Maybe these results are in a bit early, but here they are, and the winner is..."commuting confirmed pointless, office space is a thing of the past now:"
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/03/remote_work_real_estate_values/
Perhaps the newly available space can be used to address the decades-long trainwreck which has recently caught fire known as the housing shortage, in a gorillas-freeze-to-death sort of way:
That's a catch-22 though. If people are working less at offices, there's less of a reason to live near densely congested areas. So demand for offices-turned-apartments would not be as high as expected.
With crime on the increase in most metropolitan areas, schools being very hit-or-miss in big cities, and a stickiness to many peoples desire to not be crowded into small spaces with other germ bags, I see no reason anyone would want to live in a major city other than shorter commutes.
This is also translating into hardships for the local businesses that used to do brisk business in breakfast and lunch for office-goers.
volvoclearinghouse said:That's a catch-22 though. If people are working less at offices, there's less of a reason to live near densely congested areas. So demand for offices-turned-apartments would not be as high as expected.
Visited my Aunt back in March or May or something around then. She's outside Talladega Alabama. I wondered several times if the work from home environment was going to revitalize some of the small towns we saw along the way.
Also, as a counter-point to your idea that offices-turned-apartments wouldn't necessarily be a thing, there is a large growing market for car-less society (sounds nuts, doesn't it?) and the ability to walk wherever you need for whatever you need is a growing draw for real estate. Tampa is planning a new development in/next to Ybor that is directly built around that idea
No matter what there's always people who will do weird things - a guy I worked with born raised, worked and lived in a Vancouver suburb. He bought a condo in downtown Vancouver condo and commuted back to the suburb.
In reply to Rons :
That is brilliant he had no traffic ever. I lived about 7 miles outside of uptown Charlotte. My work was near the state line on hwy 49 my wife was working in uptown. Same length trip, mine was 10 minutes against traffic hers was an hour on a good day.
Even if I was 100% remote I would be looking at moving closer to downtown.
We’ve discussed this a bit in our office as a good percentage of our business is supporting the commercial market. While remote work is absolutely here to stay most of our customer base has seen day to day occupancy increase since the spring. In support of this traffic volume during commuting hours has increased noticeably in the last six months. I’d guess we’re back to 80% of where we were at this time in 2019.
Commercial real estate is cyclical even without a global pandemic; here in the Boston area there have been 3 fairly big swings in the market here since I got into the business in the late 80’s. Current development is booming here but several of our larger customers have told us they are looking out 3 to 5 years in terms of making new investments as they feel the market was overvalued pre pandemic. We’re also having a “make everything a lab” trend now that may be oversold and problematic if the tenants aren’t already signed up. More mixed use development projects are being planned as the housing market here in eastern MA is insane. Time will tell but change seems to be the norm not the exception.
GameboyRMH said:Maybe these results are in a bit early, but here they are, and the winner is..."commuting confirmed pointless, office space is a thing of the past now:"
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/03/remote_work_real_estate_values/
Perhaps the newly available space can be used to address the decades-long trainwreck which has recently caught fire known as the housing shortage, in a gorillas-freeze-to-death sort of way:
That's not true for all jobs, but yeah sorta.
Sadly, I am still unable to work from home. 
There is a fine line between Home Office and House Arrest.
I have some new neighbors that both work from home. They moved here to St Pete when they realized they don't need to live between Pittsburgh and Akron for their two jobs.
My "day job" is a commercial landlord. We've had no vacancies and have had to non-renew a tenants lease in order to accommodate growth by other tenants. There aren't as many people in the building on a daily basis as there were in February 2020, but the building is fully leased and we could lease another 20,000sf immediately if we had it. Perhaps the most expensive or worst run office spaces will have a vacancy problem but I suspect the well run and reasonably priced will continue to flourish. There will be ups and downs as with any big industry but it's not going away on any massive scale - certainly not large enough to empty out major cities - any time soon that I can see.
One casualty that I have seen is the restaurant industry downtown. The ones dependent upon daytime office foot traffic have taken a beating. Some have closed, including some really great ones, but im hopeful that soon there will be a new equilibrium reached with perhaps fewer restaurants returning to a decent stable business. Food service has always been a cutthroat industry with lots of turn over.
Woody (Forum Supportum) said:Sadly, I am still unable to work from home.
Glad you're not working at home Woody.
In reply to Rons :
I live downtown and used to work not far away, still in the city center. My new commute takes me across town (close to the airport) and commuting out of the city center in the morning, and into the city center in the evening has been great. I generally zoom along, occasionally glancing at opposing traffic doing the stop-and-crawl and thinking that life is good.
Sure...life isn't perfect, and some pockets of downtown are a bit rough around the edges, but living there I've come to know the specifics. Once home, I can head out on foot and go several blocks to bars/dining/entertainment if I want. I wouldn't have planned it that way, but it has worked out pretty well so far.
volvoclearinghouse said:That's a catch-22 though. If people are working less at offices, there's less of a reason to live near densely congested areas. So demand for offices-turned-apartments would not be as high as expected.
With crime on the increase in most metropolitan areas, schools being very hit-or-miss in big cities, and a stickiness to many peoples desire to not be crowded into small spaces with other germ bags, I see no reason anyone would want to live in a major city other than shorter commutes.
This is also translating into hardships for the local businesses that used to do brisk business in breakfast and lunch for office-goers.
It's usually younger people that want to live in dense areas, they would frequent those restaurant businesses and most don't have kids so schools aren't that big of an issue. This all hinges on converted office space being affordable.
I don't quite live in suburbia, but there's a shopping strip a block away and it's mighty convenient walking for groceries or to the post office except when it's 100 degrees out.
I asked a car guy who is in commercial real estate and he said it certainly wasn't an issue for him (SoCal). Work from home hasn't had much effect on LA traffic from what I can tell. Of course the corporate HQ for the company I work for is 90% empty, and it's a newly leased (right before, the "thing") and fully remodeled. It's a bit sad really. Not sure what the future holds for it but the company seems to be running great. No way I am going back in though.
I feel pretty confident there are very few who would choose to live near downtown in any of the major western cities currently. They are a bit of a (potentially dangerous) s-show in most areas.
In reply to aircooled :
It's going to take a while before working from home is fully accepted.
Management and ownership of big office buildings is a massive ego boost to those at the top.
However the economics of it ( working from home) is impressive. Something 38% more productive and 24% less costly. And that's calculating in the cost of owning a major headquarters. When that goes away with the attending reduction in property taxes, maintenance, and Capitol costs. It becomes an overwhelming profit center for the corporations who embrace Work from home.
Not to mention an effective pay raise for the employees. With some offices 85-95% empty, that is a lot of vacant space. If suddenly dumped on the market the value would plummet.
Forcing employees back into the office to be less productive and cost more doesn't seem to be a smart move at this point.
It's an anomaly, and only a matter of time before most are back in the office.
Denver traffic seems like it's back to pre-covid levels. I can't work from home, so have always been coming in, same as my wife...
Even though I hear this endlessly from the media, I have not seen it in real life. The only people I know working from home regularly work in software 100%.
In reply to Peabody :
It's more efficient ( approx. 40% ) to work from home for a lot of administrative and accounting tasks.
With computers every second can be accounted for.
And costs companies less money. (20+%)
Those numbers come from the bank my wife works for. It's not something that can be ignored.
Regarding traffic, I vaguely recall reading that commuter traffic tends to have a maximum density. At that point you're playing with the duration of that density as people shift their schedules around it. So peak might be back to pre-covid but the amount of time spent there is still down. That's my personal anecdotal observation in my area (central NJ) too.
I'm surprised to hear commercial (non-warehouse) is strong in other regions. The street where I used to work has a fraction of the number of cars in the parking lots. We downsized our site about 50%. There are a handful of people who go to the office because they want to. The rest go as-needed. I don't work with anyone there so I'm never needed. :) I haven't even visited the new office. Maybe tomorrow.
In reply to aircooled :
I read somewhere that most people who work in LA like food service, retail, facility mgmt, plumbers, utilities, nurses, med assistants, admins, teachers, construction ect actually commute up-to 70 miles into the city because they cant afford to live where they work. Work from home isn't an option for most of the people who commute into LA and that's why the traffic situation hasn't improved with a more WFH friendly environment.
Traffic in Atlanta is back to pre-pandemic levels as if nothing ever happened. Certainly the density of that traffic is back, but perhaps the length length of time spent at that peak density has decreased.
I agree it seems like WFH is talked about and reported on disproportionately compared to the percentage of people who actually have that option. What % of people work in an office? What % of those can actually do their office job effectively from home? If it's roughly 10% of people not commuting anymore, that helps a lot but it's still E36 M3show for the rest of us.
maschinenbau said:Traffic in Atlanta is back to pre-pandemic levels as if nothing ever happened. Certainly the density of that traffic is back, but perhaps the length length of time spent at that peak density has decreased.
I agree it seems like WFH is talked about and reported on disproportionately compared to the percentage of people who actually have that option. What % of people work in an office? What % of those can actually do their office job effectively from home? If it's roughly 10% of people not commuting anymore, that helps a lot but it's still E36 M3show for the rest of us.
Agreed I think #s on this would be interesting. I did some quick googling and numbers are all over the place so I have no real idea of what the real impact is.
I work hybrid, and most of those in my circle are hybrid or remote... its a small circle. But even of those, an increasing # are pushed to come back into the office. The team I am part of is spread across 4+ locations/time zones so it isn't like being in the office changes much for us - still a lot of time spent on zoom.
frenchyd said:In reply to Peabody :
It's more efficient ( approx. 40% ) to work from home for a lot of administrative and accounting tasks.
With computers every second can be accounted for.
And costs companies less money. (20+%)
Those numbers come from the bank my wife works for. It's not something that can be ignored.
I've heard similar numbers from a relative who works at a big accounting firm. Management hated the idea at first but the bottom line trumps managers' feelings...
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