Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

bnnbloomberg.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 185 posts

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#121

Post by simoncion »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #22
colordrops wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a public discussion forum, not your living room.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Do you think a company is asking someone to come in to the office because they're worried about their landlord's property values?

They're definitely being asked to come in (in many cases) because the cities in which the buildings exist are granting the companies tax breaks (and/or other monetary incentives) to "encourage" workers to work from the office in order to prop up local property values. (see the story here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36835843>)

And also, yeah, I expect there are some companies that are seriously concerned about propping up the value of the building in which their office is located.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#122

Post by charles_f »

cpdean wrote: post #46

Can you call it value when it's fundamentally rent-seeking? This wasn't value created, it was value extracted.

It was valuable for the person who extracted that rent, it will be less valuable. Therefore that value has disappeared from the market.

At a societal level, rent payers will pay less, and shareholders will probably be delighted.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#123

Post by sys_64738 »

DrBazza wrote: post #57
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #2

I refuse to be miserable in an office just for someone else's building value.

My former employer (in London) has just instructed everyone, finally after COVID, to be in the office for 50% of the time. Many of my former colleagues starting looking for other jobs last week. It seems employers have two concerns: cost and presenteeism. The first is easily solved, downsize your office. The second, is an organisational problem. Why commute for 90 minutes each way to sit in a office with headphones o…

Just ignore such instruction and wait to see what happens. That's what I did and I am still employed. But I don't really care.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#124

Post by sys_64738 »

jacknews wrote: post #10
CyberDildonics wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is asking you to come into an office just to boost their landlord's property values. That would be a money losing proposition for the company.

Indeed they're not asking ...

No employer can force you to do anything. Saying No or just ignoring the demand is always an option.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#125

Post by Ekaros »

jayski wrote: post #21
Kapura wrote: post #8

The building i currently live in is a 20+ storey apartment block that was made out of a converted office building built in the 60s. Given the housing prices in [checks notes] cities, it feels like a wave of residentializing is on the horizon.

Not an expert but I've read it's not easy to add all the necessary plumbing to provide showers and toilets if you redistribute office space into apartments. A lot of times office buildings will have one large bathroom per floor.

Don't offices have much more floor height than apartments? So just add stuff in the ceiling or raise the floor and run stuff under there.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#126

Post by navane »

mycall wrote: post #87
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #50

We've become more efficient as a society. We stopped wasting fuel, our time and wear and tear on cars. All that time and material can be spent on something productive. Instead headlines tell about value of offices. Maybe that value was not real. It only existed because someone with power over employees could force them to waste resources. It's a market failure.

What are some examples of something more productive? Hobbies and family time?

The lack of commuting alone brought a significant dip to all the climate doom lines

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#127

Post by xw4002 »

londons_explore wrote: post #96
dsr_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical business leases were 5-10 years. If you weren't willing to commit to 5 years in 2018, nobody owning a building in a major CBD wanted to see you. You could get sublets from businesses that wanted to recoup costs while moving to a bigger space, or space at the fringes or outside of the CBD. The leases are just starting to run out.

Plenty of leases have already expired. Yet it seems landlords would prefer to leave a building empty than to lease it for a low rent. Somehow the usual rules of supply and demand don't seem to be applying.

Interests rates only started rising in 2022. Before then it was possible to get a basically free loan to buy time in hopes of locking in a good long term deal. It’s going to take time to suck all the money out of the system and force hard choices.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#128

Post by navane »

mastax wrote: post #91
CBarkleyU wrote: post #5

Alternative title by me: Remote work frees up $800b to be spent more effectively.

When the paper value of an asset disappears you don't get the money back to spend elsewhere. Nobody does. Just like lending creates money, destruction of assets destroys money. Which happens to be what we want right now, as long as it can be done in an orderly fashion.

The value decreases because the anticipated rent decreases. This windfall is literally money that can be spend elsewhere by the entities that rent.

Re: Remote Work to Wipe Out $800B from Office Values, McKinsey Says

#130

Post by jacknews »

csomar wrote: post #69
jacknews wrote: post #6

"Remote work risks wiping $800 billion" No guesses which angle this is coming from. "Attendance still is 30% lower than what it was before the pandemic and only 37% of people are back at the office every day." And yet the world has not stopped. In fact everything seems to be going faster than ever.

The world will never stop, not even for humans. On the other hand, if you have built a career around commercial office real-estate, the world might just have stopped for you. Still, live goes on.

Sure you have to feel sorry for realtors to some extent.

But real-estate is at the very heart of the financial system, and therefore the economy if not the government.

So this is not about individual careers or working preferences in themselves.

Post reply on HN