A lot of times, when people discuss the phenomenon of employers ending work-from-home and try to make their employees come back to the office, people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices.
I don’t follow the logic at all. How would doing this benefit an employer in any way?
It’s not exactly nonsense. Commercial real estate is leveraged by corporate investors as reliable equity. There are a lot of cards balancing on top of commercial real estate investments, and a crash would cause a domino effect similar to 2008, although probably not nearly as bad.
Banks desperately want commercial spaces to maintain some value, and there are a lot of long-term leases expiring over the next few years. Businesses that stay remote may be owned by stakeholders who also invest in commercial real estate.
So it’s possible somebody somewhere is motivated to get people back into the office because they are worried about the economic fallout of another crash. Those people are far outnumbered by the Six Sigma Laser Lotus Middle Managers who have metrics showing people don’t take naps or jerk off as much in the office as they do working from home (if you’re wondering how they get those KPIs, ask yourself if you have a cover for the cam on your company-issued laptop).
TLDR The push to return to office is almost entirely about control and conformity. It’s likely some decision makers are also worried about real estate values, but there is no grand conspiracy.
Yes if we’re verrry clever we can think of some plausible link but even then it’s very loosely goosey and purely theoretical. Just because we can draw a dotted line, however thin, doesn’t mean it’s actually real. Jar Jar Binks is a Sith Lord, etc.
As you say, this is something less than a tertiary factor, perhaps a thought that has crossed a few peoples’ minds. But if it’s even given any weight at all, it is outweighed by other considerations, vastly so, every time.
I agree with you for the most part, but the link isn’t that theoretical. Banks are pushing return to work harder than anyone.
That doesn’t mean they are all purely or even primarily motivated by commercial real estate values, but it’s also naive to think it’s a coincidence.
That article doesn’t say anything relevant here, though. So banks are stodgy institutions and they don’t like work from home. Unsurprising. The article says nothing about real estate valuations being influenced by RTO, and nothing about banks and their real estate investments influencing any other companies. 🤷♂️