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I wonder how much of it is driven by the company leadership owning very expensive real estate that would lose a lot of value once tech workers are not forced to
by vhold 5y ago
I wonder how much of it is driven by the company leadership owning very expensive real estate that would lose a lot of value once tech workers are not forced to spend money into those rental or real estate markets.
- todd3834 5y agoThis is an interesting angle I hadn’t considered but I think their net worth is likely pretty diversified. If not then weighted on stocks over real estate.
- doopy1 5y agoI think it's that the companies themselves own expensive real estate, campuses, etc.... not necessarily the leadership.
- Frost1x 5y agoIt's probably, to some degree, a mixture of both. Rarely ever do decision makers not factor their own interests into their decision making process or skew/distort the situation to their advantage in some way so it's not as clearly linked to their self-interest.
- rocketpastsix 5y agoOr renting very expensive office space in various cities that have harsh terms for breaking said lease.
- sdevonoes 5y agoCan't they just sell real estate? I mean, remote working is not a thing for the vast majority of jobs out there, so office space is still a valuable asset. So if you are in IT and have offices that are not going to be used (because your employees want to work from home) then just sell/rent it to other companies in which their employees cannot work from home.
- bamboozled 5y agoWho would buy the real estate if everyone works from home?
- sdevonoes 5y agoAs I said: not everyone can work from home. IT? Sure.
- walkedaway 5y agoResidential zones are always in demand. No reason commercial can't be rezoned, and developers are always looking for prime locations.
- treis 5y agoThey could but Apple will look pretty dumb spending 5 billion on the spaceship only to sell it a few years later for (presumably) a lot less.
- nwatson 5y agoA cult with huge pockets would love the Apple spaceship. Perhaps one could timeshare to multiple cults.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ekster 5y agoYou could convert it into weird housing and make a mint. Rich people would line up to own a condo there.
- GoOnThenDoTell 5y agoIt’d certainly be an interesting landmark to live in
- 5y ago
- matz1 5y agoThis is why zoning is really bad. Those company could have converted some of those space into housing. Provide it to the employee as benefit for cheap/free. I believe quite significant number of employee would happily live on campus.
- bigbillheck 5y agoLots of office space is simply not suitable for conversion into living space.
- matz1 5y agoWhat I mean by conversion including demolishing the office building and building apartment instead not just retrofit existing office building to be a living space.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoOne step closer to a company town. And makes the prospect of a job change that much more painful.
- matz1 5y agoYes, it can be painful but not necessarily have to. Its not like there is no way to mitigate the pain.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoHow does one mitigate the pain of having to move out of company housing because of a job change?
- matz1 5y agoOne way, the company could maybe give some amount of money to help with the moving out cost or maybe allow for the employee to stay for a bit longer while they looking for new place to live.
- spenczar5 5y agoThe weird thing is that residential prices have gone way up, even in cities. It’s been a great year for the value of Seattle homes (https://www.seattlepi.com/realestate/article/seattle-2021-housing-market-projection-15825083.php https://www.seattlepi.com/realestate/article/seattle-2021-ho...). So I don’t think this has to do with executives protecting home values. It might be about the business protecting the value of office buildings, though - if they own them, and don’t rent, anyway.
- eunos 5y agoIsn't that caused by 0 interest rate mostly?
- Mikeb85 5y ago0 interest rate as well as all the stimulus money flowing through the economy. People are looking for places to put their money to not lose out to inflation and most investments reached all time highs already. So investors are looking for pretty much anything to buy - look at crypto (even shitcoins gained tons of value), real estate around the world, etc... in addition to equity markets.
- nonameiguess 5y agoAs others have said, it is likely the companies themselves owning giant, expensive, heavily-branded campuses that weren't designed with modularity and reselling in mind. However, making decisions based on this is a pretty classic sunk-cost fallacy. The cost of continuing to use the campus won't be any higher because it's half-empty.
- edem 5y agoI'm 95% sure that most of those companies have 5+ year contracts they can't cancel so they will keep trying to force people into the office.