this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 88 points 2 months ago (4 children)

To prevent a crash in the commercial office real estate market.

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 54 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Meh fuck the commercial real estate market. Turn all the buildings into micro apartments or tear them down and install fields of solar panels.

[–] sloppy_diffuser@sh.itjust.works 43 points 2 months ago

I've been screaming its just wage theft. My city provides tax breaks for occupancy (employees prop up the local economy buying lunch). They are making me pay for gas, time, and car maintenance (and lunch but fuck them, I'll just not eat) for this tax break which goes to C-level bonuses/shareholders. Its just another way of skimming off the top of employee wages.

We worked fully remote for nearly 2 years and the hybrid policy just keeps getting worse and worse. Coupled with quarterly riffs, I also suspect this is to avoid severance pay/unemployment while accelerating the down sizing. Yet our CEO bonus keeps going up and up despite our stock plummeting since the end of COVID lock downs.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Tear them down and build houses. Flood the market of every major city with houses so it becomes unprofitable to buy thousands of houses just to rent.

Then home sales go up, and millenials can ACTUALLY buy houses in their lifetime!

[–] veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

That would piss off the voting base that actually votes though

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago

Condos! Best of both worlds. Especially in a dense city, a standalone house isn't really feasible when you can fit 8+ families into the same lot.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Missing the point. The office executives are in bed with the real estate execs.

[–] bamfic@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They are the real estate owners themselves

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Sometimes, sure. Somewhat different disciplines but, some folks high up enough certainly play both investments.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Why should they care though? It's not like commercial real estate sells more computers. Staff still needs desktops, infrastructure still needs datacenters.

[–] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because all these companies have a shit load of money in the market including real state...

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] Delta_V@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's the crux of the issue.

Who's going to buy it for a high price, if there is no demand for office space, because workers are all remote?

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] aniki@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago

Property damage is an extremely effective way to fight against money. We should be doing it a lot more.

[–] Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 months ago

Cloud infrastructure is great for this. You don't need your own data center when you can just rent space on a farm. As a bonus, it's less work for the IT team who no longer have to deal with server hardware upkeep.

[–] Themadbeagle@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is what is so fascinating to me about most people, they don't understand that companies hord their assets in my different kinds of investments when they are this large. Having real estate gives them an asset they can can store large sums of money in that generally appreciate in value over time. If a company is under finacial duress, they can fire a bunch of employees, then sale the land where those employees worked and and save themselves from much larger losses on revenue for a given time period.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Both major companies I've worked for sold their commercial real estate and leased it back as one of their very first measures when cost cuts were needed. What we have here is essentially the reverse where tech companies scare off their workforce and industry knowledge and drive up employee costs so they can impart some secondary effect on the commercial real estate market... so yes i remain confused about the priorities in play here.

[–] erwan@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why would Dell care about the commercial office real estate market?

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

they bought instead of rented? iunno

[–] Themadbeagle@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

You do understand that large corporations invest in many kinds of assets in order to diversify them right? Real estate is one of the oldest investments any entity can make, and is often considered a pretty strong investment. Everyone needs land right?

[–] _sideffect@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)

So for the past 4 years it didn't matter, but now it suddenly does? I smell bs on that real estate reason

[–] UsernameHere@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

During the pandemic they had to choose between go remote or close up shop. They didn’t have much choice.

Seems that once Covid stabilized they’ve been trying to force everyone back.

[–] _sideffect@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago

But that still doesn't matter if they posted profits during that time.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's because you don't know about how CRE funding works.

Large chunk of CRE runs on short term fixed rate debt, which requires refis. Next big cycle is starting about now and will go through 2026.

So feds lowered interest rate sum, and corpos are pushing us into the office to soften the blow from CRE operators and their creditors.

With that being said, low quality class C office space is in default, no way around it.

Shiti suburban trash offices also will die along with the shiti malls.

However, the return to office policy is specifically to bail out class A and B office towers in the major cities, ie the VIP CRE owned by the real owners and not bagholders

[–] _sideffect@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Whether we're in the office or not, they're still paying for the same space.

So how does us going back justify anything?

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 2 months ago

office valued if it is used. if it is used ,it has value.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 4 points 2 months ago

Who do you think owns the real estate?