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?
Big businesses often get incentives from municipalities for being headquartered there. The city wants employees in offices who might financially support other local businesses while they commute to/from work.
If the local economy is happy and office space remains in demand, coupled with savings they receive from incentives, property values rise. The property of a business is an asset, so the more valuable the property becomes, the more value the company owns.
Ok, so it’s about responding to local government incentives? I feel like that’s an important piece of the puzzle that’s overlooked when people say it’s about real estate prices.
Not only that, but many of these companies have huge fuckoff buildings and only occupy a portion of it. Tenants fill up the rest, and occupancy drops so does the rent. Pushing for a return to office pressures the smaller companies (who are run by sociopaths with very specific risk adversities) to do the same, lest they look like they don’t want to be like Big Daddy Fortune 500 up in the top floors.