A lot of times, when people discuss the phenomenon of employers ending work-from-home and try to make their employees come back to the office, people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices.
I don’t follow the logic at all. How would doing this benefit an employer in any way?
It benefits the owners of commercial real estate. Which is primarily banks and investment firms.
Companies need to stay on the good side of banks and investment firms. Otherwise they don’t get loans.
But also, some of these companies own those buildings. If they’re not in use, their value in the market drops.
Also, there’s external pressure from cities and townships who give tax incentives to companies to bring their employees in to spend money in the city. For example, a company might get a tax break if they create a thousand jobs. That’s only a good deal for the city if those thousand people are in the city and spending their money and generating taxes.
I see, so the idea is that they’re responding to external pressure from governments and financial institutions? I guess I could see that, though it shouldn’t be hard to prove by pointing to specific policies and loan conditions.
But also, some of these companies own those buildings. If they’re not in use, their value in the market drops.
How does that work? Why would a buyer care if the seller was using the building? If anything, I would think using them would depreciate their value due to wear and tear.
If nobody is using any buildings then there’s an indefinety supply and no demand.
Buying something to create artificial demand usually isn’t a good investment strategy. A “pump-and-dump” can work if you can set off a buying frenzy and sell before it wears off, but it’s not a long-term strategy.
Besides, if that was the plan, leaving the buildings vacant would be just as effective as using them.
I’m speaking from experience in CA;
Quite a few of these markets were moved on pre pandemic. Now it’s a question of how to offload. My prior company had a very nice multi story building in SoCal before they tried calling back. That was before covid, even then they had trouble securing a purchaser or renter. The market has only gotten worse.
There’s some sunk-cost fallacy; where you’ve already paid for the space, if you make the whole team drive 1hr+ to meet it’ll have been worth it.
isn’t a good investment strategy…
long-term
It’s CEOs doing this, they don’t necessarily have to make things work out long-term as long as it doesn’t look like they messed up.
A big thing in my country, business buildings are expensive because of location and what’s around them. But if employees aren’t in the office, restaurants, cafes public transport corner shops etc lower in demand or even close entirely. This makes the building itself less in demand and harder to rent out at a higher price.
A lot of these buildings are owned by banks, CEO’s and financial institutions who have the money to push for changes like government to make people come into office and can use any reason like “think of all the failing cafes!”.
Ah, hm… I guess that makes sense. Bringing people to the office raises the value of surrounding retail, which in turn raises the value of the office. Thanks, that explanation clears it up.
Don’t forget if the company outright owns the building, any market price drop negatively affect there books, in asset/net worth section.
WFH makes it so there isn’t a buyer or very few interested.
So if you want to shift the property, you’re going to have a bad time.
A buyer is only interested if they have a use for the building. If work from home becomes the default way, then who would need to buy an office building?
Imagine you’re a CEO had signed a 10 year lease on an office building in 2019. You’re likely stuck paying for that building regardless of it you use it or not. If you feel like working in office improves productivity (not saying it does, this is just a perspective a CEO might hold) how would you rationalize to yourself and the shareholders that you’re paying thousands (or millions) for something that you could be utilizing to benefit the company and leaving it empty.
Much of commerical real estate is actually leased, these companies are contractually obligated to pay for the property regardless of if they have people in office or not. They might not be able to exit these leases for years.
Also they could be angling for the entire work force to return to work (including other companies) as a means of restoring demand for office space. Which would benefit those who flat out own the land.
Giant sunk cost fallacy. Plus old school thinking plus desire for control.
Pretty much this. A surprising amount of executives are like"we already paid for it so we should use it" with no regard for the actual bottom line impact of forcing people back to work.
You made an unfortunate investment, don’t make it worse with your boomer corporate ideology
But the other way also exists, my employer is pushing hybrid work with flex desk, so they can do a building renovation without renting one more building.
But indeed before that came on the table many top managers didn’t liked the flexible work. But it was already in place as a concession to thc unions (cheaper than a raise)
There’s a lot of dumb answers here.
people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices
It’s not the sole motivation and it’s not even “a” motivation for some businesses.
Basically, wealthy people generally are going to have all sorts of investments. If you own any commercial property then you’re going to exercise whatever influence you have to support people continuing to work on premise. That influence is often in the form of shareholders putting pressure on management.
Why would the shareholders of a company want them to take on additional unnecessary expenses like leasing office space?
Or rather, why do real estate company shareholders have such ridiculous levels of influence compared to other groups who would logically prefer more wfh?
Because if you move up the ladder far enough, they’re all the same group. Mister X sits at the board for companies a, b and c, but he also has a real estate portfolio. He’s not the one spending the money for these companies to return to office but he has a vested interest in people returning to office in general, so he lobbies for it wherever he can. Simplified example but you get the gist.
You are grasping at straws if you think the exact same shareholders work both sides in any but a few outlier cases. This is goofy logic that people who are not in management think how companies run.
Do you know what boards of directors are? These people are not running the company they just sit together every so often to give their opinion on shit. They’re sometimes related to the industry sometimes not. Again my example is a massive over-simplification of thousands of small colusions and conflicts of interests which drive these kinds of corporate wills. And for your info I did work in corporate management, not that far from CEOs so I do have an understanding, thankfully left that shit behind now though.
That’s really not how it works. In the same industry sure. But not across vastly different industries like tech, legal, government, etc and real estate.
I would suggest you to check out warren buffets portfolio
Warren Buffett is not directing resources from his position in one company to enrich himself in another company that he may have large personal holdings. That is one of the few ways shareholders can get around the safety of a corporation and sue a director.
More to the point, the board of directors are going to be extremely interested in the actions of Buffett if they think he is trying to enrich himself at the cost to their company.
Using him as an example that is.
It’s insidious.
It’s not influence as in “let’s have a logical and transparent discussion about wfh vs on premise”.
It’s rumours, back channel favours, manipulating numbers, etcetera.
Bear in mind not all companies are publicly traded. Plenty of closely held companies were started by grand dad and run on rumour and here say.
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As far as I understand it, there are political interests too. Not just the obvious, ie a city council wanting to see economic movement within the city. Any regular person with a pension likely has money tied up in real estate. Ensuring those pensions maintain value is a concern for governments.
Big businesses often get incentives from municipalities for being headquartered there. The city wants employees in offices who might financially support other local businesses while they commute to/from work.
If the local economy is happy and office space remains in demand, coupled with savings they receive from incentives, property values rise. The property of a business is an asset, so the more valuable the property becomes, the more value the company owns.
Ok, so it’s about responding to local government incentives? I feel like that’s an important piece of the puzzle that’s overlooked when people say it’s about real estate prices.
Not only that, but many of these companies have huge fuckoff buildings and only occupy a portion of it. Tenants fill up the rest, and occupancy drops so does the rent. Pushing for a return to office pressures the smaller companies (who are run by sociopaths with very specific risk adversities) to do the same, lest they look like they don’t want to be like Big Daddy Fortune 500 up in the top floors.
In Australia they are actually hiding the fact its about property value and pretending its to support the small and local businesses in the city, like cafés
The ones that were largely left to fail during COVID?
Won’t someone think of the cappuccinos!?
I suspect the real estate prices is a fantasy. I suspect the real reason is management addiction to close supervision and their lack of trust.
That’s not really a fantasy at all. It works exactly the same way as the US health insurance practices.
Picture this. You break your leg, go to a hospital, but thankfully you have insurance. So they fix you up, then give you a paper with a number that says 140k$ (I wish I were kidding, this is real) on it. You sit there, completely fucking flabbergasted, but then it all makes sense. This number doesn’t even have to be what your leg operation is worth. This 140k$ is what they pulled out of their ass on that specific day, and then negotiated to get that money from your insurance company. The day goes by, you feel like garbage, the hospital has made a ton of money, and your insurance isn’t even mad, because they make orders of magnitude more, to the point where this is pocket change to them.
This is practically the same. A business would overpay you to sit in the office, your boss pays for the office, and that arbitrary amount of money goes to whoever owns the building. Issue is, they can keep cranking up the prices on non-residential buildings endlessly, because people keep paying them. Especially when it comes to hot locations like NYC, or anything similar, you know that someone’s either already paid for that office for 5 years ahead of time, and needs to justify the absurd cost, or the office floor is sitting empty, because the landlord is delusional
I believe it’s more about CEOs seeing the investor trend of making people go back to the office raising the company stock price. Simple as that there’s no need for logic when following a trend nets you several millions extra valuation
Ding ding ding ding! 1000% this. It’s not about money, property or “collaboration.” It’s about control and the fear you’re off not working when at home.
I think it’s because there just isn’t any sensible explanation so people are trying to come up with something.
The tech companies do have massive real estate footprints, but I think it doesn’t make sense at all, those are a cost center for them.
Idk how much of this is true but I had read that in certain cases the companies got what is called sweetheart deals from cities for establishing their office in that city, what the city wants from these companies is tax paying citizens and usage of city businesses, again to create more tax paying citizens.
Now wfh means employees can move to a city which is cheaper for them or far away from the city for a more rural lifestyle (not exactly rural in many cases), so cities are unhappy and are ready to charge businesses for that and so businesses are trying to call back employees to keep their deals going
If there is no need for office block then there will inevitably be a drop off in the need to hire the space to work in, which in turn will lead to lower prices. Employers do not request higher costs.
In the UK, the government are pushing for return to work because of pressure from newspaper media. People buy papers on their way to work. The are no cost basis arguments with forced returns to work. There is an obvious case for net zero benefits.
It’s simple supply and demand. If lots of white collar workers are WFH, then hiring new people doesn’t require more office space. If you can grow your company without leasing office space, or by leasing a smaller office, demand for office space goes down.
Office space owners who use that for income suddenly don’t have (as much) income. So maybe they lower lease rates to attract new tenants. Well, now tenants stuck in higher rate leases start doing the math on penalties for breaking their existing lease vs the new prices.
If remote work stays popular or grows (hint: it’s growing), this CAN result in a race to the bottom on commercial real estate leases, which makes them less valuable investments, which could lead to a massive sell off.
All of this makes CEOs itchy. So they try to justify return to office policies. This just chases their best people into the arms of competitors who will support WFH (and naive pay more without high office space leases to pay).
I think the era of regular office work for white collar workers is over. Maybe a couple days a week for client meetings. But why not just go to the client site?
Office work was killed by COVID. Good riddance.
So maybe they lower lease rates to attract new tenants.
The golden rule of commercial leasing is that you never, ever, reduce the lease cost because the value of the property is calculated directly from lease value. Reduced lease cost is reduced property value. In valuing a commercial property the lack of a tenant is not important.
tenants stuck in higher rate leases start doing the math on penalties for breaking their existing lease vs the new prices.
Generally with a commercial lease your only real options to exit are to find someone to take on your lease. If lease prices have dropped then no one will want to take on your dud lease.
All of this makes CEOs itchy.
Why? Not all CEOs are in the same industry. Why should the CEO of Google give a fuck what the CEO of Boston Properties thinks? Google is just leasing a space from them. You would think the CEO of Google would be happy for an excuse to offload some real estate expenses.
Unfortunately nearly every job posting I see (software developer in the US) is either in office or hybrid 3 days a week. I wish the in-office era was over but I don’t see that as a reality just yet, at least not for people with less than 10 years of experience
there is a lot of full remote software dev jobs in the US, but they advertise them here in South America and India, for 20% to 50% of what they pay for americans
What you’re seeing is the incestuous relationship between government and private enterprise that is characteristic of late stage american capitalism. Everything depends on people spending money, so businesses get tax breaks and other incentives from metropolitan areas for operating in those metropolitan areas. Imagine you have a company that employs 400 people in an office building downtown. Those 400 people will need to park their cars, they’ll buy coffees in the morning, they’ll buy lunch, they’ll go out to happy hour with their coworkers on fridays. Every one of those transactions benefits business owners in the city, and for every one of those transactions the city takes a cut. Now imagine that company goes full, permanent WFH. The office is vacant. The diner down the street closes. That parking garage that was built to meet a demand that simply isn’t there anymore is simply useless. Tax income drops for the city. Everyone whose livelihood depended on the manufactured demand created by colocation is in a lot of trouble now. The only people who aren’t getting smashed are employees, who now no longer have to pay to park, can make their own coffee the way that everyone has been telling them to for years now, can eat their own food at home or order delivery from the places closest to them rather than the place closest to the office, zoom happy hours mean they’re not spending money at the bar after work, this entire microeconomy that popped up to serve the needs of employees who had no choice but to all be in one place at one time starts to collapse. So you’re right to be suspicious that companies that pay rent are invested in keeping the rent high, but there are a lot of knock-on costs associated with a business district collapsing and there’s also a lot of carrot-and-stick from local/state governments in an effort to keep people in the office and keep them spending money near the office.
It is a great one size fits all reason that includes the various banks and your CEO conspiring together to make your life worse.
Some bank executives and local government officials have been the first to push for going back to the office, so a lot of people are putting the blame on them.
I think you’re getting a lot of bullshit answers here and your first instinct was correct. This is a nonsense fable that someone came up with when they were high and then told to some friends, who believed it because they don’t know shit.
You mean to tell us that the same CEOs’ reports that mention productivity has gone up after going remote was a lie? Record breaking profits after going remote is a lie?
Why are the CEOs lying? Two of the explanations are that the profit margin is 15% and the city is threatening to end the 15% tax break or the company owns real estate and the lost of asset value is greater than productivity increases that come from going remote.
You mean to tell us that the same CEOs’ reports that mention productivity has gone up after going remote was a lie? Record breaking profits after going remote is a lie?
Why the fuck would you think that’s what he’s trying to say?
What is he trying to say then? What the commentator mentioned and what the CEOs(including my own employer) were saying from 2020-2022 are at odds with each other. So someone is incorrect. Which one is it?
It’s not exactly nonsense. Commercial real estate is leveraged by corporate investors as reliable equity. There are a lot of cards balancing on top of commercial real estate investments, and a crash would cause a domino effect similar to 2008, although probably not nearly as bad.
Banks desperately want commercial spaces to maintain some value, and there are a lot of long-term leases expiring over the next few years. Businesses that stay remote may be owned by stakeholders who also invest in commercial real estate.
So it’s possible somebody somewhere is motivated to get people back into the office because they are worried about the economic fallout of another crash. Those people are far outnumbered by the Six Sigma Laser Lotus Middle Managers who have metrics showing people don’t take naps or jerk off as much in the office as they do working from home (if you’re wondering how they get those KPIs, ask yourself if you have a cover for the cam on your company-issued laptop).
TLDR The push to return to office is almost entirely about control and conformity. It’s likely some decision makers are also worried about real estate values, but there is no grand conspiracy.
It’s simple: the board and major shareholders also invest in office properties and trying to reduce loss of their investments.
I think all answers so far are wrong/only rationalizations after the fact. I’m pretty sure the real reason to get people back is a feeling of control and superiority.
It’s harder to do something else than work when you’re at the office. So they want to at least be able to look over the shoulder of their employees, which gives them a feeling of being in control.
The other is superiority, how are managers going to feel superior, like their higher status means something, if there is no one there that’s deferring to them? “Wfh superiority” does not feel as real as seeing real people react to your presence in some way.
Achieving high social status is one of the base desires of being human, and it’s being applied to the workplace majorly. Even if technically nothing changes for bosses regarding status with wfh, it still feels like status is lost because the effects are not as visible, which has to be avoided at almost all costs.
