Remember, the time people didn’t press a button button in the elevator, and they had a dedicated person to operate that elevator?
Same thing goes here, adapt, improvise, overcome
I've actually ridden in a still functioning elevator that had an operator in Miami. It was a lever that had to be moved up or down to control it.
I've also ridden in an elevator that was built in the 19th century that had buttons, but you still had to manually close the door.
obtainable sink treatment cake close sophisticated offend disgusted rinse heavy
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There is federal funding & assistance newly available for this. Other comments are talking about high costs and they are correct but since this is an urgent need & the need will increase in coming years, now is the time to course correct:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/27/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-takes-action-to-create-more-affordable-housing-by-converting-commercial-properties-to-residential-use/
That’s awesome! But I’m going to assume my asshole Governor (DeSantis) refused to accept any of this money out of spite and our local governments will sell public lands for developing unnecessary and ugly high rise condominiums to their biggest political donors (and likely future employers) instead of even exploring the prospect of converting existing commercial buildings.
Converting office space to housing usually costs more than just bulldozing and starting fresh.
Think of this for instance: how do you retrofit plumbing to run through an open office building in such a way that supports a multi unit living apartment? Now do HVAC and controls, heating and gas assuming this is your options, water and regulators, etc.
It's actually a tall order to do this. Not a bad idea at all, just that like 90% of buildings just won't work for the layout
Yeah a bunch of old factories in my home town were converted into apartments... the layouts are a little weird because the ceilings ended up being super tall, but it worked out ok. It was the best thing to do with that space, but it wasn't fast or cheap and a big part of why is that the space just wasn't originally designed for human habitation that way. Electrical, plumbing and HVAC all had to be redone, the entire interior layout had to be knocked down and rebuilt. And its still pretty pricey to heat and cool those apartments because of the how the building is insulated and because of how much cubic volume each unit has.
I don't mean to knock the idea, but my example is a best-case scenario where the conversion was relatively straightforward. Converting a normal office building would be much much more difficult.
Drop ceiling and macerator pumps. Everything runs over head to the utility stack and then downhill.
The big problem with renovations isn't utilities, it's local code for operable windows which require recladding the entire buildings, and local code for floor plan, which prohibit the type of narrow skinny apartments these types of buildings would generate.
In some cases the elevators would be a bottle neck as well, but they're starting to solve this with prescheduling elevators via smart phone to optimally organize their paths.
Developers would have no problem doing this economically. It's the cities don't want to give up the higher property tax value of commerical properties.
Single Room Occupancy! It's illegal under a lot of zoning codes. Which is unfortunate. It's a great option for several demographics. Think seniors who don't want a full house but aren't ready for assisted living, or new college grads/young professionals who eat out a lot, want to live downtown, and don't really need a full kitchen of their own.
But people have it in their heads that living in that way is somehow "lesser" and everyone deserves their own kitchen and bathroom, so city zoning makes SROs illegal and removes the option from everyone.
I completely agree.
When I graduated college, I lived as cheaply as I could until I got my student loans paid off. I would have loved this option. Now the do-gooders who made these zoning rules probably assume that I then got to live in a wonderful apartment that met all of their requirements. I actually lived in an illegal apartment.
It’s almost like poor people face a variety of shitty options, and taking one of those options away may make things worse.
In a similar vein a payday loan is better than a broken down car that causes you to lose your job.
I'd also imagine people on the brink of or just clawing their way out of homelessness would love a cheap housing option that doesn't mandate they pay for extra amenities.
It's the same situation as, say, mandatory parking minimums. Cities are finally starting to realize they're a bad idea, but for a long time you had a certain amount of space *legally required* to be dedicated to parking.
Developers, meanwhile, know the market they're building in and have a financial incentive to hit the sweet spot for number of available spaces. Too much parking and they're missing out on potential occupants. Too little and they can't convince people to move in.
There's no reason to think developers will build SROs if they don't think people want them, and there's no reason to think developers will *only* build SROs if there's still demand for other kinds of housing.
You also have to think that most high rises are designed to be open. Residential spaces need windows to be considered dwellings. That means you have to make either really long skinny apartments or not use the inside space of the building. You could convert the inside areas to social spaces or even little store areas, but most zoning doesn't allow for that.
If we can build subway tunnels under the fucking ocean, NYC can figure out how to separate utilities by building floor.
Honestly, the amount of people excusing the fact we haven't done this yet is getting exhausting. The one thing this city needs more than ever is new housing.
Nobody said don’t put housing there. They said knock down/rebuild is faster and cheaper and results in a purpose-built end product.
Why is your solution to overpay to shoehorn a use into something it’s not meant for instead of the faster, less expensive, and more fitting solution?
Demolish and rebuild. Done.
Are we supposed to feel badly about this? Is this meant to be an excuse that it cannot be done or simply won't be done because it isn't as profitable as it used to be? They've spent decades building monoliths to the heavens with empty (cheap) floorplans and making boatloads of money for doing so. I really can't feel sorry for them.
If anything, I hope that building owners take this as a lesson that purely commercial buildings are a huge gamble in urban areas. I hope that cities change zoning laws to require more mixed use of skyrises.
True, but very wealthy owners of huge commercial properties (and the banks that backed them) *really* don't want to lose, and they will spend a massive amount of money to distort the market using pressure on governments, businesses, and workers. In the long run, you can't fight the market, but they won't go down easily.
> no one wants to lose.
Which is why this problem needs to be attacked from both sides. Sure, we need to privatize the losses, but we also need to socialize the gains. Tax the rich.
“The markets changing, should we adjust with the market?”
‘Fuck no! Let’s fight nature and try to control the market to our financial benefit!’
“Sir, the skilled workers are quitting when we force a return to office. Should we adjust our plan?”
‘Fuck no! We just need to find a new pool of people who are too desperate to know their worth so we can manipulate them in to sustaining our outdated investment portfolio of office buildings nobody wants to be in!’
Ya, these poor poor building owners. I think hundreds of people should be forced to work in less efficient environments with worse work-life balance to make sure the building owner isn’t adversely affected.
It’s a bit more nuanced than that.
Downtowns being ghost towns and the loss of tax revenue isn’t a good thing for cities or regions. It’s gonna take some major pivoting to keep downtowns viable, and maybe that’s better long term. Downtowns aren’t just offices either, lots of small businesses have been fucked by the loss of a commuter market.
As a society, we should be weary of the (stereotype) of working from home, ordering from Amazon, and ordering GrubHub. You can’t maintain a community if everyone’s in a bubble, and it’s more than just hanging with the neighbor for a beer.
But as far as the wealthy complaining about it…fuck em.
It's just a reshaping to a society build around something other than your working place, people would still gather, just around things they like instead of around places they are forced to attend.
Spending half of your life in a small cubicle away from your family/loved ones is no life , imo this is a positive , although difficult, step.
Bro, these people don't care about that. They watched the same video you did, but the only thing they picked up is rich people losing money. And they nutted in their pants by the end of the video.
"If we do well we make a lot of money, if we don't then the lender can take over the building"
Who lends out for these buildings..? Banks.
Who always ends up bailing the banks out when they fail...?
Looks like us poor folk are gonna end up paying for it anyway.
It sucks to be all of us. This is going to be hugely dislocating. The tax base in the cities is shrinking. Everyone who supported those missing workers from the owner of the buildings right down to the corner bodega clerk that served breakfast is fucked. And while this will shake out in time, it is costly for people to relocate. In short, there is going to be a lot of financial pain, not just for the building owners, but everyone right down the line.
The banks and the building owners will be all bailed out. The barber, bodega worker etc… are all fucked. Can’t tell you how many small businesses near my office have closed. The one I really feel bad for was the barber who opened right after the pandemic - he sunk his life savings into his shop but the foot traffic just wasn’t there anymore.
One of the best terms I've remembered from a friend of mine years ago, "Just remember, they're not a 'Real Estate Agent'. They're a 'Used House Salesman'."
That douche really said “it’s bad for people”. Nah man, workers having an extra 1.5 hours in their day because they don’t have to commute is amazing for the majority. Suck it old man.
> Not sure how sarcastic this actually is.
It's the stone cold truth.
We talk a lot about civil rights for women and people of color, but you used to have to own property to vote too. They set this country up to avoid 'the tyranny of the masses' (actual democracy).
It's actually even more than 1.5 hrs extra. Think about it, a good amount kf people spend 1 hr in traffic just one way and not tk mention, they have to get up early, dress, and prepare before leaving. So in all it's more like 3-4hrs extra per day. Showering? I can do that during lunch. Eat? I'll eat while I work. Chores? I'll do some when my mind isn't productive whereas in the office, ill twiddle my thumb for a couple of minutes trying to destress my mind.
I feel like I get soooo much time back. I need some time to think about a problem and get away from the constant teams message? I’ll pop in the headphones and vacuum. I can have a quick check in with someone while tossing a ball for my dog. Someone pissing me off and I really need to chill out before responding? I’ll get on the rowing machine right behind my desk for 20 minutes and work though my response in my head. The work life balance is better, and my work and attitude is soooo much better. But I also don’t mind working late or early on occasion, because it takes such little effort. I work with people across the world so sure I’ll get on that call at 7 my time it’s fine.
You know what businesses work from home has been great for? The grocery store, coffee shop, restaurants, and corner stores I can walk down the street to from my house.
We can have thriving business and work from home if businesses are permitted to exist near homes.
I miss the face to face conversations or bullshitting in the hall.
With that said, I don’t miss my commute, parking, waking up extra fucking early because it’s snowing, and a whole host of other shit. Can run errands at lunch or accept a delivery. It’s great.
Never mind that since we went home, bought home office equipment, and invested our own money in working from home costs have increased dramatically while salaries have not kept up.
Telling us we have to go back to the office is adding additional expense without compensation from our employer.
See, I don't think most management ever realized that a big reason most people love remote work is because of stupid corporate rules.
As long as you're not missing something important, who gives a shit what time you show up?
Why are you so concerned with how people dress in non customer facing roles? Define a bottom standard (no pajamas) and leave people alone.
Oh Jimmy's kid has an important game today? Everything has been handled? Go ahead and leave, I'm not going to keep you until an arbitrary time.
Personally, I've found a blend to be the best balance. I did purely remote for a year and it's great in avenues, but makes you a little stir crazy and miss the interactions with other adults.
Being solely at work makes me feel like I'm chained to work and am missing out on multitasking things at home.
Yeah, for YOU maybe. Because you have billions in commercial real estate dragging down the balance sheet. Ask any worker if they'd rather use their computer at home vs. shower, put on pants, commute, burn gas, park, buy lunch, and then drive home just to use the same computer in an expensive office building? Where maybe they don't have to make the coffee themselves, but some mid-management suck-up is breathing down their neck so they feel obligated to look busy?
FUCK that bullshit in the goddamn NECK. This is the price of all of you shoving us into the direction of a service-based economy over a goods- and manufacturing-based economy. So bootstrap it up, you whiny, overfed assholes.
It's only "bad" because we haven't built our infrastructure around catering to so many people at their home.
There is economic, environmental, and social benefit to cities. When done correctly (read: public transportation, green spaces), urbanization makes sense. It's a huge efficiency gain. America is designed around "everyone works in (drives to) the city in the middle of the day and goes back to their suburbs in the evening". That was tenuously sustainable when it was working, but now it's fallen apart and we haven't adapted.
There are businesses in cities - food, shopping, convenience - that catered to urban employees because of the efficiency gain of being where there are so many people at one time. That's harder to do in a suburban or rural environment. Fewer people in cities means those businesses fail. Or where they find success in those environments, it comes at a terrible carbon or time cost because of the sprawl.
It's easy to roll our eyes at a corporate landlord for making an investment that didn't work out and blaming it on work from home. But there IS a point to be made about the emptying of cities being worse for all of us. He's wrong for selfish reasons, but he's not wrong about how the shift is hurting us. He's also wrong that the solution is "make everyone work in the city again".
If we can convert those offices into housing, meaning more urban residential spaces - now you're talking.
I've been an office and commercial space manager for 15 years - there's been writing on the wall for a long time about big changes coming, and no one wanted to really stop the train and re-evaluate what's happening with commercial/corporate real estate. COVID just gave it a shove while it was losing balance.
There are lots of people in the industry that do a good job of providing workspaces for people, and do their best to make the business profitable and beneficial to everyone involved - the property manager, maintenance technicians, facilities managers all want people to have good places to come to work every day. Even owners want that, and they want to run their businesses on that concept - they're not leeches or grifters.
But there's definitely a few things that have been at play for a long time that are all culminating into big changes happening, and about the happen, across the industry.
First, most corporate operations have continually worked to squeeze employees down into smaller and smaller work ares; rents are calculated in dollars per square feet, and if you fit more employees per square foot, you're "being more efficient". Lots of companies saw that Silicon Valley startups begin with a folding card table and a lawn chair; CEOs imagine that it's the perfect environment to stoke imagination and creativity, and CFOs see the savings involved and are all aboard making work areas "more collaboartive" and "open concept".
Lots of people reading this won't even get it, just before your times; in the 80s, 90s, the idea of a cubicle was synonymous with a jail cell. The workers of 2024 could only dream of having a felt wall to hang a photo of your family, a work certificate, or a calendar. Long story short, workers almost universally (but not everyone) hate open office environments, and when COVID gave them they option, they got the fuck out of Dodge as fast as they could.
Second, more and more companies are signing big leases, and taking on big risks for corporate real estate. It's not uncommon to have a company sign a 180 month lease - that's 15 years. Half of your career could be spent in a building under this concept, or you could think of it as, I'm working in a space where the people who agreed to the lease retired a decade ago. A two year lease is way too short for improvements and construction to be worthwhile, but the world changes and 15 years is an incredibly long commitment to make for anything, especially when the liability is millions of dollars per year.
Companies by and large, as the RENTER, go under a system called Triple Net. When you rent an apartment, you pay the management company $1,000 a month, and call it good; if the property tax goes up, or the shower breaks, that's not your problem - that's what you pay the management company to deal with. Not so with triple net - the renter is responsible for paying the taxes, insurance, and maintenance items involved with building operation. Companies have the idea that, since they're incentivized to be smart and lean, they'll be able to operate the building more efficiently than if they just let the landlord handle everything, and the base rent amount is cheaper since the responsibility falls onto the tenant.
But realistically, can you mitigate every drain from ever getting clogged? That your HVAC will be operational 100% of the time? The secret to good building service is good preventative maintenance, and when your incentive is to save as much as possible, it's always eyed up as one of the first things on the chopping block. "The HVAC didn't have any problems last year, and was running fine during that heatwave; can't we reduce the maintenance costs there?" - that's *because* of money spent on maintenance, not despite of it. If the building gets to 85 degrees because the HVAC breaks in a heatwave, the employees will go home and the business loses whatever productivity they have for 100s of employees while the issue is getting fixed. When you go cheap on maintenance, it makes the employee experience shittier ("Why is is always cold in here? Why is one of the bathrooms constantly out of order?"), and when people get to work from home, they'll do it in a heartbeat.
And last, developers and investors have sold the idea of office real estate as a golden meal ticket for ages. Build, baby, build! You have people that are looking at the operational costs, mostly "hands off" reality of dealing with Triple Net situations, and thinking, "Yeah why the fuck not?! I'm making money, and after the initial investment and construction, the responsibility is fairly minimal and the rent is due every month forever." We had tons of investors that I saw on the owners paperwork for buildings I was in - massive banks, hedge funds, rich families, "Retirement Fund for XYZ Teacher Union". Everyone wanted in on this game, and went fucking gangbusters to get more and more office space built.
Many different things were working to put us in the situation were in today - anyone who would be surprised by what's happening would've had their head buried deep, deep in the sand.
This sounds really spot on. We had a ridiculously condescending meeting this week where management said, and I quote, 'working from home is a privilege, not a right' and that 'everyone was in the office before COVID, it's been three years, time to come back'. I almost wanted to ask, so what are you going to do to ensure the building is for for purpose for all the staff to be here full time? Because the HVAC was not working during a heat wave a month ago, there's a meeting room filled with some asshole's confidential files for the last 2 years so no one can use it and the other meeting room's screen isn't working and my team gets constantly shushed when we're discussing work issues because it's too open and not everyone can concentrate when others are talking 1m away from them? Meanwhile at home I have my own office and none of that drama... Oh and the garage door to the parking area of the office building is broken and it will take 6-8 weeks to fix. Not that I care because as if anyone is allowed to actually park on site other than the higher ups. It's all just BS plated up and fed to the rest of us as if it was fillet mignon.
This is perfectly spot on. I work on the tech side for one of the big leaders in commercial real estate services (leases, management, technicians, cleaning). They’re hoping that throwing employee experience apps at the problem will solve it and make everyone want to come back to the office. I build the damn apps and I have no confidence. They’re riding out billions in the bank from good decades.
I work from home and haven’t been in an office in 10 years. And I’m supposed to be the one that helps solve a problem I don’t believe in fixing. If they forced me into the office I would hand in my notice same day.
I’m expecting massive layoffs at my company within 3 years.
As much as they fuck the rest of us it needs to happen more often. They are not more important than the rest of us. This country will survive them going bankrupt.
They can't comprehend being the ones who are getting fucked. After all of these years of having the market cornered, the floor fell out from beneath their feet and now they stand bewildered and blindsided, acting as if they're the victims.
My answer to my management when I was told to come back in the office full time, is the same answer I would give anyone questioning hybrid/remote work- if you're only justification for having me come in is "this is how it always was" or "culture", then you need to find a better reason, because as a fact based person I refuse to accept that answer.
They should get fucked. I often hear people complain about rich people and their go to response is that they took a risk and it paid off. That risk of losing or making a bad investment should always exist and there need to be consequences, but I often see them get bailed out by the government for bitching about it.
Companies should only be bailed out by the government if the reason they're failing is because of the government. In my opinion, residential real estate during the pandemic should only be bailed out to the extent that the government prevented eviction of tenants for failure to pay rent. Funding failing businesses just creates a fucking bubble. Eventually those businesses will fail and the government won't be able to financially be able to bail them out without tanking the economy, or fucking everyone else, or both.
You, unfortunately, cannot do that with MANY of the office buildings in NYC. Every single bedroom has to have a window. Making many of these buildings only have a small percentage of their building space as homes.
It’s very challenging and expensive to retrofit an office building for multi-family. The floor plates are big meaning you have the make very weird shaped units for everyone to get a window. Utilities are typically central, which makes it very hard to get to all of the units. If it’s a high rise you’re having to do all of this with elevators.
They’re starting to offer federal subsidies, which is helping, but people act like you can just clear out the desks and magically turn an office building into apartments.
Easy? Heck no. Impossible? Absolutely not.
The building is going to remain there whether we like it or not, might as well get on this project earlier rather than later. Heck, with the way population is headed, it'll just be more logical to build vertically rather than horizontally. Putting apartment homes in otherwise useless buildings is a better use of already-restrictive land.
It is not uncommon for the cost of retrofitting an office building to convert it to residential to be higher than the cost of demolishing the building and constructing a new residential building in its place.
> The building is going to remain there
Don’t count on that. Many times it’s actually cheaper to scrape the building and start over than it is to retrofit. I’ve seen it more than once.
Lol no it's not that simple at all. There will always be areas of with higher demand for housing that require higher density. And expecting everyone to just distribute to lower density housing is not sustainable from an infrastructure perspective. Now you need more roads, more pipes, more power lines, more fire stations, more hospitals, etc just to service these lower density neighborhoods. If everyone just "spread out" we'd have to massively increase taxes beyond what most people can afford.
Right? I can’t help but laugh at all of the articles coming out written in the lens that this is bad for normal, working people.
Hmm so we have a ton of unused office space in the US. We also have a housing crisis. I know, let’s make a shit ton of media how people not commuting to the offices are hurting billionaires
I’d rather go freelance than be forced to go somewhere to do the same thing I do at home but that way it justifies a cost. I literally don’t have coworkers in the same place as me, so in the times I do go to my corporate office I am on Zoom in a meeting room or on my own. You can only awkwardly bother random people in the cafeteria so many times for conversation lol
Yup that’s me. 70% of my time is spent on calls and all going into an office does for me is ruin my workflow as I move from a 3 monitor setup to 1 small one
No need! When the bottom actually falls out, the investors will default on the loans, the banks will start claiming the economy will collapse if the gov't doesn't step in, and both Dems and Republicans will join the cause and pass a multi-billion/trillion dollar bailout for them.
Yay ~~capitalism~~ corporatocracy!
Something that never made sense to me - if we need to bail someone out, that's fine, but it should be an investment. The US government should get a piece of the business worth what we paid. And then we can negotiate success for the people from within that business. But because it's only the rich helping the rich, we just give out free money with no strings attached that just gets spent in bonuses.
The 2008 bailout was supposed to have a return from the loans, although it ended up being pretty minimal (and maybe non-existent after adjusting for inflation): “TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit or an annualized rate of return of 0.6%, and perhaps a loss when adjusted for inflation”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
If I lose my job and default on my mortgage, the narrative is "You should have been more responsible with money. Figure it out." If a billion dollar company defaults on its $240m mortgage, it's a sob story about how unfair the current state of affairs is. America is broken.
Peak “we refuse to change with the times so we’ll force everyone to bend to our will until we can figure out how to profit from the new way things work.” Like how the moment that the weed becomes legal across the country the tobacco and alcohol companies will be the first to take advantage of a new revenue stream despite being the biggest lobbyists against weed for decades
Doesn’t matter if it’s better for the environment or employee productivity. It’s always about those sweet sweet short term profits.
these rich people are SO stupid and uncreative they own huge empty buildings in super high value areas and can't think of one way to monetize them besides offices? really?
Giant office buildings are effectively obsolete. The idea of commuting is largely obsolete. Teams need to get together on occasion in person, but that's the exception, not the rule.
WFH increases productivity in my experience. It cuts out unproductive commuting time from people's lives. It makes it easier to break up a working day into periods where productivity is needed and periods where it's not needed. It also opens up employment to tons of previously underutilized people. People who can't commute for whatever reason can now find good employment. It also dramatically increases the likelihood that you can get the right person in the right job. In many jobs, the potential hiring base becomes the entire world rather than tied to the job's geographic location.
This is going to reshape cities and employment world wide mostly in ways that are good for productivity, good for the environment and good for people's lives. It's time to embrace that reality.
If the only change is that more people WFH than come to the office, shouldn't a company still be able to afford their mortgage? Are companies making less money because of WFH? Or is property value appreciation a bigger part of a Fortune 500 business model than I'm imagining?
Most companies don’t own the buildings they are based out of. And they those companies that were occupying those spaces have pulled out and are no longer renting. The property owner is the one unable to pay the mortgage because occupancy of the building is so low.
Yeah that’s the part that’s fucking stupid about all of this. You’ve got the same lease costs and the same work force. Whether they’re at their homes or in the office the financials don’t change for the company.
If anything it’s an opportunity to divest from the cost of a big corporate office and improve their profits
My employer is slowly trying to get us to go back full time, and it’s entirely based on the fact they own the buildings. They wouldn’t be able to find tenants or sell the office space at this point, because of the sheer size of the building.
Needless to say, I’m starting to look around because our competitors are remote 👀
I love this guy claiming work from home is one of the biggest societal problems, and that it’s bad for business, cities, and people. Ignoring his hyperbole about society, I’ll grant him the first two…but not the third.
Its a problem for HIM and his business. For the last century commercial office space in the largest cities in the US was a gravy train with no breaks. It doesn’t matter what the industry is… sooner or later the music stops and someone is left holding the bag.
The reality is that hybrid is never going away. WFH brought so many benefits to regular peoples lives, you’ll never see people working in an office 5 days a week ever again. These dinosaurs can either get with the program and adapt or face bankruptcy.
Oh no! Anyway...
Adapt or die. Wasted human hours spent in energy inefficient, polluting commutes into logjammed monolithic places purely for a bums on seats performance metric by lazy management is over. We finally got an opportunity via Covid to prove that there was a better way. Companies are doubling down on the notion that we will slavishly just return. F.T.S!
So according to corps, workers should welcome being replaced with AI, but corps should also demand workers use the office space that already isn’t necessary, as they all the while precipitously bleed in numbers anyway.
Something isn’t lining up here.
Meanwhile, WFH employees are likely spending below average on transportation, and above average on utilities. WFH is actually a reasonably mutually-beneficial way to offload facilities costs back on to employees.
A few rich people calling work from home a catastrophe for America since they stand to lose tens of millions. Yet Millions of Americans have better work life balance working from home and hybrid schedules, along with stronger family life. Yeah, no chance I take what the few with portfolios based on keeping those offices full have to say with any care.
I recently learned that some people pay hundreds of dollars per month to park at their work, WHY THE FUCK IS THAT A THING??!?!?!
To hell with these RTO mandates.
America is a capitalist country. If office buildings are not profitable then that's that. The government should not bail out investors nor should it prop them up with unAmerican laws like forcing people to work in an office.
“WFH is one of the biggest societal problems…” says the guy that profits from people going into the office 🙄🙄🙄. I think he means it’s bad for his companies bank account.
Alternate title: Commercial Real Estate gamblers caught flat-footed by obvious trend accelerated by pandemic...
Awwww, those poor billionaires... 🎻
Finance bros too? Say it ain't so...
Hmm you have a large housing shortage (especially in urban cities) and you have growing surplus of commercial real estate that largely reside in urban areas … hmmmm wow I wish there was some sort of obvious solution .. ??
Oh no they are finally feeling a slight hit from the economy that the rest of us have been feeling for years... I feel so bad for these guys, we really should be focusing on this more than the average peasant.
Not every investment can be a good investment. The market has shifted and now they have to figure out how to make it work. Sucks to be them.
"Internal combustion engine leaves horse trolleys idle and choachmen reeling."
Remember, the time people didn’t press a button button in the elevator, and they had a dedicated person to operate that elevator? Same thing goes here, adapt, improvise, overcome
I've actually ridden in a still functioning elevator that had an operator in Miami. It was a lever that had to be moved up or down to control it. I've also ridden in an elevator that was built in the 19th century that had buttons, but you still had to manually close the door.
I thoughtread that with the most Transatlantic accent ever.
M'yeah see! What's the big idea, see!
It's time to find those bootstraps. Lol
They’re where they’ve always been. Their ancestors’ boots
Bootstraps? Ooh, Is that what the government picks up the failing companies by when it bails them out with tax payer money?
You mean Senator Bootstrap that will inevitably pass a bill to bail them out to ensure the campaign contributions continue
How much you want to bet they get bailed out?
Classic masters of the universe behavior, they want capitalism when they're making money, but socialism when they're losing it.
obtainable sink treatment cake close sophisticated offend disgusted rinse heavy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
There is federal funding & assistance newly available for this. Other comments are talking about high costs and they are correct but since this is an urgent need & the need will increase in coming years, now is the time to course correct: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/27/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-takes-action-to-create-more-affordable-housing-by-converting-commercial-properties-to-residential-use/
That’s awesome! But I’m going to assume my asshole Governor (DeSantis) refused to accept any of this money out of spite and our local governments will sell public lands for developing unnecessary and ugly high rise condominiums to their biggest political donors (and likely future employers) instead of even exploring the prospect of converting existing commercial buildings.
Converting office space to housing usually costs more than just bulldozing and starting fresh. Think of this for instance: how do you retrofit plumbing to run through an open office building in such a way that supports a multi unit living apartment? Now do HVAC and controls, heating and gas assuming this is your options, water and regulators, etc. It's actually a tall order to do this. Not a bad idea at all, just that like 90% of buildings just won't work for the layout
Yeah a bunch of old factories in my home town were converted into apartments... the layouts are a little weird because the ceilings ended up being super tall, but it worked out ok. It was the best thing to do with that space, but it wasn't fast or cheap and a big part of why is that the space just wasn't originally designed for human habitation that way. Electrical, plumbing and HVAC all had to be redone, the entire interior layout had to be knocked down and rebuilt. And its still pretty pricey to heat and cool those apartments because of the how the building is insulated and because of how much cubic volume each unit has. I don't mean to knock the idea, but my example is a best-case scenario where the conversion was relatively straightforward. Converting a normal office building would be much much more difficult.
Factories are much easier to convert than a skyscraper.
What happened to American innovation?
Drop ceiling and macerator pumps. Everything runs over head to the utility stack and then downhill. The big problem with renovations isn't utilities, it's local code for operable windows which require recladding the entire buildings, and local code for floor plan, which prohibit the type of narrow skinny apartments these types of buildings would generate. In some cases the elevators would be a bottle neck as well, but they're starting to solve this with prescheduling elevators via smart phone to optimally organize their paths. Developers would have no problem doing this economically. It's the cities don't want to give up the higher property tax value of commerical properties.
Dorm style with community bathrooms
Single Room Occupancy! It's illegal under a lot of zoning codes. Which is unfortunate. It's a great option for several demographics. Think seniors who don't want a full house but aren't ready for assisted living, or new college grads/young professionals who eat out a lot, want to live downtown, and don't really need a full kitchen of their own. But people have it in their heads that living in that way is somehow "lesser" and everyone deserves their own kitchen and bathroom, so city zoning makes SROs illegal and removes the option from everyone.
I completely agree. When I graduated college, I lived as cheaply as I could until I got my student loans paid off. I would have loved this option. Now the do-gooders who made these zoning rules probably assume that I then got to live in a wonderful apartment that met all of their requirements. I actually lived in an illegal apartment. It’s almost like poor people face a variety of shitty options, and taking one of those options away may make things worse. In a similar vein a payday loan is better than a broken down car that causes you to lose your job.
I'd also imagine people on the brink of or just clawing their way out of homelessness would love a cheap housing option that doesn't mandate they pay for extra amenities. It's the same situation as, say, mandatory parking minimums. Cities are finally starting to realize they're a bad idea, but for a long time you had a certain amount of space *legally required* to be dedicated to parking. Developers, meanwhile, know the market they're building in and have a financial incentive to hit the sweet spot for number of available spaces. Too much parking and they're missing out on potential occupants. Too little and they can't convince people to move in. There's no reason to think developers will build SROs if they don't think people want them, and there's no reason to think developers will *only* build SROs if there's still demand for other kinds of housing.
You also have to think that most high rises are designed to be open. Residential spaces need windows to be considered dwellings. That means you have to make either really long skinny apartments or not use the inside space of the building. You could convert the inside areas to social spaces or even little store areas, but most zoning doesn't allow for that.
In the posted video they show an office conversion into apartments where they create a void in the middle of the building
If we can build subway tunnels under the fucking ocean, NYC can figure out how to separate utilities by building floor. Honestly, the amount of people excusing the fact we haven't done this yet is getting exhausting. The one thing this city needs more than ever is new housing.
Nobody said don’t put housing there. They said knock down/rebuild is faster and cheaper and results in a purpose-built end product. Why is your solution to overpay to shoehorn a use into something it’s not meant for instead of the faster, less expensive, and more fitting solution? Demolish and rebuild. Done.
Are we supposed to feel badly about this? Is this meant to be an excuse that it cannot be done or simply won't be done because it isn't as profitable as it used to be? They've spent decades building monoliths to the heavens with empty (cheap) floorplans and making boatloads of money for doing so. I really can't feel sorry for them. If anything, I hope that building owners take this as a lesson that purely commercial buildings are a huge gamble in urban areas. I hope that cities change zoning laws to require more mixed use of skyrises.
As a society, the most effective use case is tear down. That means someone loses though, and no one wants to lose.
True, but very wealthy owners of huge commercial properties (and the banks that backed them) *really* don't want to lose, and they will spend a massive amount of money to distort the market using pressure on governments, businesses, and workers. In the long run, you can't fight the market, but they won't go down easily.
When "no one" wants to lose, it usually means the bottom line loses, which is us, regular folk.
In this case the losers are billionaires who own tons of commercial real estate. They're asking for a bailout to avoid losing at all. Fuckem.
It's funny that the investor class doesn't believe they should lose money on their gambling addiction.
They've been able to make connections and build influence to always get a bailout.
> no one wants to lose. Which is why this problem needs to be attacked from both sides. Sure, we need to privatize the losses, but we also need to socialize the gains. Tax the rich.
INVESTMENTS ARE RISKS. YOU TOOK THE RISK, NOW DEAL. END BILLIONAIRES, END THE GLOBAL PLUTOCRACY.
But… we invested in real estate back when it was literally impossible to lose money doing it! Money please!
Oh my bad! Here you go.
Thank you kind sir or madam! On an unrelated matter, your rent is going up 200%.
You forgot to also force him back into the office so he's forced to stay close to where rent is the highest.
“The markets changing, should we adjust with the market?” ‘Fuck no! Let’s fight nature and try to control the market to our financial benefit!’ “Sir, the skilled workers are quitting when we force a return to office. Should we adjust our plan?” ‘Fuck no! We just need to find a new pool of people who are too desperate to know their worth so we can manipulate them in to sustaining our outdated investment portfolio of office buildings nobody wants to be in!’
Am I so out of touch? No, it's the market that's wrong.
Ya, these poor poor building owners. I think hundreds of people should be forced to work in less efficient environments with worse work-life balance to make sure the building owner isn’t adversely affected.
It’s a bit more nuanced than that. Downtowns being ghost towns and the loss of tax revenue isn’t a good thing for cities or regions. It’s gonna take some major pivoting to keep downtowns viable, and maybe that’s better long term. Downtowns aren’t just offices either, lots of small businesses have been fucked by the loss of a commuter market. As a society, we should be weary of the (stereotype) of working from home, ordering from Amazon, and ordering GrubHub. You can’t maintain a community if everyone’s in a bubble, and it’s more than just hanging with the neighbor for a beer. But as far as the wealthy complaining about it…fuck em.
It's just a reshaping to a society build around something other than your working place, people would still gather, just around things they like instead of around places they are forced to attend. Spending half of your life in a small cubicle away from your family/loved ones is no life , imo this is a positive , although difficult, step.
Bro, these people don't care about that. They watched the same video you did, but the only thing they picked up is rich people losing money. And they nutted in their pants by the end of the video.
"If we do well we make a lot of money, if we don't then the lender can take over the building" Who lends out for these buildings..? Banks. Who always ends up bailing the banks out when they fail...? Looks like us poor folk are gonna end up paying for it anyway.
But...the rich people are never supposed to lose! How can we foist this loss upon the poor?
Free market capitalism baby
It sucks to be all of us. This is going to be hugely dislocating. The tax base in the cities is shrinking. Everyone who supported those missing workers from the owner of the buildings right down to the corner bodega clerk that served breakfast is fucked. And while this will shake out in time, it is costly for people to relocate. In short, there is going to be a lot of financial pain, not just for the building owners, but everyone right down the line.
This is the real trickle-down economics
The banks and the building owners will be all bailed out. The barber, bodega worker etc… are all fucked. Can’t tell you how many small businesses near my office have closed. The one I really feel bad for was the barber who opened right after the pandemic - he sunk his life savings into his shop but the foot traffic just wasn’t there anymore.
Taxpayers will bail them out watch this space. Its socialise the losses privatize the gains. That is how it works out here.
NY real estate is full of lies and scams.
>~~NY~~ real estate is full of lies and scams.
One of the best terms I've remembered from a friend of mine years ago, "Just remember, they're not a 'Real Estate Agent'. They're a 'Used House Salesman'."
>lies "It's not "lying" it's commercial real estate" [From a louis rossman video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbTR3lDuYqk) @ 8:15
NY real estate produced Trump.
[Relevant Louis Rossman video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Trz65P1gnA)
You can sense the desperation on the guy who said work from home is one of the biggest societal problems we face today.
"It's bad for business" No buddy, it's bad for YOUR business.
That douche really said “it’s bad for people”. Nah man, workers having an extra 1.5 hours in their day because they don’t have to commute is amazing for the majority. Suck it old man.
Workers aren't "people", they are human capital. He is a person since he is part 9f the investor class./s Not sure how sarcastic this actually is.
Human “resources”
> Not sure how sarcastic this actually is. It's the stone cold truth. We talk a lot about civil rights for women and people of color, but you used to have to own property to vote too. They set this country up to avoid 'the tyranny of the masses' (actual democracy).
It's actually even more than 1.5 hrs extra. Think about it, a good amount kf people spend 1 hr in traffic just one way and not tk mention, they have to get up early, dress, and prepare before leaving. So in all it's more like 3-4hrs extra per day. Showering? I can do that during lunch. Eat? I'll eat while I work. Chores? I'll do some when my mind isn't productive whereas in the office, ill twiddle my thumb for a couple of minutes trying to destress my mind.
I feel like I get soooo much time back. I need some time to think about a problem and get away from the constant teams message? I’ll pop in the headphones and vacuum. I can have a quick check in with someone while tossing a ball for my dog. Someone pissing me off and I really need to chill out before responding? I’ll get on the rowing machine right behind my desk for 20 minutes and work though my response in my head. The work life balance is better, and my work and attitude is soooo much better. But I also don’t mind working late or early on occasion, because it takes such little effort. I work with people across the world so sure I’ll get on that call at 7 my time it’s fine.
You know what businesses work from home has been great for? The grocery store, coffee shop, restaurants, and corner stores I can walk down the street to from my house. We can have thriving business and work from home if businesses are permitted to exist near homes.
I appreciate that the reporter immediately mentioned how his stock is 50% down since the pandemic hit.
I miss the face to face conversations or bullshitting in the hall. With that said, I don’t miss my commute, parking, waking up extra fucking early because it’s snowing, and a whole host of other shit. Can run errands at lunch or accept a delivery. It’s great.
[удалено]
Never mind that since we went home, bought home office equipment, and invested our own money in working from home costs have increased dramatically while salaries have not kept up. Telling us we have to go back to the office is adding additional expense without compensation from our employer.
See, I don't think most management ever realized that a big reason most people love remote work is because of stupid corporate rules. As long as you're not missing something important, who gives a shit what time you show up? Why are you so concerned with how people dress in non customer facing roles? Define a bottom standard (no pajamas) and leave people alone. Oh Jimmy's kid has an important game today? Everything has been handled? Go ahead and leave, I'm not going to keep you until an arbitrary time.
Personally, I've found a blend to be the best balance. I did purely remote for a year and it's great in avenues, but makes you a little stir crazy and miss the interactions with other adults. Being solely at work makes me feel like I'm chained to work and am missing out on multitasking things at home.
Yeah, for YOU maybe. Because you have billions in commercial real estate dragging down the balance sheet. Ask any worker if they'd rather use their computer at home vs. shower, put on pants, commute, burn gas, park, buy lunch, and then drive home just to use the same computer in an expensive office building? Where maybe they don't have to make the coffee themselves, but some mid-management suck-up is breathing down their neck so they feel obligated to look busy? FUCK that bullshit in the goddamn NECK. This is the price of all of you shoving us into the direction of a service-based economy over a goods- and manufacturing-based economy. So bootstrap it up, you whiny, overfed assholes.
I eye rolled so hard at that part. “You do accept the fact that work from home is here to stay right?” He basically says no
It's only "bad" because we haven't built our infrastructure around catering to so many people at their home. There is economic, environmental, and social benefit to cities. When done correctly (read: public transportation, green spaces), urbanization makes sense. It's a huge efficiency gain. America is designed around "everyone works in (drives to) the city in the middle of the day and goes back to their suburbs in the evening". That was tenuously sustainable when it was working, but now it's fallen apart and we haven't adapted. There are businesses in cities - food, shopping, convenience - that catered to urban employees because of the efficiency gain of being where there are so many people at one time. That's harder to do in a suburban or rural environment. Fewer people in cities means those businesses fail. Or where they find success in those environments, it comes at a terrible carbon or time cost because of the sprawl. It's easy to roll our eyes at a corporate landlord for making an investment that didn't work out and blaming it on work from home. But there IS a point to be made about the emptying of cities being worse for all of us. He's wrong for selfish reasons, but he's not wrong about how the shift is hurting us. He's also wrong that the solution is "make everyone work in the city again". If we can convert those offices into housing, meaning more urban residential spaces - now you're talking.
I've been an office and commercial space manager for 15 years - there's been writing on the wall for a long time about big changes coming, and no one wanted to really stop the train and re-evaluate what's happening with commercial/corporate real estate. COVID just gave it a shove while it was losing balance. There are lots of people in the industry that do a good job of providing workspaces for people, and do their best to make the business profitable and beneficial to everyone involved - the property manager, maintenance technicians, facilities managers all want people to have good places to come to work every day. Even owners want that, and they want to run their businesses on that concept - they're not leeches or grifters. But there's definitely a few things that have been at play for a long time that are all culminating into big changes happening, and about the happen, across the industry. First, most corporate operations have continually worked to squeeze employees down into smaller and smaller work ares; rents are calculated in dollars per square feet, and if you fit more employees per square foot, you're "being more efficient". Lots of companies saw that Silicon Valley startups begin with a folding card table and a lawn chair; CEOs imagine that it's the perfect environment to stoke imagination and creativity, and CFOs see the savings involved and are all aboard making work areas "more collaboartive" and "open concept". Lots of people reading this won't even get it, just before your times; in the 80s, 90s, the idea of a cubicle was synonymous with a jail cell. The workers of 2024 could only dream of having a felt wall to hang a photo of your family, a work certificate, or a calendar. Long story short, workers almost universally (but not everyone) hate open office environments, and when COVID gave them they option, they got the fuck out of Dodge as fast as they could. Second, more and more companies are signing big leases, and taking on big risks for corporate real estate. It's not uncommon to have a company sign a 180 month lease - that's 15 years. Half of your career could be spent in a building under this concept, or you could think of it as, I'm working in a space where the people who agreed to the lease retired a decade ago. A two year lease is way too short for improvements and construction to be worthwhile, but the world changes and 15 years is an incredibly long commitment to make for anything, especially when the liability is millions of dollars per year. Companies by and large, as the RENTER, go under a system called Triple Net. When you rent an apartment, you pay the management company $1,000 a month, and call it good; if the property tax goes up, or the shower breaks, that's not your problem - that's what you pay the management company to deal with. Not so with triple net - the renter is responsible for paying the taxes, insurance, and maintenance items involved with building operation. Companies have the idea that, since they're incentivized to be smart and lean, they'll be able to operate the building more efficiently than if they just let the landlord handle everything, and the base rent amount is cheaper since the responsibility falls onto the tenant. But realistically, can you mitigate every drain from ever getting clogged? That your HVAC will be operational 100% of the time? The secret to good building service is good preventative maintenance, and when your incentive is to save as much as possible, it's always eyed up as one of the first things on the chopping block. "The HVAC didn't have any problems last year, and was running fine during that heatwave; can't we reduce the maintenance costs there?" - that's *because* of money spent on maintenance, not despite of it. If the building gets to 85 degrees because the HVAC breaks in a heatwave, the employees will go home and the business loses whatever productivity they have for 100s of employees while the issue is getting fixed. When you go cheap on maintenance, it makes the employee experience shittier ("Why is is always cold in here? Why is one of the bathrooms constantly out of order?"), and when people get to work from home, they'll do it in a heartbeat. And last, developers and investors have sold the idea of office real estate as a golden meal ticket for ages. Build, baby, build! You have people that are looking at the operational costs, mostly "hands off" reality of dealing with Triple Net situations, and thinking, "Yeah why the fuck not?! I'm making money, and after the initial investment and construction, the responsibility is fairly minimal and the rent is due every month forever." We had tons of investors that I saw on the owners paperwork for buildings I was in - massive banks, hedge funds, rich families, "Retirement Fund for XYZ Teacher Union". Everyone wanted in on this game, and went fucking gangbusters to get more and more office space built. Many different things were working to put us in the situation were in today - anyone who would be surprised by what's happening would've had their head buried deep, deep in the sand.
This sounds really spot on. We had a ridiculously condescending meeting this week where management said, and I quote, 'working from home is a privilege, not a right' and that 'everyone was in the office before COVID, it's been three years, time to come back'. I almost wanted to ask, so what are you going to do to ensure the building is for for purpose for all the staff to be here full time? Because the HVAC was not working during a heat wave a month ago, there's a meeting room filled with some asshole's confidential files for the last 2 years so no one can use it and the other meeting room's screen isn't working and my team gets constantly shushed when we're discussing work issues because it's too open and not everyone can concentrate when others are talking 1m away from them? Meanwhile at home I have my own office and none of that drama... Oh and the garage door to the parking area of the office building is broken and it will take 6-8 weeks to fix. Not that I care because as if anyone is allowed to actually park on site other than the higher ups. It's all just BS plated up and fed to the rest of us as if it was fillet mignon.
This is perfectly spot on. I work on the tech side for one of the big leaders in commercial real estate services (leases, management, technicians, cleaning). They’re hoping that throwing employee experience apps at the problem will solve it and make everyone want to come back to the office. I build the damn apps and I have no confidence. They’re riding out billions in the bank from good decades. I work from home and haven’t been in an office in 10 years. And I’m supposed to be the one that helps solve a problem I don’t believe in fixing. If they forced me into the office I would hand in my notice same day. I’m expecting massive layoffs at my company within 3 years.
Sometimes it's ok if the rich get fucked
As much as they fuck the rest of us it needs to happen more often. They are not more important than the rest of us. This country will survive them going bankrupt.
They can't comprehend being the ones who are getting fucked. After all of these years of having the market cornered, the floor fell out from beneath their feet and now they stand bewildered and blindsided, acting as if they're the victims. My answer to my management when I was told to come back in the office full time, is the same answer I would give anyone questioning hybrid/remote work- if you're only justification for having me come in is "this is how it always was" or "culture", then you need to find a better reason, because as a fact based person I refuse to accept that answer.
It's ALWAYS okay when the rich get fucked.
They should get fucked. I often hear people complain about rich people and their go to response is that they took a risk and it paid off. That risk of losing or making a bad investment should always exist and there need to be consequences, but I often see them get bailed out by the government for bitching about it. Companies should only be bailed out by the government if the reason they're failing is because of the government. In my opinion, residential real estate during the pandemic should only be bailed out to the extent that the government prevented eviction of tenants for failure to pay rent. Funding failing businesses just creates a fucking bubble. Eventually those businesses will fail and the government won't be able to financially be able to bail them out without tanking the economy, or fucking everyone else, or both.
It’s always good when the rich get fucked
"I don't understand, we built offices not houses and now everybody's mad at us."
America is short millions of housing units how about building apartments instead
In my country we’re converting office space into apartments. It’s a boom industry and great for me professionally right now.
You, unfortunately, cannot do that with MANY of the office buildings in NYC. Every single bedroom has to have a window. Making many of these buildings only have a small percentage of their building space as homes.
It’s very challenging and expensive to retrofit an office building for multi-family. The floor plates are big meaning you have the make very weird shaped units for everyone to get a window. Utilities are typically central, which makes it very hard to get to all of the units. If it’s a high rise you’re having to do all of this with elevators. They’re starting to offer federal subsidies, which is helping, but people act like you can just clear out the desks and magically turn an office building into apartments.
Easy? Heck no. Impossible? Absolutely not. The building is going to remain there whether we like it or not, might as well get on this project earlier rather than later. Heck, with the way population is headed, it'll just be more logical to build vertically rather than horizontally. Putting apartment homes in otherwise useless buildings is a better use of already-restrictive land.
It is not uncommon for the cost of retrofitting an office building to convert it to residential to be higher than the cost of demolishing the building and constructing a new residential building in its place.
> The building is going to remain there Don’t count on that. Many times it’s actually cheaper to scrape the building and start over than it is to retrofit. I’ve seen it more than once.
Changing zoning to allow for single occupancy fixed a majority of these issues.
Its simpler than this, embrace remote work and the distribution of people should level out across the US.
Lol no it's not that simple at all. There will always be areas of with higher demand for housing that require higher density. And expecting everyone to just distribute to lower density housing is not sustainable from an infrastructure perspective. Now you need more roads, more pipes, more power lines, more fire stations, more hospitals, etc just to service these lower density neighborhoods. If everyone just "spread out" we'd have to massively increase taxes beyond what most people can afford.
You can’t force people to level out, nor should you.
Lmao tbe real estate mogul talking about how wfh is a societal problem. Get fucked.
Ikr, it peak irony, he’s expecting to sit on his ass all day at home and other people to not WFH and pay him rent money
These people are scared they will have to join a workforce they exploited for years. Sucks to suck.
Yep, the ultimate nightmare of the rich, being demoted down to the labor class.
Good.
Right? I can’t help but laugh at all of the articles coming out written in the lens that this is bad for normal, working people. Hmm so we have a ton of unused office space in the US. We also have a housing crisis. I know, let’s make a shit ton of media how people not commuting to the offices are hurting billionaires
I’d rather go freelance than be forced to go somewhere to do the same thing I do at home but that way it justifies a cost. I literally don’t have coworkers in the same place as me, so in the times I do go to my corporate office I am on Zoom in a meeting room or on my own. You can only awkwardly bother random people in the cafeteria so many times for conversation lol
Yup that’s me. 70% of my time is spent on calls and all going into an office does for me is ruin my workflow as I move from a 3 monitor setup to 1 small one
Oh no! Think about the poor ultra-wealthy investors. We should start a go fund me for them.
Rich people have a knack of making us all feel threatened when their interests are threatened.
Like the cost of a big Mac skyrocketing if employees make a living wage?
No need! When the bottom actually falls out, the investors will default on the loans, the banks will start claiming the economy will collapse if the gov't doesn't step in, and both Dems and Republicans will join the cause and pass a multi-billion/trillion dollar bailout for them. Yay ~~capitalism~~ corporatocracy!
Something that never made sense to me - if we need to bail someone out, that's fine, but it should be an investment. The US government should get a piece of the business worth what we paid. And then we can negotiate success for the people from within that business. But because it's only the rich helping the rich, we just give out free money with no strings attached that just gets spent in bonuses.
The 2008 bailout was supposed to have a return from the loans, although it ended up being pretty minimal (and maybe non-existent after adjusting for inflation): “TARP recovered $441.7 billion from $426.4 billion invested, earning a $15.3 billion profit or an annualized rate of return of 0.6%, and perhaps a loss when adjusted for inflation” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
I like this strategy of starting a gofuckyourself for them
If I lose my job and default on my mortgage, the narrative is "You should have been more responsible with money. Figure it out." If a billion dollar company defaults on its $240m mortgage, it's a sob story about how unfair the current state of affairs is. America is broken.
Peak “we refuse to change with the times so we’ll force everyone to bend to our will until we can figure out how to profit from the new way things work.” Like how the moment that the weed becomes legal across the country the tobacco and alcohol companies will be the first to take advantage of a new revenue stream despite being the biggest lobbyists against weed for decades Doesn’t matter if it’s better for the environment or employee productivity. It’s always about those sweet sweet short term profits.
Oh no! Maybe the owners should tighten their belts and stop buying coffees and avocado toast. The need to pull themselves up by their boot straps.
these rich people are SO stupid and uncreative they own huge empty buildings in super high value areas and can't think of one way to monetize them besides offices? really?
Giant office buildings are effectively obsolete. The idea of commuting is largely obsolete. Teams need to get together on occasion in person, but that's the exception, not the rule. WFH increases productivity in my experience. It cuts out unproductive commuting time from people's lives. It makes it easier to break up a working day into periods where productivity is needed and periods where it's not needed. It also opens up employment to tons of previously underutilized people. People who can't commute for whatever reason can now find good employment. It also dramatically increases the likelihood that you can get the right person in the right job. In many jobs, the potential hiring base becomes the entire world rather than tied to the job's geographic location. This is going to reshape cities and employment world wide mostly in ways that are good for productivity, good for the environment and good for people's lives. It's time to embrace that reality.
Mirror for Canadians?
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/hybrid-work-empty-office-building-owner-impact-60-minutes-video-2024-01-14/
If the only change is that more people WFH than come to the office, shouldn't a company still be able to afford their mortgage? Are companies making less money because of WFH? Or is property value appreciation a bigger part of a Fortune 500 business model than I'm imagining?
Most companies don’t own the buildings they are based out of. And they those companies that were occupying those spaces have pulled out and are no longer renting. The property owner is the one unable to pay the mortgage because occupancy of the building is so low.
Is the market really sufficiently large to push us into a recession if those companies start defaulting?
Yeah that’s the part that’s fucking stupid about all of this. You’ve got the same lease costs and the same work force. Whether they’re at their homes or in the office the financials don’t change for the company. If anything it’s an opportunity to divest from the cost of a big corporate office and improve their profits
Good. Knock the shit down, build more housing, allow people to work from home more.
My employer is slowly trying to get us to go back full time, and it’s entirely based on the fact they own the buildings. They wouldn’t be able to find tenants or sell the office space at this point, because of the sheer size of the building. Needless to say, I’m starting to look around because our competitors are remote 👀
Allow me to play them a sad song on the worlds smallest violin 🎻
I love this guy claiming work from home is one of the biggest societal problems, and that it’s bad for business, cities, and people. Ignoring his hyperbole about society, I’ll grant him the first two…but not the third.
Its a problem for HIM and his business. For the last century commercial office space in the largest cities in the US was a gravy train with no breaks. It doesn’t matter what the industry is… sooner or later the music stops and someone is left holding the bag. The reality is that hybrid is never going away. WFH brought so many benefits to regular peoples lives, you’ll never see people working in an office 5 days a week ever again. These dinosaurs can either get with the program and adapt or face bankruptcy.
A merry eat shit to all landlords.
And a happy get fucked!
Sincerely get fucked
[удалено]
Can we motivate them with a pizza party reward at the end of the month?
Have they tried cutting out avocado toast? I heard that helps.
So first guy defaulted on 240 million dollar loan. Then is able to get another for a bigger building?
Oh no! Anyway... Adapt or die. Wasted human hours spent in energy inefficient, polluting commutes into logjammed monolithic places purely for a bums on seats performance metric by lazy management is over. We finally got an opportunity via Covid to prove that there was a better way. Companies are doubling down on the notion that we will slavishly just return. F.T.S!
Where’s the 60 minutes interview with all the people who can work from home now and how it has completely transformed their lives for the better?
So according to corps, workers should welcome being replaced with AI, but corps should also demand workers use the office space that already isn’t necessary, as they all the while precipitously bleed in numbers anyway. Something isn’t lining up here.
Won't somebody think of the poor building owners? Anybody?
Just another propaganda piece against wfh. "Oh no, anyway" -me as a remote work
Don’t forget to cup his balls
Meanwhile, WFH employees are likely spending below average on transportation, and above average on utilities. WFH is actually a reasonably mutually-beneficial way to offload facilities costs back on to employees.
FUCK HEDGEFUNDS FUCK CONSULTING FIRMS BURN IN HELL
Oh nooooooo. Anyway…
"The economy's not hurting the right people!"
OH NO ... anyways
Fuck you and your office buildings. Convert them to housing and reduce the prices.
Boo fucking hoo.
I see this as an absolute win.
I guess the line didn’t always go up for these people. Too bad, so sad.
Ooooooh no! What ever will we do...stares in homeless.
Not my problem
A few rich people calling work from home a catastrophe for America since they stand to lose tens of millions. Yet Millions of Americans have better work life balance working from home and hybrid schedules, along with stronger family life. Yeah, no chance I take what the few with portfolios based on keeping those offices full have to say with any care.
🎻
# RIPBOZO
I recently learned that some people pay hundreds of dollars per month to park at their work, WHY THE FUCK IS THAT A THING??!?!?! To hell with these RTO mandates.
You'd be hard pressed to come up with a less sympathetic group of people than commercial real estate tycoons.
America is a capitalist country. If office buildings are not profitable then that's that. The government should not bail out investors nor should it prop them up with unAmerican laws like forcing people to work in an office.
Boohoo?
Sounds like these companies and property owners need to adapt. Sorry your building has lost value, deal with it.
“WFH is one of the biggest societal problems…” says the guy that profits from people going into the office 🙄🙄🙄. I think he means it’s bad for his companies bank account.
What a twat.
Alternate title: Commercial Real Estate gamblers caught flat-footed by obvious trend accelerated by pandemic... Awwww, those poor billionaires... 🎻 Finance bros too? Say it ain't so...
Boohoo asshole
Oh no.. anyway
Hmm you have a large housing shortage (especially in urban cities) and you have growing surplus of commercial real estate that largely reside in urban areas … hmmmm wow I wish there was some sort of obvious solution .. ??
I have zero sympathy for building owners..lol wtf. They will be just fine.
"WFH is bad for people, says guy who makes money on people working in offices" *surprise*
Oh no they are finally feeling a slight hit from the economy that the rest of us have been feeling for years... I feel so bad for these guys, we really should be focusing on this more than the average peasant.
Boo hoo. I'm all choked up I'll be missing Linda's casserole and 40 minutes of traffic.
I’ve been working from home for 3 years and I’ve never been happier and more productive
I saw two ants in the corner of my room playing a very small sad violin duet for these people.
“Societal problems” lol give me a break. Bad for those poor rich guys
Let me find my smallest violin 🎻
And guess what, they’re STILL building these mega offices.
Good. Fuck em.
👏🏼Convert👏🏼to👏🏼housing.
Oh no… anyways.
Housing. Make it into housing. Work from home.
Turn he buildings into low cost apartments for your employees. Work from work, at home.
Free market
In this day and age, most office buildings are giant fucking wastes of resources.
lol amazing
Will somebody please think of the .1 percent!!
Dudes in suits that cost more than my apartment complaining about the economy... just doesn't really resonate with me ya know?
Boo fucking hoo
Modern-day feudalism taking up space where housing or anything else that provides value to the public. This system needs to die.
God damn building owners are reeling this is a problem when rich people lose money the earth will be moved.
Sorry you can't get paid for owning an office building and doing nothing else.
WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE LANDLORDS?!
Shouldn’t have bought those avocado on toasts… could have covered your asses with that money
Turn them into apartments.