8 ms·
Meta spends $181M to get out of lease at vacant London offices
- j-bos 3y agoThis article seems oddly opinionated for a "here's what happened" piece.
- solardev 3y agoIt's pretty typical in tone for that publication. It's why I avoid their articles.
- choppaface 3y agoThe Register is quasi-satire; see their slogan is “biting the hand that feeds IT.”
- hinkley 3y agoAnd their icon is a vulture.
- sealeck 3y agoThat's the editorial voice they go for.
- 01100011 3y agoNot the only one trying to reduce their office footprint: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/09/27/roku-san-jose-real-estate-office-lease-tech-build-economy-job-layoff/# https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/09/27/roku-san-jose-real-es... Commercial real estate is a significant threat to banks and the overall economy. It will be interesting to see how it plays out and if lenders are left holding the bags or if the losses will be, yet again, subsidized and passed on to taxpayers.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AustinDev 3y agoI hope the lenders get wiped out. We can't really afford to bail out these folks anymore our interest is about to exceed our budget in the next year or so.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> interest is about to exceed our budget in the next year or so Whose?
- zeusk 3y agoUS federal govt.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> US federal govt Who is saying this? One, it doesn’t make sense: interest payments are part of the budget. If we ask when interest will become the largest budget item, it’s around 2045 [1]. (For larger than discretionary, it’s early 2030s.) Fundamentally, interest as a fraction of GDP is high but precedented [2]. It’s trending worryingly. But it is not proximately dangerous. [1] https://www.crfb.org/papers/interest-payments-federal-budget https://www.crfb.org/papers/interest-payments-federal-budget [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S
- zeusk 3y agoTake it with OP, I'm just pointing out what he meant. Regardless - I do agree that the debt and deficit situation is getting a little out of hand. We're running deficits in late cycle which is quite dangerous. Also your [1] link is hilariously out of context from what has happened in the past year, interest rate on treasury bonds is 4+% and on bills/notes is 5+%. [2] Makes it seem like things are alright but we're in late cycle and we should be saving money for a downturn instead of taking on more debt at higher rates. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A091RC1Q027SBEA
- 3y ago
- workfromspace 3y agohttps://archive.ph/IrC4V https://archive.ph/IrC4V
- tuckerpo 3y agoHey methinks we found the reason for RTO
- atum47 3y agoIn relative values I've spent much more. I rented an apartment in São Paulo 3 months before the pandemic. During the pandemic I kept paying my rent, even though I went back to my parents house (we thought it would be over soon). 6 months later the bank I was working for put us all in home office forever; so i had to terminate my contract with the company that rented me the apartment. The "fine" for terminating it before the 1.5 years in contract was R$ 7.000,00. Based on what I make and what Meta makes annually, I've spent way more, haha.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoIanal but pretty sure in most Australian states you can generally break lease but are up for the cost of advertising and any lost rent money between when you vacate and the next person moves in but the realtor must make every effort to relet the place (not that anyone should trust them unless they have to). Generally leases are 12 months, which means that the landlord can increase rent every 12 months, which is currently occurring w/ massive increases (I’ve heard 25-35%). I’m not saying I’m better or worse, I just think that hearing different situations is interesting.
- bombcar 3y agoThat's also true in most US states, based on the (general) concept that breaking contracts is roughly limited to the damage caused by the breach.
- kimburgess 3y agoBleak is the word you’re looking for. The trajectory of the rental market in AU is beyond terrifying: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2023/jun/new-insights-into-the-rental-market.html https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2023/jun/new-in...
- TheHappyOddish 3y agoIt's one of many factors around inflation that are not good for Australian households. Unfortunately nobody seems interested in real wage growth to compensate.
- jlund-molfese 3y agoAnother way to say it, Meta is saving $XXXM - $181M on some London offices!
- hedora 3y agoIf you say it that way, then it doesn’t come out of their taxes and go into their adjusted earnings.
- armchairhacker 3y agoInstead of building new housing, cities should pay landlords and companies to convert their office space into apartments. Every office turned into an apartment opens up space both by increasing remote workers and tenants. Convert enough, and both the newly-remote employees and those with jobs which require in-person get a virtual pay increase from decreased rent. (I get in some sense that offices can't just be turned into apartments: you need to change the layout, install sound-proof walls and furniture, and there will be rooms without windows which presumably can't be rented. But also, many people are desperate for some kind of place to stay, so it seems like an office-cheaply-converted-into-suite would suffice)
- deelowe 3y agoYou'd have to gut the entire building or maybe even demolish it. Pretty much all of the mechanical would need to be redone.
- actuator 3y agoEh, there are quite a few apartment buildings in every major city which used to be something else like warehouses
- deelowe 3y agoWhataboutism doesn't change anything I said.
- hinkley 3y agoWhich were gutted, abated, and rebuilt from the frame up. Office building floors are concrete, usually. You cannot dictate where plumbing goes. Drain pipes are ruled by the iron fist of gravity. And down is technically in your downstairs neighbor's space.
- actuator 3y agoI have seen few buildings in London itself which were warehouses and now have these weird shaped apartments with high ceiling height and a separate floor bedroom arrangement. A lot was kept from the old structure, some of them even make the plumbing added look more of an industrial design
- mixmastamyk 3y agoHaving a Superman III moment right now. What if I could take a slice, just a slice, of that corporate waste? So small no one would notice. Or was it Office Space? :-D
- somecommit 3y agoThinking the same, but do not worry, a lot of people are taking their slices as we speak...
- beej71 3y ago_20 year_ lease...? It's a little optimistic, isn't it?
- aaomidi 3y agoMoney was cheap and places get more expensive
- londontoast 3y ago[flagged]
- ge96 3y agoNew startup: Convert your empty office into a data center. Boom
- toast0 3y agoData centers are going to need way more power and cooling than offices. It's not uncommon to have a few floors of data center in an office building, but it might be hard to convert all the floors. Also, most of the megacorps running their own datacenters are looking for locations with inexpensive power, inexpensive space, and the potential of outside air cooling. London can do outside air cooling some of the year, but not all of it, and doesn't offer inexpensive space or power as far as I know.
- ge96 3y agoTake this fantasy a step further. Take the waste heat to speed up processing of dirty water, mean while cooling the servers with that grey water mmm. I appreciate entertaining the thought. Seems like "hey? people need house ng, here are empty spaces..." yeah, not my own thought.
- phyzome 3y agoThey signed a 20 year lease in 2021? WTF were they thinking.
- ant6n 3y agoNext door to me, Spotify rented out a whole building, for I‘d guess 25-30€/m^2. they’re only using a fraction now. I wonder whether they’d sublet a bunch of rooms to my startup…