Work from home and the office real estate apocalypse

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 12:06 PM UTC

hizxy wrote: post #173

Does anyone really know the impact on productivity? I work for a remote-first company (never had an office) and things move so slow.

Post by naveen99 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 12:22 PM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #144

vba616 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can imagine it being like if a farmer had a bunch of grain stored in a silo and it somehow went bad. It's fundamentally different, practically the opposite. Paper losses are like a farmer realizing that the grain in his silo is bad. Knowing this when you were oblivious before is a good thing, whereas the grain going bad is obviously not. Once you start regarding bad news as a loss, very bad stuff happens. In som…

> Once you start regarding bad news as a loss, very bad stuff happens. I like this. It's insightful, and stated in a plain way. And equally we can say, once we start regarding good news as a gain, very bad stuff happens. The idea of "confidence" rather than measurable, tangible facts as an economic basis has been the road to many bad things. In some ways confidence and pessimism can be seen as the ability to ignore r…

Post by ghaff » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 12:26 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #123

88840-8855 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Living in a city is way better than living on the countryside. - access to a large airport to go on regular holidays easily - better health care coverage, more doctors, more specialists - cultural access - more diversity and more colorful services and products - better public transportation

I have access to a small airport that's an hour flight to a large one. The logistics of going somewhere for leisure are only marginally more difficult for me, and even easier since I don't have to navigate a small city within a city with a million people in it and traffic to get there and all that. And for the most part I have plenty of leisure around me, I don't have to fly anywhere to see wide open spaces for examp…

Post by wyldfire » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 12:40 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #8

wmeredith wrote: post #2

From the abstract, “We revalue the stock of New York City commercial office buildings taking into account pandemic-induced cash flow and discount rate effects. We find a 32% decline in office values in 2020 and 28% in the longer-run, the latter representing a $500 billion value destruction.” Is that value “destroyed”? Is it not unlocked to flow elsewhere? I’m genuinely curious about the dynamics of this.

Whether value was 'destroyed' or not depends on how you look at it. $500 billion dollars worth of assets were lost by the owners of the real estate; that value is gone, and it didn't go to someone else. It just vanished. The value didn't disappear because it transferred to someone else, it went away because the asset itself become less desirable and valuable to other people. You can imagine it being like if a farmer…

Post by MichaelZuo » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:02 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #137

betwixthewires wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those people and culture and amenities are just other people , and when the core economic engine of the city is gone, those people leave too. Imagine you're a Jamaican halal chicken shop owner and your core business is professional office workers walking by on the way home from work and stopping in for a bite. When that office worker is no longer there because he can make the same salary and cut his expenses in h…

The economy is supposed to be about enhancing other people's lives, not vice versa. Living in a city where you can walk down the road to get a chicken sandwich is a big win over living in a suburb where you have to drive everywhere. That's still true if you're working remotely.