No but seriously, it’s a bit annoying that these guys are holding everyone hostage in a way. If they don’t make bank, we all suffer? Seems wrong.
I work IT on a union contract. I’m building a pension. My cousin retired at 48 from his union mechanic job and now makes 50% pay until he dies.
You should consider a union.
Not really. The office market is not that huge and the vacancies overall are also not that bad. It’s not like every single office is suddenly empty.
On the flip side: where these offices are located, housing is extremely expensive, so you could transform some offices to apartments, pivot projects currently in construction and maybe even demolish some older buildings.
These headlines are just a sign that the current management class is utterly incapable of reacting to anything but “line go up”. They can’t understand that they can’t exploit their way out of this for once.
Turning office space into living space is often mentioned in discussions like this. It should be noted that converting the space is not as easy as it seems. In particular, moving the plumbing infrastructure to support individual bathrooms and kitchens is extremely challenging and it makes some projects impracticable.
Didn’t you and I already debate this?
Your argument is no different than saying the stone chipping business will collapse because pesky bronze smelters are making swords.
A broad portfolio doesn’t have a particularly heavy real estate position. Maybe some state pension schemes are - I think you mentioned the Canadian one last one - but it’s not like the office buildings become worthless from one day to then other. Some will remain occupied offices, some will convert into residential accommodation. Others will get torn down and redeveloped. The economy will adapt.
A collapse of the commercial real estate market would spill over to the larger market and most certainly impact any investments you have. We don’t really want banks to go under in big ways, it always ends up hurting the poor and middle class the most.
