Commercial Real Estate Effects Post-Pandemic

This is like the 10th week working from home and I’ve about had it. Of course part of that is the kids being home too. With them at school would be more doable.

I love not wasting 45-60 min a day on a commute. And setting the alarm for 6:30 and being ‘at work’ at 7:00. But also miss the social interaction (and this from an introvert).Being stuck in my makeshift dining room office for hours on end, with one video conference to the next gets very stale very quickly.

Ideal world I would probably prefer to do 1-2 days a week from home, with the rest at work. We’ll see where all this ends up.

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I miss the interaction and structure of going to the office, but in some ways I can focus more easily in the home office and I really don’t miss the commute (about 30 mins each way in normal traffic).

I would not want to work from home full time, but I think about two days at home and three in the office each week would be ideal for me.

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I might pick 2 in the office, 3 from home, but about half-time is where I’ve landed as the best balance too.

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This is a great discussion, and I think (optimistically) that this will all even out in the end. More people will telework, but companies will want offices with larger square footage to be able to give employees some space. The open-concept floor is probably dead, and thank god, because I don’t think I could work in such an environment. We will definitely see a decrease in traffic congestion, I think, as the traditional commute becomes a 2-3 day a week thing instead of 5 days for many people. As for me, I can see myself working from home a little more often, but with two kids under the age of five, I can’t exactly get a ton of things done.

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I’m reading that lots of people from NYC (and other large northern metros) are moving asap to get away from some of the high infection rates in those areas.
Raleigh seems to be a top destination for these migrations.

They’ll find a $2500 unit in Peace or FNB tower to be a fine price.

This is an undeniable trend. I’d expect the developers to know this and pick up the pace for building housing. So office construction may take a pause, but residential projects should actually start scaling up.

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I was actually thinking the same thing. I hope to see more residential construction over the next several years as a result of ppls fleeing the higher density/more expensive areas up north and Covid19 is the catalist to get folks to make the move.

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I can reinforce the “other” side of the commercial real estate trend which is not bailing on the space, but expanding due to needing more sqf per employee. Our company is looking to invest a good chunk of change on new furniture with stations that are properly spaced and segmented. We were looking to expand before all this and will just need more space than we originally planned.

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LOL - The company I work for has been ‘densifying’ the office areas (making cubicles smaller to get more people into the same area) over the past year or so. In hind sight that appears to have been a mistake.

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I feel like if telecommuting becomes more accepted, you’ll start to see the general population spread out more as there will no longer be a need to be physically near the job opportunities. People could actually live wherever they want as long as there is proper access to internet.

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Yep the pattern of spreading out will depend a lot on Internet access for work from home. Patterns are very spotty outside major metro areas. I have up to 1gb service if I want it and I’m a mile off public road here in mountains. While last I looked some areas in northern wake county are stuck with 1mb dsl at best. Do not depend on coverage maps as they treat very expensive satellite service with slow ping rates and limits on speeds during different times of day, the same high speed wired connections. Want to make your cell bill skyrocket, try using it for a hot spot 9-10 hours a day for connection. Companies will not put up with letting employees working from home and can barely get connected and with lot’s of dropped connections.

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Does anyone think expectations will change if WFH becomes a thing? For awhile, companies are allowing people to use their personal cell phones, personal internet, and basically personal space, equipment (desks, chairs, peripherals) at home. If we live in a spread out world after this, shouldn’t companies give us more than just a laptop in order for us to be more mobile?

My company has a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) plan and chips in for our cell phone bill. Perhaps a little more to pay for your internet could help too. I wouldn’t mind the same keyboard and mouse that’s at work as well. (monitors too) I’m guessing this is much less compared to paying for office space.

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I want them to buy me an extra room in my condo so I have an office. LOL

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My company pays part of my cell phone bill. When I knew I was going to be working from home I brought two monitors and my docking station from the office to my home (plus the laptop obviously). I’ve been very happy to have them.

If we go to a model where we work from the office some days and from home some days, it would definitely be nice to have a set of monitors and docking station both at home and the office. And as you say, pitching in on internet as well.

Edit: I’m talking about “redundant” equipment, so that is higher cost. If one was only working from home, that would be even more argument for the company helping with cost of equipment and services.

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I’m the finance guy, but I disagree. You are not commuting (gas, clothes, etc). You can buy your own monitor and chair.

My wife has worked largely from home for 15 years - she is here or on the road, but no office to ever show up at. At least one company gave here $1500 to set up her home office - she got a desk, a chair & printer. The company sent the computer (lap top) and monitor. In her field, where the majority of the folks are road/home workers, this is not universal, but not uncommon. I guess it will depend in part on the companies culture - many businesses will no doubt feel like @R-Dub. This might become part of future contract negotiations as well. Its the kind of perk you might have to offer to land the employees you need in a tight field.

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It doesn’t sound like there’s a consensus on whether everyone’s more down to work remotely vs working in a shared, common physical spaces. My gut feeling, then, is that both will become popular (but working from home is taken more seriously as a business model versus pre-COVID), so it’ll become a differentiator between companies for industries where that makes sense.

…except “work from home” and “work at work” aren’t just binary, black-and-white decisions; work styles are on a spectrum. There’s other arrangements and lifestyles that fall in between those two options. Because of that, I feel like -or I hope, at least- companies and offices will start to look and function differently from each other, and there’s more environmental diversity out there.

I wonder if this could help revive WeWork or other rental offices/coworking spaces? If they hadn’t blown up so quickly that they went bankrupt before the pandemic, I think this would have been their moment to shine.

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My Company came out with their return to work plan today. It certainly seems like a conservative approach and it is only stating maximums, not minimums. There will be more to come, but you can certainly feel there will be less people under that one roof for a while. Played right into my plan to expand my WFH to Monday and Friday instead of just Friday.

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I live 7-minute walk from my office so this is a negative financial loss for me as I don’t commute. Plus the free espresso machine at work means I have to invest in my own coffee making. lol

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And that’s great, but this isn’t a time for entitlement to show its ugly head. This isn’t directed at you. The things that end up in our “suggestion box” at work is mind boggling to me.

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