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

Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

papers.ssrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 269 posts

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#181

Post by ghaff »

lmm wrote: post #135
betwixthewires wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The density itself makes it worth paying a premium to live there. Just being able to not own a car is a huge saving that can go straight into rent, and even if it costs more the quality of life benefits are worth it. And hell, worst case land prices and rents in the city center come down a bit, that's not really a problem.

Many/most people living in a lot of cities still own cars so that they can easily travel outside the city. It's a perfectly valid preference to live in the denser part of a city but it is a preference and not an absolute.

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#182

Post by paul_f »

_delirium wrote: post #57
tamrix wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a chance. This is completely unrealistic without major, major reconstruction. It's cheaper to deconstruct and build a new building in its place. Imagine the amount of plumbing you would have to redo for the toilets. There all sorts of codes for apartments, there must be so many windows, you need natural light in bedrooms etc

I doubt that practical considerations relating to renovating a building's plumbing are very relevant. NYC is known for an aggressive zoning policy against commercial-to-residential conversations, which they overtly defend as policy (to keep NYC attractive for business headquarters). If it were infeasible to undertake commercial-to-residential conversions for practical/construction reasons, the city wouldn't need to g…

Great article on the problems of office to residential conversions. Essentially, good office buildings make bad residential, and vice-versa. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/why-empty-offic...

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#183

Post by paul_f »

cortesoft wrote: post #11
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet ass apartments in office buildings I hope.

Will people still want to live in cities as much if you can work from home?

I think the better question becomes, will cities remain as attractive, without the daily worker demand creating more shops/restaurants/entertainment? If just the locals, will those places continue to exist and thrive as they did pre-COVOD?

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#184

Post by blagie »

occamrazor wrote: post #149
tarsinge wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These vibrant ecosystems flourished where people spent most of their day. It could be a huge win if they finally migrate to residential neighborhoods, where people will now be more present.

Residential neighborhoods don’t have the same peak density. In central business districts every street has shops, in residential ones it wouldn’t be sustainable.

Much of the world proves this assumption false. See, e.g.:

- Residential districts in China and many former Soviet countries. Big concrete blocks, with the bottom floor lined with small stores. They're absolutely delightful places to live.

- Urban residential districts in the US aren't quite in this style, but a city like Cambridge will have small shops within walking distances of virtually all housing.

The critical thing is that the shops are a lot more pleasant and human than US business districts. A massive lunch hour line at some overpriced (probably due to high-rent and long lines everywhere) sandwich place isn't very human. A small business run by the owner is. One of the differences is that in residential settings, business owners and residents are part of a community -- they get to know each other, sometimes for decades. Business districts have people moving in and out too frequently for that.

"Peak density" is also a lot worse than "mean density." Both a customer and a business owner is better served with traffic spread out throughout the day, rather than nearly 100% of business crammed in during breakfast and lunch hour.

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#185

Post by bin_bash »

alexalx666 wrote: post #152
achow wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The place I work had diverse companies in a 'tech park' - Amazon, Google, and many others inside a gated office space, the total population of which could easily surpass 10K. We used to have a common and very vibrant food court, even though each company used to give free cafeteria food, employees used to walk to the common food court for variety - of both people and food. Also, since there was so much traffic…

It's kind of shocking to read the phrase "vibrant food court". If this was the bar before COVID it can only get better.

Read up on Singapore’s hawker centres for an idea of what’s possible with food courts

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#186

Post by ghaff »

dmpetrov wrote: post #79

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 :)

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.

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#187

Post by bel_marinaio »

blagie wrote: post #184
occamrazor wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Residential neighborhoods don’t have the same peak density. In central business districts every street has shops, in residential ones it wouldn’t be sustainable.

Much of the world proves this assumption false. See, e.g.: - Residential districts in China and many former Soviet countries. Big concrete blocks, with the bottom floor lined with small stores. They're absolutely delightful places to live. - Urban residential districts in the US aren't quite in this style, but a city like Cambridge will have small shops within walking distances of virtually all housing. The critical…

excellent comment!

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#188

Post by cmarschner »

occamrazor wrote: post #149
tarsinge wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These vibrant ecosystems flourished where people spent most of their day. It could be a huge win if they finally migrate to residential neighborhoods, where people will now be more present.

Residential neighborhoods don’t have the same peak density. In central business districts every street has shops, in residential ones it wouldn’t be sustainable.

Mixed use zoning is the answer. The American-style segregation of life vs. work needs to be a thing if the past. It might have made sense when most of work was industrial and thus noisy and dirty, but with modern office environments and services it just adds mobility costs.

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#189

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

ehnto wrote: post #92
IAmGraydon wrote: post #23

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 re…

I am not entirely convinced WFH will stay the norm either. Certainly more normal, but I think the HN crowd might be uniquely positioned to exploit the situation. Your average office worker doesn't usually have the agency to push back on office policies at the best of times, and you already see plenty of pull back into the office. The other part of the equation is the more common hybrid arrangement. If you still have…

The issue isn't so much work from home, which is not the ideal working arrangement for all, it's the commute to a central location. What has happened is people have realised the essential stupidity of it.

The future will be much more mixed and more sensible. Some people will work from home and some people will work in offices, but those offices will be much closer to where people live and people who need to work together will tend to live close by, or at least have the opportunity to. Essentially we'll see a lot more smaller offices in the suburbs.

You couldn't design a worse system of everyone having to commute to a central location, with infrastructure that is always overloaded at rush hour and underused the rest of the time.

The key to that arrangement surviving has been that the impact is all on workers and the convenience payoff has been for employers. The pandemic opened people's eyes and they're not going back.

Re: Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

#190

Post by morelisp »

raldi wrote: post #150
danuker wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are many more of those. Maybe total value still decreased, because people no longer pay such a large premium for the limited city center space. As such, total money paid on rent is less.

Total money spent on card catalogs went down since 1980. Does that mean value was destroyed?

In a weird coincidence, I have been trying find a card catalogs or two for home storage for a couple months. These are often incredibly well-made solid wood furniture, and yet most libraries worldwide have just been scrapping them. (Their size and weight makes them extremely difficult to ship - buyers/sellers aren't well aligned.)

So, in short, yes. We also got new value, but tons is being unnecessarily destroyed.

Post reply on HN