I remember some webcomic fairytale, where a wizard builds a big tower.
Then, there’s a big storm, and the wizard asks the villagers to help or his tower will fall over.
The villagers say he shouldn’t have made such a tall tower, that could so easily fall to a storm.
The wizard says, if they don’t help, his falling tower will crush the whole village.
So, the the king forces the villagers to take bricks from their own houses and reinforce the wizard’s tower.
And when they were finished, the wizard’s tower was twice as big.
And he lived happily ever after.
Modern capitalism has gotten very, very good at capitalizing gains, and socializing losses. It is no wonder we are living in the time of worst economic inequality in possibly human history.
I know right? It’s not like there isn’t also a housing crisis we should be doing something about. If office space is in less demand, why not convert it into housing, which is in high demand?
Oh I know why. It’s cause then all the housing prices would become less inflated, thereby lowering the rich landlords profit margins in another area.
And zooooooooooniiiiiiiing (whiniest shit weasel voice you can imagine), God can you imagine all the paperwork they have to file to get the area rezoned as partially residential? The horrors!
That’s a nice narrative, but actually office buildings are very difficult to turn into housing. They are designed as office buildings not as residential. Their are many examples but here are two:
plumbing, office buildings have nowhere near the water capacity for residential, maybe a few restrooms per floor.
Windows, habitual rooms legally require windows. Office building have large spaces without windows and are not designed to have all the rooms to have windows.
It would cost around $500 a square foot to remodel which would mean a tiny 400sq ft unit would cost about 200k to make which is about the same as just making a house.
These office building owners are in trouble, if their was an easy way to convert the buildings they would, they would not face bankruptcy to help their buddies property hold an extra 10% in value
We don't have a housing crisis. We have a Greed crisis. There are more than enough homes to home every single houseless individual, but corporate greed means we let 1/3 of units sit vacant to drive up profits
People keep forgetting that there ARE enough houses. What's missing is enough money to rent or buy.
In an ideal free market situation rent would go down to avoid having empty housing not generating profit. Because the competitors would grab that opportunity.
In greed dystopia America there is a cartel artificially keeping prices high by agreeing to lose the profit on the empty housing to manipulate the market.
If office space is in less demand, why not convert it into housing, which is in high demand?
They can't. Seen this discussed a few times, but basically the infrastructure & design constraints for offices don't match the requirements for housing to the point where it's easier to tear the building down and build a new one. Different plumbing requirements, power requirements, soundproofing, etc etc.
This same class wines and dines with city council members and contributes to mayoral runs, and can largely just buy the vote of state legislatures.
People live in dorms with the equivalent plumbing of an office building and that’s legal. You start to get young singles living downtown, and restaurants and bars will come back. You get that, people will go ahead and start putting bathrooms in every room to compete with each other.
The two reasons that the people who own multiple skyscrapers refuse to lift a finger here and just pontificate about how powerless they are against Bob the used car salesman sitting in the city council is because they want to be in bed with a bank instead of the general public. They want the power and prestige.
The other more serious reason is that housing doesn’t work like they say it does. Real estate developers will always say, “the problem is we need more housing.” Of course they will say that, and it seems to make sense that increased supply will reduce demand.
But it doesn’t. Even in Oregon and Washington, the two states with the least amount of vacancy, there are enough vacant homes that every single homeless individual could have two homes and there would still be thousands left over.
Across the border in BC, they have a homeless crises and too much vacant housing, which is about to close down real estate businesses and push thousands and thousands of people out of jobs, and potentially out of houses. Because there is too much vacancy.
The people in charge of doing this, the people that own the big buildings, the real estate companies, and everything else need to keep building to keep money. And it is in their benefit to make as few regulations as possible as they are incentivized for a big pay day rather than a stable income of modest income.
Because if they did fulfill everyone’s need for stable housing, they would have put themselves out of work. They know that, so it’s always going to be, “If we just build a few more houses..” that nobody can live in.
That’s all nice and all but the plumbing of an office building is fundamentally different than that of a residential building. People using the bathroom a handful times a day is a lot different than people taking a shower, cooking, washing laundry , using the bathroom. You have to make renovations that are basically like building a new housing project to make it so. You can’t do it piecemeal either. Not to mention lack of natural light in interior units. Tax incentives for future office buildings to have the ability to turn into residential units is a good idea maybe just good investment advice also. Your dorms idea is pretty interesting definitely less stuff to consider but capacity still remains a major roadblock.
I personally don't see what the issue is to just demo and reconstruct, like it's still a net positive.
And if we do it the Japan method the housing can go up pretty damn quick and I think cheaper. It's just doing prefab modular design, it might not look super pretty on the outside but I think the benefits way exceed the negatives
The question was why they don’t just renovate, my answer was limited to that specific question. Frankly, I’m all for a painful readjustment that reduces the landlord wealth quotient a bit. Just… we need to be honest about our questions.
I think the issue is that when the downtown areas become vacant, there goes all those tax dollars. Those dollars pay for the roads, bridges, teachers, cops.
I’m not sad the rich guys are losing out. But tons of abandoned and unused buildings is terrible for everyone. It drags the entire local economy down.
Again, not shedding any tears for the greedy bastards
I don't understand ... the owners still own the buildings and the buildings didn't go away ... why is it "there go the tax dollars?" Is there a law you can't tax an empty structure?
All the people working in there, buying from local shops, stay home and buy from their own local shops. All that lost business cascade into lost jobs and a downturn in local economic activity, which means less taxes to pay. Does the increased activity where they live compensate for it? Somewhat... bar the loss in transportation-related stuff.
The economy is kind of like an ecosystem, you remove one specie and it has consequences
I have a novel idea to make up for this - tax the rich more.
Economies change. Human behaviors change. The world changes, and so can legislation and the profits and income streams of rich people (and how we source taxes).
While I agree (though technically "taxing them more" isn't the issue. It's how they go around taxes by borrowing money that is put up to their assets. The rich aren't "paid" or have much in capital gains, they just use the increasing value of their assets to pay of loans because it means they pay less in taxes.)... this is a bit irrelevant to what this discussion here is about. Taxing the rich more whose assets are devaluating isn't going to magically make tax money, especially since most taxes are based on capital gains. Which they aren't getting there because of remote work
Also, often large companies were given tax incentives to put office buildings in particular places. Usually the company is paying reduced taxes with the expectation that employees will be there paying payroll taxes and spending money. If they're not then the business is essentially reneging on the deal.
Here’s a real life example: A good friend of mine owns a restaurant very near the Financial District in San Francisco. Pre-pandemic, his lunch business was booming- to the point he made his expenses for the day before 2:00 pm most days. So dinner was pure profit. Nearly all his customers were office workers who commuted from outside the city. (The FD had something like a million+ commuters. I forget the actual number but it was massive.)
Three years post-pandemic. He’s now open for dinner only because lunch is basically a bust. The numbers just aren’t there to make it profitable. He’s focusing on catering and outside events to make up that revenue.
I’m not saying that everyone needs to go back to the office five days a week, but not being there absolutely creates an economic ripple effect.
Just find a new way to use the buildings. Do some renovations and turn them into apartments or drop the rent low enough that small businesses can move in.
Exactly. For example, you have a skyscraper with a bunch of vacant offices. Tear out a few floors and make them into apartment housing. And on the ground floor, you could put in small grocery stores or restaurants. That way, people can come and live in or visit downtown for more than a pub crawl.
My city had an old department store that closed 30 years ago, that I think by this point they've torn down. I'm not sure. It was still standing last I went down there, and mostly being used for storage of random crap.
If they remodeled or replace the building with a grocery on the ground floor, three or four levels of apartments, and maybe a penthouse restaurant, then it would increase the amount of people that can live in the downtown area exponentially.
Also not our problem. Most people aren’t even part of those downtown communities , they are just forced to pilgrimage there every day.
Remote work will actually help heal our society as family units can live in the same communities instead of moving away to large cities. This in turn would increase the birth rate they care so much about because parents would have family support and could more easily take care of children or get them to and from daycare. Tax revenues increase for locations outside city centers.
Remote is literally better for everyone except for big city governments, their chamber of commerce and real estate investors.
The asset-owning class always bemoans that they "take the risk" so they "deserve the profits". Then the moment the risk doesnt pay off, they demand state intervention to stop them losing the game.
Other ways they're not risking anything:
- They're typically only risking their investor's money.
- Even if they risk their own money, they'll have plenty left over if it doesn't work out.
It's all a cynical lie to make ordinary people imagine how risky it would be for them to start a business, so they forget that those risks don't apply to rich people.
Forcing people back to work when those same jobs can be done at home should be grounds for a revolt. Us workers just can't have that quality of life because it might affect the million dollar salaries of the rich.
If it was France in 1789, this would look much different.
In their defense, I don't think it's that easy. I believe that the regulations for office/residential spaces are too different, and the refitting costs might actually make it cheaper to demolish and rebuild - up until the people who make money off there not being enough residential housing (and the politicians they've bought) dig up every rule they can find to stop it from happening.
It's a good thought, but absent a large scale unified push for it there's not really much chance of it happening in a form that's actually helpful.
It can be done, but particularly more modern buildings with large floor plates do make it difficult to have a viable residential product as they just can’t access many windows.
Maybe ironically, depending on your definition of the word, but older office buildings which tended to have smaller floor plates do work better for that type of adaptive use.
Windows aren’t the only problem. Office buildings, particularly skyscrapers, aren’t designed to handle the same plumbing and HVAC capacity needed by a residential building.
That’s true, but you can add plumbing if you do a full gut. However if you’re 50 plus feet deep from the corridor to a window, unless you’re doing truly massive apartments, you’re just not going to have the access to light and views to the outside that will make a sellable product.
Taking down some of these office buildings is going to be a major engineering feat.
I don't think this is financially achievable.
One office building --small skyscraper-- over her was completely stripped. Only "floors" remained. Then the entire building was turned into housing, except for the ground floor (shops) and the first floor (upscale restaurant).
The apartments on the top 3 floors were sold for sky-high prices, within days of the announcement of the sale.
Then don't use capitalism to make it happen. Capitalism should only be allowed for industries that actually benefit from it, and that almost universally means non-essential products and services. Televisions are non-essential, and capitalism has made them widely available and affordable. Housing, on the other hand, is very essential, and capitalism does not provide a wide array of affordable options.
Cost cant be set aside. The buildings are just not set up for human dwelling. Safety is the biggest concern. Emergency egress being one of the tops.
Commercial buildings are designed with the idea that people going in can easily get out on their own 2 feet. Residential does not.
It would be cheaper to demo and build from scratch a lot of the time.
Here's the reality check for those who don't understand the true nature of capitalism. And no, I'm not dunking on you, specifically, this is more aimed at those wealthy businesspeople who cry about profit loss and expect government bailouts every time their businesses start to flag in profits.
Capitalism works both ways. A person can, in theory, build themselves a great business in a capitalist based economy. In it's most simplistic and basic form, it works on simple supply and demand. Make a product that people want, and you can potentially make a fortune.
But it also works the other way. If there's no interest in that product, or society changes in such a way that your product no longer has a sustainable niche in the market, you either need to change things to keep it a product that people want or need, or your business fails. End of story.
This bizarre idea that it must become somebody else's problem to prop up a failing business goes against the very nature of capitalism. You can infuse all the money you want into a failing business to keep it limping along, but if that business never makes the necessary changes to make itself desirable again, they will simply become a massive welfare recipient on a perpetual and grand scale, forever vacuuming up great amounts of money without ever becoming sustainable on it's own again.
This sounds an awful lot like the right's worst claims about human welfare recipients, doesn't it? I wonder where they got that idea.
People aren't businesses. Individuals generally don't like living on poverty-level amounts of handouts, and that's what welfare for people is. A poverty level hand up to try to keep people going. These businesses aren't getting a pittance, though. They're getting tens of millions of dollars at a shot. Enough to sustain the business and their profit margins for months. Not just what they barely need to get by. Huge difference here. These businesses have plenty of reason to keep going for those bail outs without having to put in the cost or effort to change their business model. Why bother, when the government will hand them plenty of dough for doing the same thing?
It's not our problem if these companies do not want to reinvest in their own properties. Times have changed. The needs of the people have changed. It's not up to us to keep their buildings profitable when we have no earthly use for all those offices anymore. If they can't find people to rent the offices, then they need to either convert their buildings to something more useful, or sell them to someone who can.
Welcome to the other side of capitalism. This is the part where they find out what happens when they don't make money, and Daddy Warbucks doesn't come to wipe their ass for them.
Exactly, but also factor in the need for competition to keep prices low and quality higher. Government regulation and affirmative action help create more competition. When producers don’t have competition, all the things you mention come into play.
Not if you demolish it. Screw them. I’m glad that their investments are likely to lose money as the future brings inevitable decentralization.
They will kick and scream and pull everyone into the office, but long term they are screwed. And if they are not seeing the writhing on the wall, it’s their future loss.
I like the idea for certain, but the logistics are crazy.
The building regulations for commercial vs residential have many differences, like not having bedrooms without windows, but just things like the layout of bathrooms make things difficult.
Putting in a false floor for plumbing is begging for terrible failures, but otherwise you're at the mercy of however the plumbing is laid out. Which leads to two scenarios, you build likely very large, and pricey, apartments (condos?) that allow for at least one bathroom in the unit to be close to existing plumbing. Or, you build a large amount of cheaper units, and build a dorm like public bathrooms and showers.
Both scenarios aren't great, and I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. But the plumbing alone is an enormous hurdle I can't see any good way around without adding in a lot of failure points.
That’s what Chicago is doing. Unfortunately, like most cities, they started way too late and are moving too slow, so now people are getting hit with massive property tax hikes to make up for the lost revenue from vacant office spaces downtown.
As much as I want to be glib about this, those office spaces failing is hurting a lot of people you wouldn’t think it would affect.
Thats with any investment from a city who prioritized corporations over people.
Utah saw this when they made a deal with the auto industry and buried pre built trolly lines that taxes went into previously. This move hurt all low income neighborhoods for the simple justification of auto industry profits for a car oriented city structure.
On the flip side of that CNN why don’t you show how much money everyday workers lose driving into those building? Or how much maintenance we have to upkeep on the infrastructure to go into those buildings? Or the time lost sitting into our cars for a job we could do at home?
At the very least CNN is honest that the concern with this situation is for the wealthy, not what can alleviate just a little stress and financial burden off the everyday workers.
How to measure profits for the rich against humanity. I grew up being reminded “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or one” from watching TV
Work From Home is costing us billions of dollars a year! And by "us" I mean the billionaires who own the office buildings, gas companies, car companies, auto repair companies, tire companies...won't someone think of the billionaires? /s of course
To be fair it's also costing the small companies around the office buildings that provide meals and services, but when it's the billionaires complaining about it it's kind of hard to sympathize
I made the mistake of buying a new car right after covid thinking RTO was imminent and rates were so low - I barely have 20k miles on it after 4 years and would have been better off with my paid-off old car
What I don't get is how this even hurts the bottom line of the companies. The pre WFH status quo expected that you'd pay for these expensive office spaces forever. They'd continue to be an expense, something that reduces profit. Even vacant, a lot of upkeep costs are eliminated now. You don't need to keep the inside lit, you can set the thermostat to just keep the building from getting damaged by extreme outside temperatures instead of comfortable for people inside, you aren't paying for much or any water usage anymore since no one uses the restrooms. So what if you then sell and lose and money? You weren't planning to get rid of the office space anytime soon anyway. And if you were going to sell it, you're probably buying a new space to replace it so all your workers have an office space.
I just don't see how companies see this as an actual bad thing. You can get rid of an expensive piece of property to use and maintain and let someone else use it for something better. Even if you technically sell for a loss, you lose the expenses associated with keeping it for people to use.
It's not the companies leasing the space that have the problem.
It's the people who own the buildings. They spent millions and millions of dollars to build, typically taking out loans against the value of the buildings. Historically this is an extremely safe investment. Real estate almost never goes down in value. It almost always goes up.
Now their buildings sit vacant, but they still have to pay on those loans. A lot of those loans were very low interest, but that interest rate is frequently contingent on the value of the property staying high. Once they devalue to a certain point, the banks are going to come calling.
So that's only the owners' problem, right? Nope. Large banks and funds invest in commercial real estate. Like I said before, historically that's a very safe and smart investment. But if the whole commercial real estate market crashes, those funds and banks are in for a rough ride, which cascades throughout the economy.
It also fucks with property taxes, which can have rippling effects for cities.
The leadership of the companies leasing the space have friends or investments in commercial real estate. Thus it behooves them to force return to office.
People heavily invest in something -> value of that thing goes down drastically -> those people have problems -> banks that loaned them money have problems -> problems for all of us
I feel bad for the restaurants and other small businesses that benefitted from extra foot traffic in downtown cores where those officer buildings were, but never once have I thought, "Gee, these poor corporate landlords..."
So I agree that there’s no need for sympathy for the wealthy owners of office buildings, but we shouldn’t be so glib about the secondary effects. Commercial real estate generally pays property taxes at far higher rates than residential, so collapsing prices can punch a massive hole in city budgets, it’s already happening in man6 places and will continue to get worse. That means that regular people are going to pay higher property taxes, and likely get reduced or degraded services as well. Cities covered it up with federal money from COVID, but that’s over now and the chickens are coming home to roost.
If I was forced back to the office it would be a significant pay cut. Not to mention my mental health would fall through the floor. I interviewed for a job that was in office 5 days a week. I wanted the job but decided to not take it solely based on the office vibe. So so so depressing.
Remember that the C Suite and owners come and go as they please- there isn't a standard in most cases for wfh once you hit a certain level in the corporate hierarchy.
My company recalled its remote workforce for just this reason- tax breaks from the city on the new building downtown and occupancy requirements for said tax breaks... it went over like a lead balloon and continues to be a source of issue for the workforce around here.
Nothing says you don't really mean anything to us like using people as warm bodies for tax breaks.
As someone who wfh, when one of the higher ups mentioned forcing us back to the office our supervisors and us told them no. We have been more productive with wfh. I do not give two shits if the building owner loses some money.
Ebeneezer Scrooge was a landlord. Most classic Scooby-doo villains were real estate developers. No sympathy for rent seeking, owner-class, bitch babies. None. Heal your trauma or get unmasked by meddling kids. Hope you're ruined, actually.
This is a fine opinion to have. However, you can't have this opinion and then also, down the road, complain when jurisdictions have to cut public programs due to decreased tax revenue. Or complain when crime increases in urban areas because there are fewer people around (basic component of neighborhood safety). Or complain when restaurants shut their doors because of decreased foot traffic. I'm not disagreeing with the post, I'm just adding color for those who may not know (if you do know these consequences and still don't care about the urban doom loop, my reply is not geared toward you). And I don't care what your opinion is, you are absolutely entitled to it. We live in a complex, interconnected society where the effects of large economic changes are not black and white.
Just think, if we all work from home (where possible) then all those office buildings can be torn down to make new houses and apartments. And then the residential rent can go down. And people will be happier.
Rich people and companies love free market until anything cuts into their profit margin.
Then suddenly they socialists looking for a bailout and to spread their losses over the rest of the public. Of course any profit is always privatized - that's the part of capitalism they want to keep.
Well maybe if those wealthy landowners didn't spend frivolously on avocado toast and lattes they would have more money to put towards securing their investments.
That and we have a fucking housing shortage. If only we could somehow magically make more room for houses in areas that already exist. What a rare opportunity that would be!!!
I mean the wealthy always talk about how people living on minimum wage are just two smart investments away from being millionairs, so I'm sure the owners of the office buildings can get back on their feet in a few weeks.
Funny that they don’t want to convert to affordable housing rather than spending much more money lobbying CEOs to force their people back to the office. Hmm I wonder why that could be?
Converting to housing is actually very difficult and expensive. Commercial buildings have very different building codes, and their plumbing and electrical systems are designed for very different uses. It costs millions and takes years to convert a single building.
WORKING PEOPLE: buy less, eat less, consume less ohh stop over reacting
TOP 1% RICH: They need more subsidies and Tax breaks so we can be a better America.
You have an empty building????!! Convert it into an affordable child care facility and get your greedy subsidies by helping them. Convert it into affordable Housing so you can also get your greedy subsidies that way. You created the information super highway that allows anyone to work from anywhere and are trying to overtake work with AI but you want them in traffic for 4 hours a day cause of your poor empty offices until you can replace us with AI. F Off!!
The central issue here is governments and media confusing scoring well on metrics with people's actual quality of life.
Money changing hands is usually a good overall proxy for how well things are going in the country, but if you micro-control based on it you start doing stupid things for the metrics only. Most forms of cost-cutting look like a bad thing if you only look at the value of associated services and products going down. But they are only a bad thing for people invested in those services and products, and good for everybody else.
This seems like good news, unironically! Rents going down? All for it!
I’m in NYC (actually outside because I’m not a 10+ millionaire.) The city was much cooler before the suits took over and pushed all the small businesses, artists, young people out to the boroughs and beyond. Now it’s a shiny, empty, prohibitively expensive shopping mall for well-heeled tourists. I’d love to see a renaissance, and lord knows it ain’t the bankers that are gonna bring it.
I’m in the DMV area and when the DC mayor was pushing to have everyone return to work because DC wasn’t getting the foot traffic and business of commuters anymore, that shit really rubbed me the wrong way. If your city isn’t enticing enough to keep a flow of tourists/visitors coming in without FORCING people to be there, how tf is that everyone else’s problem? DC has built its entire economic survival based on forcing federal employees to commute in and spend money there.
To add to this extremely on-point comment, I would add the markets are supposed to optimise the provision of facilities for people, not the other way around.
So if there's a demand for e.g. coffee in an area people will start coffee stores and make money and service that demand, and if there's no demand the store will make a loss and shut down. That's a market operating efficiently to deliver services which people want where they want it.
At no point should we be demanding that people change their habits solely for the reason of creating artificial demand for things that are no longer needed. That completely misses the point of what markets are for.
Truly! Why not pivot? We’re in a housing deficit, right? Is it so hard to see an easy shift here? I understand the pricing differences from commercial to residential, but these folks know how to profit from ‘losses’.
People working from home support their community.
As you will do more groceries as breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner will be done at home, or maybe in a local restaurant.
You'll pay more for power, water and gas, so those people working from home are more actively participating in the economy and stimulating local economy/businesses.
So one one hand we have the owner class saying people need to be in the offices so that said offices have value, but on the other they're laying off everyone they can by saying AI is the way toward unlimited profit. The number must always be racing towards the heavens for these idiots, and only for them. Even if there's nothing left and the world is burning. The number must go up. Avaricious scum.
I left a job that could 100% be done remotely for a job that absolutely couldnt because they made such a big deal of coming to the office for no reason.
Ok ill play the game, ill come in to AN office, but its gonna be one that pays me more and has work that cant be done on a laptop at home.
So anyway thats how I became a fairly compensated senior computer engineer instead of an overworked and underpaid tech consultant
Telework is the way. If you have the self-discipline to work from home and a stable internet connection and you can do all the tasks that you need to do for the salary that it was agreed upon when you took a job... In what universe does it matter if you're sitting in an office under fluorescent lighting spending money each week just to commute not to mention the wasted time that could arguably he spent being productive anyway or sitting at home just getting your stuff done.
I'm a primary care physician. Huge swaths of my job can still be done from home or via webcam. So if I can work efficiently and still provide extreme value from my home office... Why couldn't a computer programmer or someone else's job is entirely phone and computer-based?
Who gives a shit? Trump increased the country's deficit by more than double that in less than 1 year. Why should we care about something that is projected to be ~1/10th the cost over 5 years, when most of that deficit went towards tax breaks for these parasites?
I hope all Americans remember that Gavin Newsom is in bed with massive corporate property firms in California and that, more than anything, is why he pushed so hard to insist on RTO over WFH.
But companies firing people due to AI or just cutting expenses or hiring people in other countries isn't causing this. It is just those lazy workers who want to work from home.
As someone who has no problem with wealthy people existing, I also have no problem with them losing money due to free market capitalism. Those buildings will eventually be bought at a lower price, now that there is less demand for them, and either out to other use or demolished. It’s creative destruction and it’s beautiful.
Fucking real estate "investors" are the absolute worst. Whether it's some landlord faffing about with a duplex, or commercial rent-seekers, it's all such desperate dickery. "OH NOES, I STUPIDLY ATTACHED MY NET WORTH TO THIS THING THAT CAN'T BE MOVED, WHAT WILL I DO IF NOBODY PAYS ME TO DO NOTHING?!"
Imagine having all these large office buildings in cities that aren't used anymore and the government is just throwing up their hands about what to do about the housing crisis.
They have this mentality that if profits aren't increasing, then the company is not profitable. Excuse me? If you made 1 million in profits instead of 2 million, YOU STILL MADE PROFIT!
That's also the whole point of the "come back to office" """""""trend"""""". Office buildings are an investment and if they aren't used, that investment failed. That's it. That's the whole reason why CEOs are so anal on getting everyone back into offices
But… but… but… tHe StOcK mArKeT! WaLL sTrEet! ThE eCoNoMy! YoU aRe AfFeCtEd toOoOoOoO!
Let it all fail at this point. Fuck it all. I’d rather it all crash and burn and we’re all fucked together rather than keep propping up the super ultra wealthy while they fuck us.
I mean they should adjust, plan appropriately and cut back on things, maybe take a chance to learn a new skill. I don't know, you know the same thing they tell us when they fire people without regard.
The buildings could be repurposed for affordable housing but we can’t have that! How else will we price gouge the people for wanting the luxury of shelter
The hilarious part is when a major disruption happens to the working class (like say AI taking their jobs), they are told to adapt, pivot, reskill, and start over. But when video conferencing makes in-office work less necessary (and office buildings less valuable), the same people making that statement are now claiming we can’t change a thing that affects them.
So business borrows based on the idea of occupancy of office space from the bank. Business is worried about losing money and banks are afraid of having those debts unpaid. To avoid the bank from going under or losing profits the government steps in to help drive return to office life. Everyone makes money except employees which now have another expense but only like a 2% raise on 3+% inflation?
This pretty much sums up Toronto (Canada) I believe
So we are supposed to subsidize their rent costs with our unpaid travel time, our expenses for buying and maintaining office clothes, our expenses for buying lunches and coffee, and our general exhaustion after the 10 hour day (8 hours plus 1 hour travel each way)? They are vampires.
During Covid, our restaurant (employee, not owner) was shut down by the government off-and-on for 3-4 months at a time over the course of the few years; our capacity was limited, the rules we live by all changed- but not once was payment of my rent suspended, nor minimum payments on credit cards. Like that great bit in Goodfellas: "Business is bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me."
It's always about tipping the scales incrementally in their favour.
So THAT is the reason they wanted people back to work, I couldn't for the life of me figure what their angle besides power and control could be...it also includes property valuation and net worth
Rent going down seems like a good thing. Also, you'd think companies would be thrilled about remote work. Why would you want to spend money to rent unnecessary office space? Are people just stuck in their ways, or does not being at the office rob middle management of the opportunity to claim credit for the work of subordinates?
This reminds me of that time I was homeless for six months and the business real estate industry just started selling buildings to the Japanese (and then whipped up hatred for the Japanese “buying up everything”) while I continued to be homeless until I solved the problem on my own.
I heard two white men discussing how they had a RTO mandate bc the ceo owns the property and needs to show investors he can maintain occupancy so he can get more capital. This is a conversation I overheard while playing tennis!! I regret not saying anything… even yelling “do you hear yourself?!?” Would’ve. Felt good
Funny how their losses are always everyone’s problem, but their profits stay theirs
Trickledown economics 101
It's called Trickledown economic loss
I believe it’s pronounced “tickle my pickle (and cradle the balls)-onomics.”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
You joke, but thats literally how it works. They just tell everyone it works the exact opposite so nobody complains.
It’s actually just trick economics. And the trick is on the average American.
Golden shower any day now!
Trickle on your head economics.
Socialize losses. Privatize Profits.
Our entire economy is built around those values.
From the development cycle to the bank.
But why not socialize everyone's losses
Because that would be SocialistNaziCommieLGBTransBLMtifasism!
*DeiWoke
“We need people to use this property or else we lose money”
Have you tried converting it to apartments that way people can live in it all the time?
“But that will devalue the housing we also own”
Aw dang. So sad for you. /s
And your losses are always "too bad, work harder, start a business".
Lump that in with learn to code
And stop spending $10,000/month on coffee, toast, and cell phone bill!
Avocado toasts!!
I remember some webcomic fairytale, where a wizard builds a big tower.
Then, there’s a big storm, and the wizard asks the villagers to help or his tower will fall over.
The villagers say he shouldn’t have made such a tall tower, that could so easily fall to a storm.
The wizard says, if they don’t help, his falling tower will crush the whole village.
So, the the king forces the villagers to take bricks from their own houses and reinforce the wizard’s tower.
And when they were finished, the wizard’s tower was twice as big.
And he lived happily ever after.
-Capitalist bedtime stories.
Privatise the profits. Socialise the costs.
Private profit, public loss. See PPP loans.
Modern capitalism has gotten very, very good at capitalizing gains, and socializing losses. It is no wonder we are living in the time of worst economic inequality in possibly human history.
Why should we prop up empty office buildings? Adapt or lose money like everyone else. Not our problem.
I know right? It’s not like there isn’t also a housing crisis we should be doing something about. If office space is in less demand, why not convert it into housing, which is in high demand?
Oh I know why. It’s cause then all the housing prices would become less inflated, thereby lowering the rich landlords profit margins in another area.
They don't want to compete against their friends. If they change to apartments that hurts their boy with the apartments
And zooooooooooniiiiiiiing (whiniest shit weasel voice you can imagine), God can you imagine all the paperwork they have to file to get the area rezoned as partially residential? The horrors!
That’s a nice narrative, but actually office buildings are very difficult to turn into housing. They are designed as office buildings not as residential. Their are many examples but here are two:
plumbing, office buildings have nowhere near the water capacity for residential, maybe a few restrooms per floor.
Windows, habitual rooms legally require windows. Office building have large spaces without windows and are not designed to have all the rooms to have windows.
It would cost around $500 a square foot to remodel which would mean a tiny 400sq ft unit would cost about 200k to make which is about the same as just making a house.
These office building owners are in trouble, if their was an easy way to convert the buildings they would, they would not face bankruptcy to help their buddies property hold an extra 10% in value
We don't have a housing crisis. We have a Greed crisis. There are more than enough homes to home every single houseless individual, but corporate greed means we let 1/3 of units sit vacant to drive up profits
This ^
People keep forgetting that there ARE enough houses. What's missing is enough money to rent or buy.
In an ideal free market situation rent would go down to avoid having empty housing not generating profit. Because the competitors would grab that opportunity.
In greed dystopia America there is a cartel artificially keeping prices high by agreeing to lose the profit on the empty housing to manipulate the market.
It says it in the post. This would lower rent. Can’t have that
They can't. Seen this discussed a few times, but basically the infrastructure & design constraints for offices don't match the requirements for housing to the point where it's easier to tear the building down and build a new one. Different plumbing requirements, power requirements, soundproofing, etc etc.
But this isn’t like a law of nature.
This same class wines and dines with city council members and contributes to mayoral runs, and can largely just buy the vote of state legislatures.
People live in dorms with the equivalent plumbing of an office building and that’s legal. You start to get young singles living downtown, and restaurants and bars will come back. You get that, people will go ahead and start putting bathrooms in every room to compete with each other.
The two reasons that the people who own multiple skyscrapers refuse to lift a finger here and just pontificate about how powerless they are against Bob the used car salesman sitting in the city council is because they want to be in bed with a bank instead of the general public. They want the power and prestige.
The other more serious reason is that housing doesn’t work like they say it does. Real estate developers will always say, “the problem is we need more housing.” Of course they will say that, and it seems to make sense that increased supply will reduce demand.
But it doesn’t. Even in Oregon and Washington, the two states with the least amount of vacancy, there are enough vacant homes that every single homeless individual could have two homes and there would still be thousands left over.
Across the border in BC, they have a homeless crises and too much vacant housing, which is about to close down real estate businesses and push thousands and thousands of people out of jobs, and potentially out of houses. Because there is too much vacancy.
The people in charge of doing this, the people that own the big buildings, the real estate companies, and everything else need to keep building to keep money. And it is in their benefit to make as few regulations as possible as they are incentivized for a big pay day rather than a stable income of modest income.
Because if they did fulfill everyone’s need for stable housing, they would have put themselves out of work. They know that, so it’s always going to be, “If we just build a few more houses..” that nobody can live in.
That’s all nice and all but the plumbing of an office building is fundamentally different than that of a residential building. People using the bathroom a handful times a day is a lot different than people taking a shower, cooking, washing laundry , using the bathroom. You have to make renovations that are basically like building a new housing project to make it so. You can’t do it piecemeal either. Not to mention lack of natural light in interior units. Tax incentives for future office buildings to have the ability to turn into residential units is a good idea maybe just good investment advice also. Your dorms idea is pretty interesting definitely less stuff to consider but capacity still remains a major roadblock.
I personally don't see what the issue is to just demo and reconstruct, like it's still a net positive.
And if we do it the Japan method the housing can go up pretty damn quick and I think cheaper. It's just doing prefab modular design, it might not look super pretty on the outside but I think the benefits way exceed the negatives
The question was why they don’t just renovate, my answer was limited to that specific question. Frankly, I’m all for a painful readjustment that reduces the landlord wealth quotient a bit. Just… we need to be honest about our questions.
While we have a housing crisis lol
I think the issue is that when the downtown areas become vacant, there goes all those tax dollars. Those dollars pay for the roads, bridges, teachers, cops.
I’m not sad the rich guys are losing out. But tons of abandoned and unused buildings is terrible for everyone. It drags the entire local economy down.
Again, not shedding any tears for the greedy bastards
I don't understand ... the owners still own the buildings and the buildings didn't go away ... why is it "there go the tax dollars?" Is there a law you can't tax an empty structure?
All the people working in there, buying from local shops, stay home and buy from their own local shops. All that lost business cascade into lost jobs and a downturn in local economic activity, which means less taxes to pay. Does the increased activity where they live compensate for it? Somewhat... bar the loss in transportation-related stuff.
The economy is kind of like an ecosystem, you remove one specie and it has consequences
I have a novel idea to make up for this - tax the rich more.
Economies change. Human behaviors change. The world changes, and so can legislation and the profits and income streams of rich people (and how we source taxes).
While I agree (though technically "taxing them more" isn't the issue. It's how they go around taxes by borrowing money that is put up to their assets. The rich aren't "paid" or have much in capital gains, they just use the increasing value of their assets to pay of loans because it means they pay less in taxes.)... this is a bit irrelevant to what this discussion here is about. Taxing the rich more whose assets are devaluating isn't going to magically make tax money, especially since most taxes are based on capital gains. Which they aren't getting there because of remote work
Also, often large companies were given tax incentives to put office buildings in particular places. Usually the company is paying reduced taxes with the expectation that employees will be there paying payroll taxes and spending money. If they're not then the business is essentially reneging on the deal.
Here’s a real life example: A good friend of mine owns a restaurant very near the Financial District in San Francisco. Pre-pandemic, his lunch business was booming- to the point he made his expenses for the day before 2:00 pm most days. So dinner was pure profit. Nearly all his customers were office workers who commuted from outside the city. (The FD had something like a million+ commuters. I forget the actual number but it was massive.)
Three years post-pandemic. He’s now open for dinner only because lunch is basically a bust. The numbers just aren’t there to make it profitable. He’s focusing on catering and outside events to make up that revenue.
I’m not saying that everyone needs to go back to the office five days a week, but not being there absolutely creates an economic ripple effect.
Just find a new way to use the buildings. Do some renovations and turn them into apartments or drop the rent low enough that small businesses can move in.
Exactly. For example, you have a skyscraper with a bunch of vacant offices. Tear out a few floors and make them into apartment housing. And on the ground floor, you could put in small grocery stores or restaurants. That way, people can come and live in or visit downtown for more than a pub crawl.
My city had an old department store that closed 30 years ago, that I think by this point they've torn down. I'm not sure. It was still standing last I went down there, and mostly being used for storage of random crap.
If they remodeled or replace the building with a grocery on the ground floor, three or four levels of apartments, and maybe a penthouse restaurant, then it would increase the amount of people that can live in the downtown area exponentially.
People will still live in the Cities, people will want to move into them more if these buildings become places people actually want to go.
Also not our problem. Most people aren’t even part of those downtown communities , they are just forced to pilgrimage there every day.
Remote work will actually help heal our society as family units can live in the same communities instead of moving away to large cities. This in turn would increase the birth rate they care so much about because parents would have family support and could more easily take care of children or get them to and from daycare. Tax revenues increase for locations outside city centers.
Remote is literally better for everyone except for big city governments, their chamber of commerce and real estate investors.
The tax dollars don’t go to those things anyway…
First we should save the whalers, bring back whale oil candles!
The skyscrapers!? Won’t someone think of the skyscrapers!?!
I'll think about how needless they are
instructions unclear, adding more needles to the tops of skyscrapers
The asset-owning class always bemoans that they "take the risk" so they "deserve the profits". Then the moment the risk doesnt pay off, they demand state intervention to stop them losing the game.
Other ways they're not risking anything: - They're typically only risking their investor's money. - Even if they risk their own money, they'll have plenty left over if it doesn't work out.
It's all a cynical lie to make ordinary people imagine how risky it would be for them to start a business, so they forget that those risks don't apply to rich people.
Well put. Seems they're only okay with risks so long as there's no actual risk.
Indeed, during covid shutdown many businesses were forced to stop trading, but never any consideration of reducing or stopping rent.
Forcing people back to work when those same jobs can be done at home should be grounds for a revolt. Us workers just can't have that quality of life because it might affect the million dollar salaries of the rich.
If it was France in 1789, this would look much different.
They need to convert those offices to residential housing.
In their defense, I don't think it's that easy. I believe that the regulations for office/residential spaces are too different, and the refitting costs might actually make it cheaper to demolish and rebuild - up until the people who make money off there not being enough residential housing (and the politicians they've bought) dig up every rule they can find to stop it from happening.
It's a good thought, but absent a large scale unified push for it there's not really much chance of it happening in a form that's actually helpful.
It can be done, but particularly more modern buildings with large floor plates do make it difficult to have a viable residential product as they just can’t access many windows.
Maybe ironically, depending on your definition of the word, but older office buildings which tended to have smaller floor plates do work better for that type of adaptive use.
Windows aren’t the only problem. Office buildings, particularly skyscrapers, aren’t designed to handle the same plumbing and HVAC capacity needed by a residential building.
That’s true, but you can add plumbing if you do a full gut. However if you’re 50 plus feet deep from the corridor to a window, unless you’re doing truly massive apartments, you’re just not going to have the access to light and views to the outside that will make a sellable product.
Best we're gonna get out of that kind of plan is giant Judge Dredd style arcos with no real design consideration towards livability.
Taking down some of these office buildings is going to be a major engineering feat.
I don't think this is financially achievable.
One office building --small skyscraper-- over her was completely stripped. Only "floors" remained. Then the entire building was turned into housing, except for the ground floor (shops) and the first floor (upscale restaurant).
The apartments on the top 3 floors were sold for sky-high prices, within days of the announcement of the sale.
Office conversions are prohibitively expensive.
Then don't use capitalism to make it happen. Capitalism should only be allowed for industries that actually benefit from it, and that almost universally means non-essential products and services. Televisions are non-essential, and capitalism has made them widely available and affordable. Housing, on the other hand, is very essential, and capitalism does not provide a wide array of affordable options.
Cost cant be set aside. The buildings are just not set up for human dwelling. Safety is the biggest concern. Emergency egress being one of the tops. Commercial buildings are designed with the idea that people going in can easily get out on their own 2 feet. Residential does not. It would be cheaper to demo and build from scratch a lot of the time.
Things are different for commercial buildings. Even the thickness of the wires used throughout the building are different.
Not our problem.
Here's the reality check for those who don't understand the true nature of capitalism. And no, I'm not dunking on you, specifically, this is more aimed at those wealthy businesspeople who cry about profit loss and expect government bailouts every time their businesses start to flag in profits.
Capitalism works both ways. A person can, in theory, build themselves a great business in a capitalist based economy. In it's most simplistic and basic form, it works on simple supply and demand. Make a product that people want, and you can potentially make a fortune.
But it also works the other way. If there's no interest in that product, or society changes in such a way that your product no longer has a sustainable niche in the market, you either need to change things to keep it a product that people want or need, or your business fails. End of story.
This bizarre idea that it must become somebody else's problem to prop up a failing business goes against the very nature of capitalism. You can infuse all the money you want into a failing business to keep it limping along, but if that business never makes the necessary changes to make itself desirable again, they will simply become a massive welfare recipient on a perpetual and grand scale, forever vacuuming up great amounts of money without ever becoming sustainable on it's own again.
This sounds an awful lot like the right's worst claims about human welfare recipients, doesn't it? I wonder where they got that idea.
People aren't businesses. Individuals generally don't like living on poverty-level amounts of handouts, and that's what welfare for people is. A poverty level hand up to try to keep people going. These businesses aren't getting a pittance, though. They're getting tens of millions of dollars at a shot. Enough to sustain the business and their profit margins for months. Not just what they barely need to get by. Huge difference here. These businesses have plenty of reason to keep going for those bail outs without having to put in the cost or effort to change their business model. Why bother, when the government will hand them plenty of dough for doing the same thing?
It's not our problem if these companies do not want to reinvest in their own properties. Times have changed. The needs of the people have changed. It's not up to us to keep their buildings profitable when we have no earthly use for all those offices anymore. If they can't find people to rent the offices, then they need to either convert their buildings to something more useful, or sell them to someone who can.
Welcome to the other side of capitalism. This is the part where they find out what happens when they don't make money, and Daddy Warbucks doesn't come to wipe their ass for them.
Exactly, but also factor in the need for competition to keep prices low and quality higher. Government regulation and affirmative action help create more competition. When producers don’t have competition, all the things you mention come into play.
Not if you demolish it. Screw them. I’m glad that their investments are likely to lose money as the future brings inevitable decentralization.
They will kick and scream and pull everyone into the office, but long term they are screwed. And if they are not seeing the writhing on the wall, it’s their future loss.
Oh no I weep a single tear
Let it fail, demolish and replace with housing
Fuck these corpo cunts
I like the idea for certain, but the logistics are crazy.
The building regulations for commercial vs residential have many differences, like not having bedrooms without windows, but just things like the layout of bathrooms make things difficult.
Putting in a false floor for plumbing is begging for terrible failures, but otherwise you're at the mercy of however the plumbing is laid out. Which leads to two scenarios, you build likely very large, and pricey, apartments (condos?) that allow for at least one bathroom in the unit to be close to existing plumbing. Or, you build a large amount of cheaper units, and build a dorm like public bathrooms and showers.
Both scenarios aren't great, and I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. But the plumbing alone is an enormous hurdle I can't see any good way around without adding in a lot of failure points.
That’s what Chicago is doing. Unfortunately, like most cities, they started way too late and are moving too slow, so now people are getting hit with massive property tax hikes to make up for the lost revenue from vacant office spaces downtown.
As much as I want to be glib about this, those office spaces failing is hurting a lot of people you wouldn’t think it would affect.
Thats with any investment from a city who prioritized corporations over people.
Utah saw this when they made a deal with the auto industry and buried pre built trolly lines that taxes went into previously. This move hurt all low income neighborhoods for the simple justification of auto industry profits for a car oriented city structure.
On the flip side of that CNN why don’t you show how much money everyday workers lose driving into those building? Or how much maintenance we have to upkeep on the infrastructure to go into those buildings? Or the time lost sitting into our cars for a job we could do at home?
At the very least CNN is honest that the concern with this situation is for the wealthy, not what can alleviate just a little stress and financial burden off the everyday workers.
Don't show the money they lose, show the lives they lose. Make a lost of everyone who died driving to work I a year.
How to measure profits for the rich against humanity. I grew up being reminded “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or one” from watching TV
I grew up being reminded "From Hell's depths, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee" from the same show.
In other words….
Remote work allows workers to keep $800 billion instead of needlessly redistributing wealth to rich land owners
Work From Home is costing us billions of dollars a year! And by "us" I mean the billionaires who own the office buildings, gas companies, car companies, auto repair companies, tire companies...won't someone think of the billionaires? /s of course
To be fair it's also costing the small companies around the office buildings that provide meals and services, but when it's the billionaires complaining about it it's kind of hard to sympathize
My wife and I sold her car during covid WFH has saved me a ton of money in car payments and insurance.
And the scary truth about how dangerous cars are, potentially a lot more than just money. The fewer people on the road the better.
I made the mistake of buying a new car right after covid thinking RTO was imminent and rates were so low - I barely have 20k miles on it after 4 years and would have been better off with my paid-off old car
Profits over progress. Unfortunately, most of us don't see that changing anytime soon.
What I don't get is how this even hurts the bottom line of the companies. The pre WFH status quo expected that you'd pay for these expensive office spaces forever. They'd continue to be an expense, something that reduces profit. Even vacant, a lot of upkeep costs are eliminated now. You don't need to keep the inside lit, you can set the thermostat to just keep the building from getting damaged by extreme outside temperatures instead of comfortable for people inside, you aren't paying for much or any water usage anymore since no one uses the restrooms. So what if you then sell and lose and money? You weren't planning to get rid of the office space anytime soon anyway. And if you were going to sell it, you're probably buying a new space to replace it so all your workers have an office space.
I just don't see how companies see this as an actual bad thing. You can get rid of an expensive piece of property to use and maintain and let someone else use it for something better. Even if you technically sell for a loss, you lose the expenses associated with keeping it for people to use.
It's not the companies leasing the space that have the problem.
It's the people who own the buildings. They spent millions and millions of dollars to build, typically taking out loans against the value of the buildings. Historically this is an extremely safe investment. Real estate almost never goes down in value. It almost always goes up.
Now their buildings sit vacant, but they still have to pay on those loans. A lot of those loans were very low interest, but that interest rate is frequently contingent on the value of the property staying high. Once they devalue to a certain point, the banks are going to come calling.
So that's only the owners' problem, right? Nope. Large banks and funds invest in commercial real estate. Like I said before, historically that's a very safe and smart investment. But if the whole commercial real estate market crashes, those funds and banks are in for a rough ride, which cascades throughout the economy.
It also fucks with property taxes, which can have rippling effects for cities.
The leadership of the companies leasing the space have friends or investments in commercial real estate. Thus it behooves them to force return to office.
So tldr the commercial real estate market going down could cause a lite version of what happens if the US bond market goes down?
Yeah, more or less.
People heavily invest in something -> value of that thing goes down drastically -> those people have problems -> banks that loaned them money have problems -> problems for all of us
Same reason we can’t have affordable universal healthcare. That would deprive billionaire insurance executives of their extreme profits.
I feel bad for the restaurants and other small businesses that benefitted from extra foot traffic in downtown cores where those officer buildings were, but never once have I thought, "Gee, these poor corporate landlords..."
Oh no! Not the valuation of office buildings!
So I agree that there’s no need for sympathy for the wealthy owners of office buildings, but we shouldn’t be so glib about the secondary effects. Commercial real estate generally pays property taxes at far higher rates than residential, so collapsing prices can punch a massive hole in city budgets, it’s already happening in man6 places and will continue to get worse. That means that regular people are going to pay higher property taxes, and likely get reduced or degraded services as well. Cities covered it up with federal money from COVID, but that’s over now and the chickens are coming home to roost.
If people on reddit couldn't be glib about the secondary effects, what would they even do?
If I was forced back to the office it would be a significant pay cut. Not to mention my mental health would fall through the floor. I interviewed for a job that was in office 5 days a week. I wanted the job but decided to not take it solely based on the office vibe. So so so depressing.
Remember that the C Suite and owners come and go as they please- there isn't a standard in most cases for wfh once you hit a certain level in the corporate hierarchy.
My company recalled its remote workforce for just this reason- tax breaks from the city on the new building downtown and occupancy requirements for said tax breaks... it went over like a lead balloon and continues to be a source of issue for the workforce around here.
Nothing says you don't really mean anything to us like using people as warm bodies for tax breaks.
Perfectly summarized. If I have to hear about declining real estate values ever again and how I'M THE SOLUTION, then I DEMAND a slice of the profits.
As someone who wfh, when one of the higher ups mentioned forcing us back to the office our supervisors and us told them no. We have been more productive with wfh. I do not give two shits if the building owner loses some money.
Ebeneezer Scrooge was a landlord. Most classic Scooby-doo villains were real estate developers. No sympathy for rent seeking, owner-class, bitch babies. None. Heal your trauma or get unmasked by meddling kids. Hope you're ruined, actually.
Have they considered what AI will do to office rental prices!?!? Oh the humanity!!
It’s a fair point but it’s also a fact that this could have a ripple effect throughout the economy and could end up impacting you directly.
This is a fine opinion to have. However, you can't have this opinion and then also, down the road, complain when jurisdictions have to cut public programs due to decreased tax revenue. Or complain when crime increases in urban areas because there are fewer people around (basic component of neighborhood safety). Or complain when restaurants shut their doors because of decreased foot traffic. I'm not disagreeing with the post, I'm just adding color for those who may not know (if you do know these consequences and still don't care about the urban doom loop, my reply is not geared toward you). And I don't care what your opinion is, you are absolutely entitled to it. We live in a complex, interconnected society where the effects of large economic changes are not black and white.
https://preview.redd.it/pxkx0cq9us6g1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f6f41a8d5132ac78f13133e4aefe09876d76fbab
Oh no, not the rich people’s yacht money!
"And drives down rents"
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Just think, if we all work from home (where possible) then all those office buildings can be torn down to make new houses and apartments. And then the residential rent can go down. And people will be happier.
"Wealthfare" if you will.
Rich people and companies love free market until anything cuts into their profit margin.
Then suddenly they socialists looking for a bailout and to spread their losses over the rest of the public. Of course any profit is always privatized - that's the part of capitalism they want to keep.
They are your problem because that’s where a lot of property taxes come from.
Well maybe if those wealthy landowners didn't spend frivolously on avocado toast and lattes they would have more money to put towards securing their investments.
Driving rent down is a good thing.
Maybe it’s time to build office buildings more easily converted to apartments or build multi use buildings in the first place?
That and we have a fucking housing shortage. If only we could somehow magically make more room for houses in areas that already exist. What a rare opportunity that would be!!!
I'm going to look up the original to vote it up.
I think a large number of people forget that they in fact own stock in the companies that own said buildings through 401k and pension investment.
I mean the wealthy always talk about how people living on minimum wage are just two smart investments away from being millionairs, so I'm sure the owners of the office buildings can get back on their feet in a few weeks.
Funny that they don’t want to convert to affordable housing rather than spending much more money lobbying CEOs to force their people back to the office. Hmm I wonder why that could be?
Converting to housing is actually very difficult and expensive. Commercial buildings have very different building codes, and their plumbing and electrical systems are designed for very different uses. It costs millions and takes years to convert a single building.
If only there was something that they could do with the vacant space like housing…..oh wait, they’ve already started
Conservstives economics in a Nutshell.
WORKING PEOPLE: buy less, eat less, consume less ohh stop over reacting
TOP 1% RICH: They need more subsidies and Tax breaks so we can be a better America.
You have an empty building????!! Convert it into an affordable child care facility and get your greedy subsidies by helping them. Convert it into affordable Housing so you can also get your greedy subsidies that way. You created the information super highway that allows anyone to work from anywhere and are trying to overtake work with AI but you want them in traffic for 4 hours a day cause of your poor empty offices until you can replace us with AI. F Off!!
The central issue here is governments and media confusing scoring well on metrics with people's actual quality of life.
Money changing hands is usually a good overall proxy for how well things are going in the country, but if you micro-control based on it you start doing stupid things for the metrics only. Most forms of cost-cutting look like a bad thing if you only look at the value of associated services and products going down. But they are only a bad thing for people invested in those services and products, and good for everybody else.
I’m saving this. It’s so damn poignant.
Lower rents sound AWFUL. /snark
Will no one think of the Office Buildings?
This seems like good news, unironically! Rents going down? All for it!
I’m in NYC (actually outside because I’m not a 10+ millionaire.) The city was much cooler before the suits took over and pushed all the small businesses, artists, young people out to the boroughs and beyond. Now it’s a shiny, empty, prohibitively expensive shopping mall for well-heeled tourists. I’d love to see a renaissance, and lord knows it ain’t the bankers that are gonna bring it.
I’m in the DMV area and when the DC mayor was pushing to have everyone return to work because DC wasn’t getting the foot traffic and business of commuters anymore, that shit really rubbed me the wrong way. If your city isn’t enticing enough to keep a flow of tourists/visitors coming in without FORCING people to be there, how tf is that everyone else’s problem? DC has built its entire economic survival based on forcing federal employees to commute in and spend money there.
Losses for thee but profits for me
Like seriously do something else with the building. If office space isn’t needed be innovative and convert it but stop blaming remote workers.
Also absurd considering how expensive housing in Canada is, offices can easily be converted into condos
Turn them into housing
To add to this extremely on-point comment, I would add the markets are supposed to optimise the provision of facilities for people, not the other way around.
So if there's a demand for e.g. coffee in an area people will start coffee stores and make money and service that demand, and if there's no demand the store will make a loss and shut down. That's a market operating efficiently to deliver services which people want where they want it.
At no point should we be demanding that people change their habits solely for the reason of creating artificial demand for things that are no longer needed. That completely misses the point of what markets are for.
Wealth wouldn’t exist without the workers
Truly! Why not pivot? We’re in a housing deficit, right? Is it so hard to see an easy shift here? I understand the pricing differences from commercial to residential, but these folks know how to profit from ‘losses’.
People working from home support their community. As you will do more groceries as breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner will be done at home, or maybe in a local restaurant. You'll pay more for power, water and gas, so those people working from home are more actively participating in the economy and stimulating local economy/businesses.
Fuck commercial real estate, those people are insufferable pricks.
So one one hand we have the owner class saying people need to be in the offices so that said offices have value, but on the other they're laying off everyone they can by saying AI is the way toward unlimited profit. The number must always be racing towards the heavens for these idiots, and only for them. Even if there's nothing left and the world is burning. The number must go up. Avaricious scum.
Sounds like a you problem bruh 😎.
Haven’t the money guys been telling us for decades, "Hey things change you have to adapt"? Well guess what suckers.
They will make up the losses by replacing these remote workers with AI. Murdered by economics.
I left a job that could 100% be done remotely for a job that absolutely couldnt because they made such a big deal of coming to the office for no reason.
Ok ill play the game, ill come in to AN office, but its gonna be one that pays me more and has work that cant be done on a laptop at home.
So anyway thats how I became a fairly compensated senior computer engineer instead of an overworked and underpaid tech consultant
Telework is the way. If you have the self-discipline to work from home and a stable internet connection and you can do all the tasks that you need to do for the salary that it was agreed upon when you took a job... In what universe does it matter if you're sitting in an office under fluorescent lighting spending money each week just to commute not to mention the wasted time that could arguably he spent being productive anyway or sitting at home just getting your stuff done. I'm a primary care physician. Huge swaths of my job can still be done from home or via webcam. So if I can work efficiently and still provide extreme value from my home office... Why couldn't a computer programmer or someone else's job is entirely phone and computer-based?
It's just stupid to say otherwise.
Love it when the market dictates value and they have to scramble to manipulate government so they can keep selling people things they don't need.
Who gives a shit? Trump increased the country's deficit by more than double that in less than 1 year. Why should we care about something that is projected to be ~1/10th the cost over 5 years, when most of that deficit went towards tax breaks for these parasites?
I hope all Americans remember that Gavin Newsom is in bed with massive corporate property firms in California and that, more than anything, is why he pushed so hard to insist on RTO over WFH.
But companies firing people due to AI or just cutting expenses or hiring people in other countries isn't causing this. It is just those lazy workers who want to work from home.
Make them low cost living spaces. You won’t
It's interesting that remote work is being blamed for property values of office buildings going down, but what about no work?
What about the job losses from massive layoffs that have started and are projected to continue?
Will this not ALSO have a detrimental effect on office property?
This proves that the power is with the people. They need us way more than we need them.
As someone who has no problem with wealthy people existing, I also have no problem with them losing money due to free market capitalism. Those buildings will eventually be bought at a lower price, now that there is less demand for them, and either out to other use or demolished. It’s creative destruction and it’s beautiful.
didn't the 10 trilllion dollars of PPE funds help at all ?
Fucking real estate "investors" are the absolute worst. Whether it's some landlord faffing about with a duplex, or commercial rent-seekers, it's all such desperate dickery. "OH NOES, I STUPIDLY ATTACHED MY NET WORTH TO THIS THING THAT CAN'T BE MOVED, WHAT WILL I DO IF NOBODY PAYS ME TO DO NOTHING?!"
This also goes for stock buybacks.
I guess they should have sold their holding sooner, sucks for them.
let them eat cake
Is that a big deal? It is less than musk’s pay package. /s
Imagine having all these large office buildings in cities that aren't used anymore and the government is just throwing up their hands about what to do about the housing crisis.
They have this mentality that if profits aren't increasing, then the company is not profitable. Excuse me? If you made 1 million in profits instead of 2 million, YOU STILL MADE PROFIT!
That's also the whole point of the "come back to office" """""""trend"""""". Office buildings are an investment and if they aren't used, that investment failed. That's it. That's the whole reason why CEOs are so anal on getting everyone back into offices
But… but… but… tHe StOcK mArKeT! WaLL sTrEet! ThE eCoNoMy! YoU aRe AfFeCtEd toOoOoOoO!
Let it all fail at this point. Fuck it all. I’d rather it all crash and burn and we’re all fucked together rather than keep propping up the super ultra wealthy while they fuck us.
I mean they should adjust, plan appropriately and cut back on things, maybe take a chance to learn a new skill. I don't know, you know the same thing they tell us when they fire people without regard.
This must be the "risk" everyone told me was the reason they should be allowed to pocket all the profits.
Welp, you win some, you lose some.
The buildings could be repurposed for affordable housing but we can’t have that! How else will we price gouge the people for wanting the luxury of shelter
The hilarious part is when a major disruption happens to the working class (like say AI taking their jobs), they are told to adapt, pivot, reskill, and start over. But when video conferencing makes in-office work less necessary (and office buildings less valuable), the same people making that statement are now claiming we can’t change a thing that affects them.
So business borrows based on the idea of occupancy of office space from the bank. Business is worried about losing money and banks are afraid of having those debts unpaid. To avoid the bank from going under or losing profits the government steps in to help drive return to office life. Everyone makes money except employees which now have another expense but only like a 2% raise on 3+% inflation?
This pretty much sums up Toronto (Canada) I believe
Good spot for affordable housing
So we are supposed to subsidize their rent costs with our unpaid travel time, our expenses for buying and maintaining office clothes, our expenses for buying lunches and coffee, and our general exhaustion after the 10 hour day (8 hours plus 1 hour travel each way)? They are vampires.
“You can’t eat at home!
I spent millions in these restaurants!”
TURN THEM INTO HOUSING YOU FUCKING WANKERS
Heaven forbid they convert the space to residential and help ease the housing crisis.
Lobby to redistrict.
Sell as luxury condos.
Profit.
Turn these vacant buildings into homes for people who need them.
Maybe they should start converting these useless spaces into apartments. Lower housing prices and rescue their failing properties.
But no, we need to do the least efficient thing.
Office buildings are an outdated technology. Since when do we care about outdated tech losing value?
That’s beautiful. Is it from a poem?
And I wonder how much companies using AI is gonna take away from buildings obviously they don’t need people
Fuck your couch!
Guess they should sacrifice their grandma for the economy
During Covid, our restaurant (employee, not owner) was shut down by the government off-and-on for 3-4 months at a time over the course of the few years; our capacity was limited, the rules we live by all changed- but not once was payment of my rent suspended, nor minimum payments on credit cards. Like that great bit in Goodfellas: "Business is bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me."
It's always about tipping the scales incrementally in their favour.
Good, maybe they can tear down office buildings and make that into homes that we can actually afford
Gold
A fucking men.
So THAT is the reason they wanted people back to work, I couldn't for the life of me figure what their angle besides power and control could be...it also includes property valuation and net worth
What happens to those buildings when AI takes all the Jobs?
Rent going down seems like a good thing. Also, you'd think companies would be thrilled about remote work. Why would you want to spend money to rent unnecessary office space? Are people just stuck in their ways, or does not being at the office rob middle management of the opportunity to claim credit for the work of subordinates?
Maybe the space can be used for housing?
If only we needed buildings desperately for something else ...
Turn it into housing, FFS
Imagine if these offices would become condos and apartments while WFH stayed strong.. normal people utopia.
This reminds me of that time I was homeless for six months and the business real estate industry just started selling buildings to the Japanese (and then whipped up hatred for the Japanese “buying up everything”) while I continued to be homeless until I solved the problem on my own.
I heard two white men discussing how they had a RTO mandate bc the ceo owns the property and needs to show investors he can maintain occupancy so he can get more capital. This is a conversation I overheard while playing tennis!! I regret not saying anything… even yelling “do you hear yourself?!?” Would’ve. Felt good
Maybe they could invest in affordable housing with all of that available building space.