17 ms·

Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

153 points by rathertrue 4y ago

rvieira 4y ago
Mandatory Arthur C. Clarke predicting the future in 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajlLeTgrEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajlLeTgrEg
skizm 4y ago
I’m wondering the best way to invest in NYC property more without directly buying it. I seriously doubt the prices will stay depressed for long. Is finding the right REIT my best bet here?
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wmeredith 4y ago
From the abstract, “We revalue the stock of New York City commercial office buildings taking into account pandemic-induced cash flow and discount rate effects. We find a 32% decline in office values in 2020 and 28% in the longer-run, the latter representing a $500 billion value destruction.” Is that value “destroyed”? Is it not unlocked to flow elsewhere? I’m genuinely curious about the dynamics of this.
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  You'd need to have already been equally* in residential and commercial, which are well siloed throughout all sorts of property-related industries, in order to break even and serve as a conduit for the transfer of value. *Whatever optimal point.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    An individual investor would need to have that balance to not lose value, sure. But a society as a whole, is the $500B "destroyed"? Or is there a transfer from the property owners to the businesses that no longer rent the space? The NPV of those decreased rent costs may just happen to be about $500 billion, right? Not to mention the value gained by all the no-longer-commuting workers.
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- cortesoft 4y ago
  Whether value was 'destroyed' or not depends on how you look at it. $500 billion dollars worth of assets were lost by the owners of the real estate; that value is gone, and it didn't go to someone else. It just vanished. The value didn't disappear because it transferred to someone else, it went away because the asset itself become less desirable and valuable to other people. You can imagine it being like if a farmer had a bunch of grain stored in a silo and it somehow went bad. The value of the grain is gone, because no one wants rotten grain; it isn't like someone else now has that value. Sure, the other farmers will sell more of their crops, but they still have to grow that food in addition to the rotten food... there is no efficiency gained or extra production in the economy. The money spent on that commercial real estate is gone. Those big fancy buildings will have been wasted resources and effort.
  - chii 4y ago
    there's more to it though. Real estate doesn't "expire" like grain. It can be repurposed, but it would require some capital investment. As an analogy, the grains could be fermented and turned into spirits. And as an addendum, the value lost in the commercial real estate could be potentially considered as transferred - let's say a business either gets a cheaper rent, or stops renting offices (after this is why these commercial real estate valuation is lowered), then those businesses saved money and thus that money saved is what got "transferred".
    - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
      If NYC office space in a high rise, it cannot just be repurposed for something else.
      - Taniwha 4y ago
        like WFH capable apartments ....
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      - 4y ago
- jmtulloss 4y ago
  They are exaggerating it by not including the increases in value elsewhere, but there is "value" destroyed. The flow to other places is not as high as what was lost. I think this is due to the perceived value of proximity not keeping up with technology. The "real" value of proximity fell as technology improved, and that was exposed during the pandemic. It's more of a correction than outright destruction, but it's not wrong that the overall asset class lost value.
  - xkgt 4y ago
    It will be interesting to observe what this means for growth of cities. In the last 100 years, city sizes increased while staying within Marchetti's travel time budget [1] (1 hour for round trip) thanks to higher speeds available through motorized transport. Now that technology is redefining proximity once again, I wonder what factors will continue to encourage/discourage people to live in dense cities. 1 - http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/scan/MARCHETTI-052.pdf http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/scan/MARCHETTI-052.pd...
  - koshnaranek 4y ago
    If we look at the most extreme case where everybody had an office or at least a desk and then everybody moves to homeoffice 100% then it massively decreases then demand for property in general. Everybody already has a home. Even if more people buy bigger homes then or rent a personal office, lots of former office space will be converted for other uses.
- MichaelBurge 4y ago
  Real estate people tend to borrow a lot of money. Minimum 70% LTV = 3x leverage = a 33% decline wipes out all their equity. And especially in big cities the "high-quality" real estate is usually break-even and all profit is made on appreciation, so any drop in income might mean some of them can't hold the property. If they have to sell their properties and take a huge loss, it doesn't really affect you or me - it just means a different group of rich people will become the new landlords. But the old landlords won't like it, and it probably qualifies as news.
- faangiq 4y ago
  Yes value was destroyed by these deals/builds not properly accounting for risk of a shift to WFH. Basically all the companies involved lit money on fire to the tune of $500b. Other areas benefited but this was pure vaporization of money.
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  So far, I suspect every dollar lost on commercial real estate has been gained on residential. In many cases, the uplift in residential value is directly attributable to WFH (e.g. where a home office or more rural property becomes more desirable.)
  - seadan83 4y ago
    How does thus work? I still live in the same place as before. If anything, less people want to live here because proximity close to work is less important. Some places gained value for sure, I think Bend Oregon is a very notable example. I don't think it is 1:1 as not everyone up and left where their office became a ghost town.
- sbrother 4y ago
  Living in a resort town in Utah, I’m fairly sure a large portion of that value was transferred to Mountain West residential real estate
  - seadan83 4y ago
    Pink cars are all the rage and sell for +20% One day pink is viewed as bad and now blue is the color to have. So now blue cars sell for +20% and pink sell for +0% The extrinsic value is arguably transferred, but if you are holding a pink car, you're down in value that was just lost due to a loss in extrinsic value. A"transfer" is a bit tortured imo because the change in value was not 1:1. Some WFH areas gained a lot more comparatively than other locations lost, and vice versa
- richardw 4y ago
  House prices in areas people would rather live have all gone up. Those houses also play the role of offices 3-5 times a week. I’m not sure if it makes up for the loss in commercial real estate though, but I’d say some destruction of value and some transfer of value.
- nomilk 4y ago
  And if everyone quit smoking it would cause the "destruction" of billions of value in the tobacco industry.
  - richardfey 4y ago
    Exactly. Until someone starts to calculate the compound healthcare and welfare costs.
    - seadan83 4y ago
      Generally the tobacco industry does not pay those costs. Hence, relative to the tobacco industry, it would be a vaporization of value
  - nomilk 4y ago
    I take from the downvotes that people thought this was serious. Its absurdity was intended to show how misleading the use of the word "destruction" is when talking about economic costs derived from things that are no longer needed. Being more healthy, or more efficient, is unequivocally good!
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  I think the whole thing becomes more clear when you remember that price is an indication of how desirable things are relative to other things rather than an indicator of intrinsic value. If you have an asset which used to be desirable but is no more, its market value is indeed just destroyed and not transferred. It doesn’t necessarily impact the price of other goods.
- richardfey 4y ago
  I was about to comment on the same passage. The value has moved into housing real estate that can serve as a remote working place *and* into the less quantifiable quality of life improvement. This is the same bias used in GDP calculation vs happiness, it's a huge topic, look it up for more information.
- kolp 4y ago
  One way of looking at the "destruction" of the value of the property is based on Net Present Value of future rent payments. Let's take one hypothetical building, its owner and its tenant. The market value of this building (not its construction cost) is the Net Present Value of future rent payments to be made by a tenant to the owner. There is a scheduled, anticipated transfer of value from tenant to owner based upon the agreed market rental value of the building. When the agreed market rental rate declines, the amount of value to be transferred from tenant to owner declines and consequently, the present value of those future payments is lower. This is the basis for journalists or commentators to say that value has been destroyed. But, the value hasn't been "destroyed"; it has been transferred to the tenant in the form of the net present value of his rent reduction.
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  Perhaps one could say that the value was adjusted downwards. It wasn't an actual thing that was destroyed - rather, a dynamic equilibrium has changed. "Value was destroyed" has all the wrong connotations - it sounds like something somebody had a moral right to was maliciously, well, destroyed.
- Angostura 4y ago
  The value of buggy-whip stocks was certainly destroyed with the advent of the motorcar.
cortesoft 4y ago
It will be interesting to see what happens to our cities if WFH stays/becomes the norm. So much of modern city design is built around the office, what happens when that isn't the case?
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  Sweet ass apartments in office buildings I hope.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    Will people still want to live in cities as much if you can work from home?
    - xboxnolifes 4y ago
      If it's affordable, yes. Generally speaking, the only thing that keeps me away from wanting to live in a major city is paying 3x the price, for 5x less space. Most other parts of city life can be nice.
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    - chii 4y ago
      Cities are also where most social gatherings happen, esp. for younger people. If these unused offices could be better as apartments, i don't see a decline in how cities being a great place to be.
    - prawn 4y ago
      I think so. Some portion of the population likes the density and walkability of a city. If you take away a lot of commuting traffic, it's unlikely to get less liveable. I co-own a small city office and we've always assumed redeveloping as three-storeys with residential above commercial would be our long-term plan. It's a short walk to dozens of restaurants/cafes/pubs, short walk to a chemist, small supermarket, florist, and so on. Two blocks from large parks and running/cycle tracks, etc.
superfrank 4y ago
I'm curious to see how this plays out in the long term since data they're using is from 2020. In late 2020 I remember reading tons of articles about how people were fleeing the city causing apartment rental prices to plummet. Now, two years later, most of my friends who rent are paying as much as, if not more than they were paying pre-covid and the apartment buildings I can see into look as full as they ever were (anecdotal evidence, I know). Personally, I don't see a way for commercial prices to come back if WFH is here to stay, but a lot of people are incentivized to think of a solution and I've been surprised before. I think we should get another year or twos worth of data before we start calling it an apocalypse.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Here’s your data; Covid definitely slowed rent growth during 2020 but throughout 2021 and 22 it looks like it’s back in full-swing, with >15% YOY in 2021 and similar growth predicted for 2022. https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data
- olingern 4y ago
  Rent is way up in Brooklyn as of late 2021. I decided to leave nyc because renewing my lease came with a significant rent hike to the “pandemic deal” I got. Commercial-wise, I can’t see it recovering to pre-pandemic levels. I’m not seeking an office out and I know many friends / former coworkers that are happy not in an office
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IAmGraydon 4y ago
I’m a believer in reversion to the mean, and I think that’s what we will see with the office market and work from home. The technology to work from home existed before the pandemic. Why didn’t it take off before the pandemic if it works so well? We didn’t suddenly discover a new technology here. The use of that technology was precipitated by a transient force, and when that force is removed completely, things will return to the previous equilibrium. It will take years for the mentality to revert, however. That’s my take. Smart investors will acquire office properties during this time.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  respectfully disagree. knowledge, just like innovation cannot be reverted. it hadn't taken off before the pandemic since we were living under a purposefully driven illusion of the necessity of office work. just like food delivery, employers, just like workers now have the knowledge that wfh works. thus workers will always have the leverage of having competitive companies that know it does offering it.
- lolinder 4y ago
  > Why didn’t it take off before the pandemic if it works so well? We didn’t suddenly discover a new technology here. The use of that technology was precipitated by a transient force, and when that force is removed completely, things will return to the previous equilibrium. Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that working from home has always been better but that there was enough friction preventing a move in that direction that it didn't happen until covid forced it to. If that's the case, then we don't expect a reversion because the friction preventing the initial adoption is gone.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Well some of that is also regional, as the "forced" was a region by region, and job by job type of impact. For me, my employer only had about 3 mo's collectively from 2019 to 2022 where full time work from home was even an option, and zero months where it was required and the offices where shut down. I think there is a perception that all employers, everywhere were required to go full time work from home, that simply is not the reality
deleted 4y ago
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Syonyk 4y ago
> We show that the pandemic has had large effects on both current and expected future cash flows for office buildings. And this is why loans charge interest, for the "I have no idea what's going to happen but I don't believe you that this enterprise is entirely risk free" sort of reasons. Though I think we've generally managed to decouple the concept of "risk/reward" in loans/investment/etc, in favor of "I'm guaranteed returns, come hell or high water!" However... on the topic of office space, I can only say, "Well, those chickens sure went home to roost." I can't fault office workers for not wanting to go back to the circle of Hell that a modern "open office" floorplan is. And I don't blame them in the slightest for seeing through the "spraying fountain of crap" that are management's supposed justifications for it. "Serendipitous encounters" happen with offices. But they happen in the places where people go to hang out when they want those encounters, when they want a break from the peace and quiet needed to actually do work. I expect a lot of workers just want to hear management say, once, "You know, it's cheaper to squeeze you in tighter and buy a few more desks than to buy more office space." Though it doesn't explain why the new office space has 500 foot sightlines... Over the years, I've had almost every office configuration one can have, with the notable exception of a proper cubicle. Frequently, I would have nearly killed someone for a cubicle. Offices with doors are great, and even if you have to share them with someone, as long as there's good space to work and spread things out, they're wonderful. Door closed, I'm working. Door open, come and chat. "Team work areas" are fine, if all the people in the room are on the same team. They tend to develop work patterns and cycles, so you know that some hours are light work time with some social interaction, some are heads down hours. Of course, it's amazing just how fast the couches, coffee tables, bookshelves, whiteboards, etc can disappear to cram more people in when the team expands. And then there's the open office hell that is just horrible for the exact sort of work that tech types are paid good money to be good at - what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work." The sort of stuff where, done right, you can disappear into a problem for 6 hours, and come up with something good. The open office reality is more, "If you can get half an hour of actual concentration, with something loud screaming in your headphones, you're having a good day." And I've been able to compare the two states, because my current office (full time remote) is the "Solar Shed" - an 8x12 Tuff-Shed that's entirely off grid, and entirely my own workspace. I now can, and do, manage the "My wife has to ping me for dinner because I've lost all track of time with some problem" days. I came to it from open office, and the contrast couldn't be more extreme. So, yeah. If office spaces were good places to get work done, I expect a lot more people would be interested in going back. But they're not. And even a poor quality WFH space is often better than "always loud, always people talking, can't get an hour of good concentration in" open office hell. A good WFH space? Nobody has offices like that anymore.
faangiq 4y ago
There are a lot of insolvent investors out there that have been papering over this somehow. When the music stops it will be insanely brutal.
dkokelley 4y ago
I'd love to see office spaces transformed into other useful spaces: Parks, cultural centers, entertainment, residential space, etc. Some office space could still be used as a coworking space for people who don't want to work from home. The land didn't disappear. Only the need for a specific use has changed.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Redevelop the office space as residential space. Our cities are flush with office space but are squeezed for housing. Sounds like a win / win.
- cookiengineer 4y ago
  Get rid of roads while we're at it. There are better and more efficient ways to transport goods into the city.
  - jasper_fitussi 4y ago
    Wait, what?
    - cookiengineer 4y ago
      Ask yourself how much infrastructure exists only for the purpose of commuting. You'll be amazed by the statistics. There's also lots of interesting satellite data about how clean the air in cities world wide got when COVID lockdowns started. [1] We don't need roads in cities. And definitely not multi-lane roads. [1] https://maps.s5p-pal.com/ https://maps.s5p-pal.com/
      - spiderfarmer 4y ago
        You’re so disconnected from reality. Ask yourself how many people are unable to work remotely. If you can’t think of enough examples to justify roads, go outside more.
        cookiengineer 4y ago
        Are factories now built downtown or am I missing something? Do you think that cities of the future rely on cars or on more efficiently scaleable means of transportation - like trains, subways and trams? > Ask yourself how many people are unable to work remotely. Please elaborate. Personally, I don't think there's any elected mayor on the planet that has "moving more factories inside the city" on their agenda. Note that I was specifically arguing about office spaces. And everyone in an office space can work remotely. I'm not arguing about politics, I'm arguing that technologically there's no need for office spaces inside the city. It's a societal expectation that doesn't make sense anymore and isn't necessary. What COVID showed us is that most if not all of the tasks that were done in offices before can be done remotely just fine. Additionally it showed us how quiet and livable cities can get when there's no traffic jam of commuters.
dmpetrov 4y ago
I'd like to see a research of WFH impact to people's spendings. Many households have to pay extra for more space to have a home office while companies pay less :)
- ghaff 4y ago
  As with many things, averages are pretty worthless. You mostly have two primary costs. - Possible upgrades to living space so that you can "lend" your employer an office. - Possible significant time/cost savings by not having to commute. Mostly these aren't borne by the same people.
- spangry 4y ago
  It's just anecdotal, but I found myself unintentionally saving money like crazy when I was WFH during lockdown due to not selling out every day for fuel, parking and buying lunch. But then again I'm someone who always pays the 'disorganisation tax'. I'm sure people with more optimised spending (e.g. catching the bus, bringing their lunch in from home etc.) didn't see as much of an effect.
  - dmpetrov 4y ago
    Well... I need to rent a property with +1 bedroom to WFH. It is a substantial family spending.
asimpleusecase 4y ago
This has an impact not just in rents for office buildings but the entire ecosystem of support businesses that sell to workers who come into city centre to work. One example. Small organic food shop, that sold mostly to office workers and has seen a 70% drop in foot traffic. The same thing hits bars, cafes, restaurants, theatres and other venues. Those very things that make living near or in a city interesting for many people. In my case, precovid I thought a city centre apartment could be kinda nice, no commute, nice vibe and lots of access to amenities. But now much of that vibrant ecosystem is gone. Why would someone want to live in a converted office in such a setting? And if you house people who only have no other options - aren’t you just creating a type of ghetto?
- DougN7 4y ago
  Is this true? Won’t the businesses go where the people are? So more organic shops and cafes in the suburbs? Or if the office building is turned into housing, all the people would be back again, and not just from 9-5, so the businesses would follow, right?
- PestoDiRucola 4y ago
  > Those very things that make living near or in a city interesting for many people Most of the time, the types of bars and restaurants that rely on office workers as customers are not going to be the type of bars and restaurants you'd go in your free time when going out with friends.
- yakak 4y ago
  I know a few areas that were gentrified in earlier times and ended up with things more suited for residents of a certain class than commuters. I also know of other downtown locations that became terrible to live in because a grocery store was uneconomical use of space. I'd generally say that if they can fill it to a good density it can have a good local market compared to suburbs with poor density.
  - betwixthewires 4y ago
    But how do you fill it to a good density when the cost to live there is higher and there's no need to live there to earn a living anymore?
farmin 4y ago
I'm hearing it already start to reverse in Sydney at least. So a bunch of people bought houses up the coast thinking they could work from home after covid pushing value of houses up and commercial down. But turns out people can't be trusted and and companies want people back in the office and they can't sell these coastal houses for same price they bought them for. Anecdotal of course. I have no data.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  All of the non tech people I know in Australia are now back in the office. I think we might see a halt in new office construction, but existing offices do look like they will eventually fill up. And a lot of the big names like Apple and Tesla have signalled that in office work will resume.
Animats 4y ago
Section 3.4, "Identifying the Persistence of Work From Home", is weird. They are trying to calculate the persistence of work from home based on data about what rents on high-quality office space did during the pandemic: "A key parameter in the calibration is p, which governs the persistence of remote work. 13 We identify this parameter as follows. We assume that the economy transitioned from the no-WFH expansion state (the E state) in 2019 to the WFH state and a recession (the WFH-R state) in 2020. We compute the model-implied return on the NYC A+ office market in this transition (using the A+ calibration)." Why this should be a valid predictor for post-pandemic / endemic periods is not clear at all. These guys have a data set of office rental data, and seem to be trying to infer way too much from it.
betwixthewires 4y ago
This is just the beginning of a wider shift that will destabilize domestic economies worldwide, particularly in well developed nations, if the trend continues. It's not just urban office buildings. It starts there, then it leads to deurbanization, increased populations in less urban areas, a more flat population distribution. Why live in a city unless your job requires it? All the other perks of a city only really apply if you actually need to be there to sustain yourself. It will lead to several big cities filing bankruptcy, most service businesses in dense cities going broke, city services unable to continue to function. Information workers are the core of a city's economy, all service oriented businesses cater to them. Once they're gone, the service workers go too, it's a cascading process of the collapse of big cities. When they said the internet was going to revolutionize humanity they weren't kidding around. Overall it will be a good thing, but the process will be very painful.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  > Why live in a city unless your job requires it? Huge variety of shops in walkable proximity, great public transport network, vibrant cultural life, plenty of opportunities to socialise. Why would you want to live outside of a city?
  - blhack 4y ago
    >vibrant cultural life It's so funny that you say this. From my perspective the vibrant cultural life happens outside of the city. In the city everything is permitted and controlled. If you want interesting stuff, you have to get out of the city for it!
  - betwixthewires 4y ago
    I do live outside of a city, and I do it for the lack of traffic, less crime, lower cost of living, being surrounded by the natural outdoors, and less stressful culture. But you missed my point. All those perks of living in a city are great, if you need to be there to earn what you earn. without that, the high cost of living simply isn't justified. Even if people want to be there, they'll make financial and economic decisions. And once those people start leaving, all those shops and bars and bodegas and what not that cater to them will go belly up. Then their owners and employees will leave. There goes your vibrant cultural life and opportunities to socialize. The flip side is that you'll find more of those things in less densely populated areas as this shakes out, and cost of living will rise as well outside of cities, but not by nearly as much, because the diaspora will be spread out.
TheGigaChad 4y ago
kkfx 4y ago
My cynic and caustic view: office buildings will became social houses for new poor witch will happen to be far more than today, wealthy from large cities migrate toward new places around some new or existing services and all such buildings have actually to be built, along a bit of needed infra. So real estate simply refocus from large and expensive buildings to smaller single houses, not much less expensive for their buyer while in raw materials terms they cost FAR less, who really loose are those who actually live in large cities, can't buy a new home in a good place, all who have jobs around offices (like restaurants, bar, ... and all shops in the shopping center areas nearby large offices areas). Of course, those who came first might fall because it's an uncharted territory, those who came second normally prosper benefiting from those who came first, who came third and beyond... Sorry, you are too late...
asiachick 4y ago
My uninformed solution is, at least in SF, they should re-zone all of the financial district and union square. If the first floors were cafes and shops and the upper floors where apartments and the top floors restaurants, patios, lounges, they'd revitalize that part of town. It's dead at the moment.
danjac 4y ago
I wonder if wfm in the UK has significantly impacted newspaper readership from the drop in commuters (particularly the Metro, which is targeted at casual commuter readers) that proprietors and editors - and their flying monkeys in the government, including the Prime Minister - are writing thundering columns in their papers denouncing work from home as some kind of apocalyptic threat to the economy in general.
alkonaut 4y ago
Does anyone work for a company that has reduced its office space but not headcount due to wfh? Most seem to still be working remotely from too large offices while companies are figuring out what to do.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  My employer started shifting to a work from home model about five years ago. They were shedding office space as quickly as they were able to get out of leases. I think that slowed down with covid because before the pandemic they were able to easily find other companies eager to take over leases. On the rare occasion I go into a company facility, it's notable how dead they are, with plenty of excess space. This was true even before covid. I know they were planning on putting up some of the company owned facilities up for sale back in 2019 but I think that's been put on hold now that they market has dropped.
hizxy 4y ago
Does anyone really know the impact on productivity? I work for a remote-first company (never had an office) and things move so slow.
- dugite-code 4y ago
  I've only seen some articles and no solid research but every indicator is WFH is just as if not more productive than in person work. If you think about it, it makes a certain amount of sense, workers have more hours in the day due to no wasted transport time, and can do work ad-hoc when ideas strike even outside regular buisness hours. Also meetings are less disruptive, you don't have to get up to go to a specific room and wait for everyone to show up, you open the link and can keep doing minor tasks while you wait or evwn during the meeting if it's not that critical for you. Really working in an office has a lot of wasted time you can imagine lessening or outright disapearing when done remote.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  IME, the factors that drive 'things moving slowly' are more likely to be company culture and management structure / ethos than the proximity of workers to each other. I worked for a fully-remote company during the pandemic, led by highly-motivated and talented engineers, and the pace was higher than in any office I've ever worked.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  My mega corp did a lot of research using our pervasive spyware and came to the conclusion that remote work improved productivity by approximately 15%. I think generally velocity though is driven more by decision making processes and culture more than where chairs are being warmed.
Melchizedek 4y ago
Good. Work from office should really be made illegal in order to protect the environment and public health. Exceptions can be made of course for occupations where physical presence is actually needed. This madness has to end. Using very finite resources in order to transport people’s bodies daily, while polluting the air and contributing to a climate disaster for no good reason is absurd.
kloch 4y ago
I thought it was strongly discouraged to have sensationalist titles on scholarly papers? Maybe that's just in physics.
nsonha 4y ago
any chance they will be converted to residential and push rent down?
zxcvbn4038 4y ago
At some point that office space will get converted to housing and things will balance out again. Don’t feel too bad for those small organic food shops because there are not that many of them, most of the office workers were eating Subway or McDonald’s - if they could afford it. You get a lot better options when your working remotely. I know where all the farmers markets are now. My grill has never had so much action.
fundad 4y ago
These economies were overbuilt based on captive demand. We may just have to do without so many Hale n Hearty Soup shops. It’s true that Aramark suffers when we enjoy entertainment at home but should we have to attend a concert daily just to support Aramark?

153 points by rathertrue 4y ago

Mandatory Arthur C. Clarke predicting the future in 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajlLeTgrEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajlLeTgrEg

skizm 4y ago

I’m wondering the best way to invest in NYC property more without directly buying it. I seriously doubt the prices will stay depressed for long. Is finding the right REIT my best bet here?

deleted 4y ago
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wmeredith 4y ago

From the abstract, “We revalue the stock of New York City commercial office buildings taking into account pandemic-induced cash flow and discount rate effects. We find a 32% decline in office values in 2020 and 28% in the longer-run, the latter representing a $500 billion value destruction.” Is that value “destroyed”? Is it not unlocked to flow elsewhere? I’m genuinely curious about the dynamics of this.

hunter2_ 4y ago
You'd need to have already been equally* in residential and commercial, which are well siloed throughout all sorts of property-related industries, in order to break even and serve as a conduit for the transfer of value. *Whatever optimal point.
- function_seven 4y ago
  An individual investor would need to have that balance to not lose value, sure. But a society as a whole, is the $500B "destroyed"? Or is there a transfer from the property owners to the businesses that no longer rent the space? The NPV of those decreased rent costs may just happen to be about $500 billion, right? Not to mention the value gained by all the no-longer-commuting workers.
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cortesoft 4y ago
Whether value was 'destroyed' or not depends on how you look at it. $500 billion dollars worth of assets were lost by the owners of the real estate; that value is gone, and it didn't go to someone else. It just vanished. The value didn't disappear because it transferred to someone else, it went away because the asset itself become less desirable and valuable to other people. You can imagine it being like if a farmer had a bunch of grain stored in a silo and it somehow went bad. The value of the grain is gone, because no one wants rotten grain; it isn't like someone else now has that value. Sure, the other farmers will sell more of their crops, but they still have to grow that food in addition to the rotten food... there is no efficiency gained or extra production in the economy. The money spent on that commercial real estate is gone. Those big fancy buildings will have been wasted resources and effort.
- chii 4y ago
  there's more to it though. Real estate doesn't "expire" like grain. It can be repurposed, but it would require some capital investment. As an analogy, the grains could be fermented and turned into spirits. And as an addendum, the value lost in the commercial real estate could be potentially considered as transferred - let's say a business either gets a cheaper rent, or stops renting offices (after this is why these commercial real estate valuation is lowered), then those businesses saved money and thus that money saved is what got "transferred".
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    If NYC office space in a high rise, it cannot just be repurposed for something else.
    - Taniwha 4y ago
      like WFH capable apartments ....
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    - 4y ago
jmtulloss 4y ago
They are exaggerating it by not including the increases in value elsewhere, but there is "value" destroyed. The flow to other places is not as high as what was lost. I think this is due to the perceived value of proximity not keeping up with technology. The "real" value of proximity fell as technology improved, and that was exposed during the pandemic. It's more of a correction than outright destruction, but it's not wrong that the overall asset class lost value.
- xkgt 4y ago
  It will be interesting to observe what this means for growth of cities. In the last 100 years, city sizes increased while staying within Marchetti's travel time budget [1] (1 hour for round trip) thanks to higher speeds available through motorized transport. Now that technology is redefining proximity once again, I wonder what factors will continue to encourage/discourage people to live in dense cities. 1 - http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/scan/MARCHETTI-052.pdf http://www.cesaremarchetti.org/archive/scan/MARCHETTI-052.pd...
- koshnaranek 4y ago
  If we look at the most extreme case where everybody had an office or at least a desk and then everybody moves to homeoffice 100% then it massively decreases then demand for property in general. Everybody already has a home. Even if more people buy bigger homes then or rent a personal office, lots of former office space will be converted for other uses.
MichaelBurge 4y ago
Real estate people tend to borrow a lot of money. Minimum 70% LTV = 3x leverage = a 33% decline wipes out all their equity. And especially in big cities the "high-quality" real estate is usually break-even and all profit is made on appreciation, so any drop in income might mean some of them can't hold the property. If they have to sell their properties and take a huge loss, it doesn't really affect you or me - it just means a different group of rich people will become the new landlords. But the old landlords won't like it, and it probably qualifies as news.
faangiq 4y ago
Yes value was destroyed by these deals/builds not properly accounting for risk of a shift to WFH. Basically all the companies involved lit money on fire to the tune of $500b. Other areas benefited but this was pure vaporization of money.
benjaminwootton 4y ago
So far, I suspect every dollar lost on commercial real estate has been gained on residential. In many cases, the uplift in residential value is directly attributable to WFH (e.g. where a home office or more rural property becomes more desirable.)
- seadan83 4y ago
  How does thus work? I still live in the same place as before. If anything, less people want to live here because proximity close to work is less important. Some places gained value for sure, I think Bend Oregon is a very notable example. I don't think it is 1:1 as not everyone up and left where their office became a ghost town.
sbrother 4y ago
Living in a resort town in Utah, I’m fairly sure a large portion of that value was transferred to Mountain West residential real estate
- seadan83 4y ago
  Pink cars are all the rage and sell for +20% One day pink is viewed as bad and now blue is the color to have. So now blue cars sell for +20% and pink sell for +0% The extrinsic value is arguably transferred, but if you are holding a pink car, you're down in value that was just lost due to a loss in extrinsic value. A"transfer" is a bit tortured imo because the change in value was not 1:1. Some WFH areas gained a lot more comparatively than other locations lost, and vice versa
richardw 4y ago
House prices in areas people would rather live have all gone up. Those houses also play the role of offices 3-5 times a week. I’m not sure if it makes up for the loss in commercial real estate though, but I’d say some destruction of value and some transfer of value.
nomilk 4y ago
And if everyone quit smoking it would cause the "destruction" of billions of value in the tobacco industry.
- richardfey 4y ago
  Exactly. Until someone starts to calculate the compound healthcare and welfare costs.
  - seadan83 4y ago
    Generally the tobacco industry does not pay those costs. Hence, relative to the tobacco industry, it would be a vaporization of value
- nomilk 4y ago
  I take from the downvotes that people thought this was serious. Its absurdity was intended to show how misleading the use of the word "destruction" is when talking about economic costs derived from things that are no longer needed. Being more healthy, or more efficient, is unequivocally good!
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
I think the whole thing becomes more clear when you remember that price is an indication of how desirable things are relative to other things rather than an indicator of intrinsic value. If you have an asset which used to be desirable but is no more, its market value is indeed just destroyed and not transferred. It doesn’t necessarily impact the price of other goods.
richardfey 4y ago
I was about to comment on the same passage. The value has moved into housing real estate that can serve as a remote working place *and* into the less quantifiable quality of life improvement. This is the same bias used in GDP calculation vs happiness, it's a huge topic, look it up for more information.
kolp 4y ago
One way of looking at the "destruction" of the value of the property is based on Net Present Value of future rent payments. Let's take one hypothetical building, its owner and its tenant. The market value of this building (not its construction cost) is the Net Present Value of future rent payments to be made by a tenant to the owner. There is a scheduled, anticipated transfer of value from tenant to owner based upon the agreed market rental value of the building. When the agreed market rental rate declines, the amount of value to be transferred from tenant to owner declines and consequently, the present value of those future payments is lower. This is the basis for journalists or commentators to say that value has been destroyed. But, the value hasn't been "destroyed"; it has been transferred to the tenant in the form of the net present value of his rent reduction.
ahartmetz 4y ago
Perhaps one could say that the value was adjusted downwards. It wasn't an actual thing that was destroyed - rather, a dynamic equilibrium has changed. "Value was destroyed" has all the wrong connotations - it sounds like something somebody had a moral right to was maliciously, well, destroyed.
Angostura 4y ago
The value of buggy-whip stocks was certainly destroyed with the advent of the motorcar.

cortesoft 4y ago

It will be interesting to see what happens to our cities if WFH stays/becomes the norm. So much of modern city design is built around the office, what happens when that isn't the case?

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Sweet ass apartments in office buildings I hope.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Will people still want to live in cities as much if you can work from home?
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    If it's affordable, yes. Generally speaking, the only thing that keeps me away from wanting to live in a major city is paying 3x the price, for 5x less space. Most other parts of city life can be nice.
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  - chii 4y ago
    Cities are also where most social gatherings happen, esp. for younger people. If these unused offices could be better as apartments, i don't see a decline in how cities being a great place to be.
  - prawn 4y ago
    I think so. Some portion of the population likes the density and walkability of a city. If you take away a lot of commuting traffic, it's unlikely to get less liveable. I co-own a small city office and we've always assumed redeveloping as three-storeys with residential above commercial would be our long-term plan. It's a short walk to dozens of restaurants/cafes/pubs, short walk to a chemist, small supermarket, florist, and so on. Two blocks from large parks and running/cycle tracks, etc.

superfrank 4y ago

I'm curious to see how this plays out in the long term since data they're using is from 2020. In late 2020 I remember reading tons of articles about how people were fleeing the city causing apartment rental prices to plummet. Now, two years later, most of my friends who rent are paying as much as, if not more than they were paying pre-covid and the apartment buildings I can see into look as full as they ever were (anecdotal evidence, I know). Personally, I don't see a way for commercial prices to come back if WFH is here to stay, but a lot of people are incentivized to think of a solution and I've been surprised before. I think we should get another year or twos worth of data before we start calling it an apocalypse.

judge2020 4y ago
Here’s your data; Covid definitely slowed rent growth during 2020 but throughout 2021 and 22 it looks like it’s back in full-swing, with >15% YOY in 2021 and similar growth predicted for 2022. https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/national-rent-data
olingern 4y ago
Rent is way up in Brooklyn as of late 2021. I decided to leave nyc because renewing my lease came with a significant rent hike to the “pandemic deal” I got. Commercial-wise, I can’t see it recovering to pre-pandemic levels. I’m not seeking an office out and I know many friends / former coworkers that are happy not in an office
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IAmGraydon 4y ago

I’m a believer in reversion to the mean, and I think that’s what we will see with the office market and work from home. The technology to work from home existed before the pandemic. Why didn’t it take off before the pandemic if it works so well? We didn’t suddenly discover a new technology here. The use of that technology was precipitated by a transient force, and when that force is removed completely, things will return to the previous equilibrium. It will take years for the mentality to revert, however. That’s my take. Smart investors will acquire office properties during this time.

hackernewds 4y ago
respectfully disagree. knowledge, just like innovation cannot be reverted. it hadn't taken off before the pandemic since we were living under a purposefully driven illusion of the necessity of office work. just like food delivery, employers, just like workers now have the knowledge that wfh works. thus workers will always have the leverage of having competitive companies that know it does offering it.
lolinder 4y ago
> Why didn’t it take off before the pandemic if it works so well? We didn’t suddenly discover a new technology here. The use of that technology was precipitated by a transient force, and when that force is removed completely, things will return to the previous equilibrium. Not necessarily. It's entirely possible that working from home has always been better but that there was enough friction preventing a move in that direction that it didn't happen until covid forced it to. If that's the case, then we don't expect a reversion because the friction preventing the initial adoption is gone.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Well some of that is also regional, as the "forced" was a region by region, and job by job type of impact. For me, my employer only had about 3 mo's collectively from 2019 to 2022 where full time work from home was even an option, and zero months where it was required and the offices where shut down. I think there is a perception that all employers, everywhere were required to go full time work from home, that simply is not the reality

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Syonyk 4y ago

> We show that the pandemic has had large effects on both current and expected future cash flows for office buildings. And this is why loans charge interest, for the "I have no idea what's going to happen but I don't believe you that this enterprise is entirely risk free" sort of reasons. Though I think we've generally managed to decouple the concept of "risk/reward" in loans/investment/etc, in favor of "I'm guaranteed returns, come hell or high water!" However... on the topic of office space, I can only say, "Well, those chickens sure went home to roost." I can't fault office workers for not wanting to go back to the circle of Hell that a modern "open office" floorplan is. And I don't blame them in the slightest for seeing through the "spraying fountain of crap" that are management's supposed justifications for it. "Serendipitous encounters" happen with offices. But they happen in the places where people go to hang out when they want those encounters, when they want a break from the peace and quiet needed to actually do work. I expect a lot of workers just want to hear management say, once, "You know, it's cheaper to squeeze you in tighter and buy a few more desks than to buy more office space." Though it doesn't explain why the new office space has 500 foot sightlines... Over the years, I've had almost every office configuration one can have, with the notable exception of a proper cubicle. Frequently, I would have nearly killed someone for a cubicle. Offices with doors are great, and even if you have to share them with someone, as long as there's good space to work and spread things out, they're wonderful. Door closed, I'm working. Door open, come and chat. "Team work areas" are fine, if all the people in the room are on the same team. They tend to develop work patterns and cycles, so you know that some hours are light work time with some social interaction, some are heads down hours. Of course, it's amazing just how fast the couches, coffee tables, bookshelves, whiteboards, etc can disappear to cram more people in when the team expands. And then there's the open office hell that is just horrible for the exact sort of work that tech types are paid good money to be good at - what Cal Newport calls "Deep Work." The sort of stuff where, done right, you can disappear into a problem for 6 hours, and come up with something good. The open office reality is more, "If you can get half an hour of actual concentration, with something loud screaming in your headphones, you're having a good day." And I've been able to compare the two states, because my current office (full time remote) is the "Solar Shed" - an 8x12 Tuff-Shed that's entirely off grid, and entirely my own workspace. I now can, and do, manage the "My wife has to ping me for dinner because I've lost all track of time with some problem" days. I came to it from open office, and the contrast couldn't be more extreme. So, yeah. If office spaces were good places to get work done, I expect a lot more people would be interested in going back. But they're not. And even a poor quality WFH space is often better than "always loud, always people talking, can't get an hour of good concentration in" open office hell. A good WFH space? Nobody has offices like that anymore.

faangiq 4y ago

There are a lot of insolvent investors out there that have been papering over this somehow. When the music stops it will be insanely brutal.

dkokelley 4y ago

I'd love to see office spaces transformed into other useful spaces: Parks, cultural centers, entertainment, residential space, etc. Some office space could still be used as a coworking space for people who don't want to work from home. The land didn't disappear. Only the need for a specific use has changed.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Redevelop the office space as residential space. Our cities are flush with office space but are squeezed for housing. Sounds like a win / win.

cookiengineer 4y ago
Get rid of roads while we're at it. There are better and more efficient ways to transport goods into the city.
- jasper_fitussi 4y ago
  Wait, what?
  - cookiengineer 4y ago
    Ask yourself how much infrastructure exists only for the purpose of commuting. You'll be amazed by the statistics. There's also lots of interesting satellite data about how clean the air in cities world wide got when COVID lockdowns started. [1] We don't need roads in cities. And definitely not multi-lane roads. [1] https://maps.s5p-pal.com/ https://maps.s5p-pal.com/
    - spiderfarmer 4y ago
      You’re so disconnected from reality. Ask yourself how many people are unable to work remotely. If you can’t think of enough examples to justify roads, go outside more.
      - cookiengineer 4y ago
        Are factories now built downtown or am I missing something? Do you think that cities of the future rely on cars or on more efficiently scaleable means of transportation - like trains, subways and trams? > Ask yourself how many people are unable to work remotely. Please elaborate. Personally, I don't think there's any elected mayor on the planet that has "moving more factories inside the city" on their agenda. Note that I was specifically arguing about office spaces. And everyone in an office space can work remotely. I'm not arguing about politics, I'm arguing that technologically there's no need for office spaces inside the city. It's a societal expectation that doesn't make sense anymore and isn't necessary. What COVID showed us is that most if not all of the tasks that were done in offices before can be done remotely just fine. Additionally it showed us how quiet and livable cities can get when there's no traffic jam of commuters.

dmpetrov 4y ago

I'd like to see a research of WFH impact to people's spendings. Many households have to pay extra for more space to have a home office while companies pay less :)

ghaff 4y ago
As with many things, averages are pretty worthless. You mostly have two primary costs. - Possible upgrades to living space so that you can "lend" your employer an office. - Possible significant time/cost savings by not having to commute. Mostly these aren't borne by the same people.
spangry 4y ago
It's just anecdotal, but I found myself unintentionally saving money like crazy when I was WFH during lockdown due to not selling out every day for fuel, parking and buying lunch. But then again I'm someone who always pays the 'disorganisation tax'. I'm sure people with more optimised spending (e.g. catching the bus, bringing their lunch in from home etc.) didn't see as much of an effect.
- dmpetrov 4y ago
  Well... I need to rent a property with +1 bedroom to WFH. It is a substantial family spending.

asimpleusecase 4y ago

This has an impact not just in rents for office buildings but the entire ecosystem of support businesses that sell to workers who come into city centre to work. One example. Small organic food shop, that sold mostly to office workers and has seen a 70% drop in foot traffic. The same thing hits bars, cafes, restaurants, theatres and other venues. Those very things that make living near or in a city interesting for many people. In my case, precovid I thought a city centre apartment could be kinda nice, no commute, nice vibe and lots of access to amenities. But now much of that vibrant ecosystem is gone. Why would someone want to live in a converted office in such a setting? And if you house people who only have no other options - aren’t you just creating a type of ghetto?

DougN7 4y ago
Is this true? Won’t the businesses go where the people are? So more organic shops and cafes in the suburbs? Or if the office building is turned into housing, all the people would be back again, and not just from 9-5, so the businesses would follow, right?
PestoDiRucola 4y ago
> Those very things that make living near or in a city interesting for many people Most of the time, the types of bars and restaurants that rely on office workers as customers are not going to be the type of bars and restaurants you'd go in your free time when going out with friends.
yakak 4y ago
I know a few areas that were gentrified in earlier times and ended up with things more suited for residents of a certain class than commuters. I also know of other downtown locations that became terrible to live in because a grocery store was uneconomical use of space. I'd generally say that if they can fill it to a good density it can have a good local market compared to suburbs with poor density.
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  But how do you fill it to a good density when the cost to live there is higher and there's no need to live there to earn a living anymore?

farmin 4y ago

I'm hearing it already start to reverse in Sydney at least. So a bunch of people bought houses up the coast thinking they could work from home after covid pushing value of houses up and commercial down. But turns out people can't be trusted and and companies want people back in the office and they can't sell these coastal houses for same price they bought them for. Anecdotal of course. I have no data.

Gigachad 4y ago
All of the non tech people I know in Australia are now back in the office. I think we might see a halt in new office construction, but existing offices do look like they will eventually fill up. And a lot of the big names like Apple and Tesla have signalled that in office work will resume.

Animats 4y ago

Section 3.4, "Identifying the Persistence of Work From Home", is weird. They are trying to calculate the persistence of work from home based on data about what rents on high-quality office space did during the pandemic: "A key parameter in the calibration is p, which governs the persistence of remote work. 13 We identify this parameter as follows. We assume that the economy transitioned from the no-WFH expansion state (the E state) in 2019 to the WFH state and a recession (the WFH-R state) in 2020. We compute the model-implied return on the NYC A+ office market in this transition (using the A+ calibration)." Why this should be a valid predictor for post-pandemic / endemic periods is not clear at all. These guys have a data set of office rental data, and seem to be trying to infer way too much from it.

betwixthewires 4y ago

This is just the beginning of a wider shift that will destabilize domestic economies worldwide, particularly in well developed nations, if the trend continues. It's not just urban office buildings. It starts there, then it leads to deurbanization, increased populations in less urban areas, a more flat population distribution. Why live in a city unless your job requires it? All the other perks of a city only really apply if you actually need to be there to sustain yourself. It will lead to several big cities filing bankruptcy, most service businesses in dense cities going broke, city services unable to continue to function. Information workers are the core of a city's economy, all service oriented businesses cater to them. Once they're gone, the service workers go too, it's a cascading process of the collapse of big cities. When they said the internet was going to revolutionize humanity they weren't kidding around. Overall it will be a good thing, but the process will be very painful.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> Why live in a city unless your job requires it? Huge variety of shops in walkable proximity, great public transport network, vibrant cultural life, plenty of opportunities to socialise. Why would you want to live outside of a city?
- blhack 4y ago
  >vibrant cultural life It's so funny that you say this. From my perspective the vibrant cultural life happens outside of the city. In the city everything is permitted and controlled. If you want interesting stuff, you have to get out of the city for it!
- betwixthewires 4y ago
  I do live outside of a city, and I do it for the lack of traffic, less crime, lower cost of living, being surrounded by the natural outdoors, and less stressful culture. But you missed my point. All those perks of living in a city are great, if you need to be there to earn what you earn. without that, the high cost of living simply isn't justified. Even if people want to be there, they'll make financial and economic decisions. And once those people start leaving, all those shops and bars and bodegas and what not that cater to them will go belly up. Then their owners and employees will leave. There goes your vibrant cultural life and opportunities to socialize. The flip side is that you'll find more of those things in less densely populated areas as this shakes out, and cost of living will rise as well outside of cities, but not by nearly as much, because the diaspora will be spread out.

TheGigaChad 4y ago

kkfx 4y ago

My cynic and caustic view: office buildings will became social houses for new poor witch will happen to be far more than today, wealthy from large cities migrate toward new places around some new or existing services and all such buildings have actually to be built, along a bit of needed infra. So real estate simply refocus from large and expensive buildings to smaller single houses, not much less expensive for their buyer while in raw materials terms they cost FAR less, who really loose are those who actually live in large cities, can't buy a new home in a good place, all who have jobs around offices (like restaurants, bar, ... and all shops in the shopping center areas nearby large offices areas). Of course, those who came first might fall because it's an uncharted territory, those who came second normally prosper benefiting from those who came first, who came third and beyond... Sorry, you are too late...

asiachick 4y ago

My uninformed solution is, at least in SF, they should re-zone all of the financial district and union square. If the first floors were cafes and shops and the upper floors where apartments and the top floors restaurants, patios, lounges, they'd revitalize that part of town. It's dead at the moment.

danjac 4y ago

I wonder if wfm in the UK has significantly impacted newspaper readership from the drop in commuters (particularly the Metro, which is targeted at casual commuter readers) that proprietors and editors - and their flying monkeys in the government, including the Prime Minister - are writing thundering columns in their papers denouncing work from home as some kind of apocalyptic threat to the economy in general.

alkonaut 4y ago

Does anyone work for a company that has reduced its office space but not headcount due to wfh? Most seem to still be working remotely from too large offices while companies are figuring out what to do.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
My employer started shifting to a work from home model about five years ago. They were shedding office space as quickly as they were able to get out of leases. I think that slowed down with covid because before the pandemic they were able to easily find other companies eager to take over leases. On the rare occasion I go into a company facility, it's notable how dead they are, with plenty of excess space. This was true even before covid. I know they were planning on putting up some of the company owned facilities up for sale back in 2019 but I think that's been put on hold now that they market has dropped.

hizxy 4y ago

Does anyone really know the impact on productivity? I work for a remote-first company (never had an office) and things move so slow.

dugite-code 4y ago
I've only seen some articles and no solid research but every indicator is WFH is just as if not more productive than in person work. If you think about it, it makes a certain amount of sense, workers have more hours in the day due to no wasted transport time, and can do work ad-hoc when ideas strike even outside regular buisness hours. Also meetings are less disruptive, you don't have to get up to go to a specific room and wait for everyone to show up, you open the link and can keep doing minor tasks while you wait or evwn during the meeting if it's not that critical for you. Really working in an office has a lot of wasted time you can imagine lessening or outright disapearing when done remote.
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
IME, the factors that drive 'things moving slowly' are more likely to be company culture and management structure / ethos than the proximity of workers to each other. I worked for a fully-remote company during the pandemic, led by highly-motivated and talented engineers, and the pace was higher than in any office I've ever worked.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
My mega corp did a lot of research using our pervasive spyware and came to the conclusion that remote work improved productivity by approximately 15%. I think generally velocity though is driven more by decision making processes and culture more than where chairs are being warmed.

Melchizedek 4y ago

Good. Work from office should really be made illegal in order to protect the environment and public health. Exceptions can be made of course for occupations where physical presence is actually needed. This madness has to end. Using very finite resources in order to transport people’s bodies daily, while polluting the air and contributing to a climate disaster for no good reason is absurd.

kloch 4y ago

I thought it was strongly discouraged to have sensationalist titles on scholarly papers? Maybe that's just in physics.

nsonha 4y ago

any chance they will be converted to residential and push rent down?

zxcvbn4038 4y ago

At some point that office space will get converted to housing and things will balance out again. Don’t feel too bad for those small organic food shops because there are not that many of them, most of the office workers were eating Subway or McDonald’s - if they could afford it. You get a lot better options when your working remotely. I know where all the farmers markets are now. My grill has never had so much action.

fundad 4y ago

These economies were overbuilt based on captive demand. We may just have to do without so many Hale n Hearty Soup shops. It’s true that Aramark suffers when we enjoy entertainment at home but should we have to attend a concert daily just to support Aramark?