When I see pieces like this, it’s hard to take them seriously because we’re still in the pandemic. It’s not quite the total dystopian nightmare it was a year ago, but it’s not over, either. Many people haven’t resumed normal patterns of social interaction even outside of the work situation. I think it’s too soon to be making calls.
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Yep it’s not over yet, 4 out of 10 people in NC have not been vaccinated 
.
I have been hiding out on MT top for last 20 months and still am. Had advantage, I have mostly worked from home for last 30+ years so other than limiting personal interactions not much changed. Other than limiting meeting versus people main thing I miss is travel. Planed and canceled two vacation type trips since spring this year. Just glad not in big apartment building where hard to avoid other people.
All that said I am coming to meetup next Thursday !!! 
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…and what percentage of that 40% have already had COVID? 
Count me and my whole family as part of that unvaccinated group that has recovered from the virus and has more diverse and longer lasting cellular immunity than the solely vaxed°. I had 4 in-person meetings today, 9 - 6:30 …shewww the housing industry is no joke right now.
I’m personally unaffected that you are happy and satisfied with your medical/work decisions, and hope you extend that same ambivalent courtesy to others who are happy with theirs.
I do worry about the long term viability of office building projects moving forward. All it takes is the epidemiology-media-industrial complex releasing 1 new story about a new variant to send most big box businesses that are leasing new space running back to their home offices. Meanwhile many small-medium businesses continue to operate like it’s 2019.
I think prospective office projects should proceed with caution, or not at all, because there is a huge chunk of society that doesn’t want to get back to normal. If they did, they would have already.
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Anddd we have regressed into a vax vs antivax debate. Let’s agree to disagree because nobody here is going to change their minds on an internet forum. We can continue discussion of how lucky we are that for Raleigh Covid was a speed bump and not a derailing!
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For the record, my comment was not antivax… it was anti-anti-unvax. And perhaps with a tinge of MSM distrust.
But yes we are lucky, although I am curious how long the bloc-83 development ground floor spaces will remain vacant. Also, will Pendo be moving into their tower with full office staff? …or some sort of hybrid model I would imagine.
A quote from the article I linked to:
- Although fewer than 100 office properties or portfolios are in special servicing, there are 782 office properties or portfolios across the U.S. on loan-servicer watchlists, which highlight concerns over a borrowers’ abilities to stay current on a existing property debts. Many commercial properties were watchlisted when the pandemic hit early last year.
- New York leads the pack among cities with the most watchlisted office properties, with 57 as of last week. Houston has the second most, with 46 properties.
- The total debt associated with watchlisted office properties as of this month is $25.8 billion.
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We were just talking about this Monday evening. For all the promise of Bloc83, it’s a ghost town except my beloved Dram and Draught. Hope this changes in 2022, when apparently everything we’re all looking forward to downtown is going to happen!
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Hopefully so!!!
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Wish I was a rich person that could start a business converting large office buildings into residential. Seems like that would be a good business in 2021.
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I think I made the comment in another thread on the volume of projects ‘starting’ in 2022 in jest, but it is quite encouraging. I don’t think we’re at the 2019 going into 2020 level where we’re looking at developing signature towers near the convention center lots, but 2022 is shaping up to be the year of development we had hoped 2020 was. Which, I agree, kinda shows Covid didn’t have a long term too detrimental effect on the overall development pipeline for the city/county/region.
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When was the last time we had 4 cranes in the DTR sky?
That’s happening within the next 1-2 months.
If that’s the only metric, we’re ahead of 2019>2020.
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That is definitely a strong visual metric for sure. I was probably more referring to the sentimentality of 2019>2020 where we still had everyone commuting to the office, traveling for business, etc. I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to the level of needing brand new 30+ story office buildings being built downtown since WFH has become such a strong alternative. I think it’s a good indicator we’re seeing a lot of these developments going up have residential aspects to them to guarantee some sort of ROI.
Who knows, I could be way off and there could be a huge demand to return to the office and maybe 5 years from now I look like an idiot as a 40 story office building is built somewhere near DTR.
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A lot of what you say is clearly accurate but I can say that I have a friend that runs a division (here locally) of a much larger company that is looking for more office space and naming rights on a building.
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Count me and my whole family as part of that unvaccinated group that has recovered from the virus and has more diverse and longer lasting cellular immunity than the solely vaxed°.
Citation needed
I think prospective office projects should proceed with caution, or not at all, because there is a huge chunk of society that doesn’t want to get back to normal. If they did, they would have already.
People around here may sneer when I doompost that North Hills is going to eat all of downtown’s office market but I think the new normal of remote work has more than halved the future office demand for the metro… which is already shunting much of Raleigh’s potential office market to RTP, Durham, North Hills, and Centennial (never mind adding another potential market with downtown south). Raleigh is a city that could barely muster 1x 30 floor building every 20 years on average before the pandemic. Putting several more large office towers in North Hills will absolutely saturate the market.
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Coming right up:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
I agree with you - very bearish on office towers
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That’s encouraging to hear that there’s people like your friend out there for sure. Hopefully more people like your friend have that sort of near term vision that will pay out in the longer term.
I still personally think, kinda like @Vatnos mentioned, that the demand probably isn’t there for at least another 1-3 years. I feel people have become accustomed a lot to the WFH model and some probably won’t want to let it go? Who knows, maybe midway through the 2020s we’ll all be finally putting COVID in the rearview and there’s a bunch of more towers dedicated to office space downtown.
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Just give up Evan, they’ll never understand. You’re wasting your time/energy even trying at this point. Cognitive dissonance/confirmation bias has been on another level since COVID. They’ll just have to realize the truth for themselves…unfortunately it may take a few more months (or even years), but eventually the adverse reactions will be too common/extreme to ignore.
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Thanks…
I know Leo is 
To bring it back on topic… my original point is that office towers, and dense development in general, will not be out of the woods for a while… perhaps not until a new crises emerges and takes covid’s place. We could see headlines on Monday about a new variant emerging in South America that would send a shockwave through all planned projects. The article I linked above is profiling what could be the beginning of a commercial real estate crises similar to the '08 housing crash if these watchlisted projects can’t cover their massive speculative financial obligations.
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I posted the following on LinkedIn a couple of days ago on this topic that seems appropriate to link here. I’m not a writer but I think I get my point across. I’m curious what the group here thinks about the future inevitable impact of companies downsizing their workforce and if those that WFH are more vulnerable. Perhaps it’s the opposite if the company is really looking to get out of the office space game. Either way, hope it’s at least thought provoking.
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Well I have had the vaccine and then got Covid a couple of months ago. So I figure I am double protected. That said, our family is still not engaging in pre-covid activities. Our 10 year old will get his first shot on Monday. By mid Dec, we will venture inside a restaurant and eat out as family for the first time in nearly 2 years.
So hard to say that we are already in the post-covid economy, when I know a lot of families are in the same boat we are - waiting on their kids to be vaxxed. A lot of things yet to shake out. My job has went full vaccine mandate as of 01 Nov, and we are mostly back in the office now. But some folks still remote or bybrid.
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Got me shot, world wide open .
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