Remote work threatens the foundation of the commercial real estate market. Expect a huge push to get people back into the office - especially if there is softness in the job market.
I think if you see companies shying away from remote work it'll really just be because it isn't proving effective -- because companies will be losing out on huge recruiting and cost-advantages in doing so.
I've been working remote for a while, and I'm still pretty skeptical. It's definitely a lot harder to build relationships, which are super-important, I think.
Maybe a hybrid model with lots of frequent in-person work retreats could be ideal.
They had a political problem with investors (why are you wasting all this money of office space that nobody is going to?) and getting people back into the office was the easiest way to take that heat off of them.
They did eventually force everyone back in the office, but I had moved on shortly before that happened.
Getting 80% of what you're paying for space you don't need is much better than getting 0%. Then you get to claim a big cost reduction this year and a big cost reduction when the lease expires and you can dump the unneeded space entirely.
Name something that can't be used at all by anyone for any purpose.
If demand falls off the price will decline. They might respond by rezoning some commercial into residential, which would be great for residential buyers, but the existing landlords would not be pleased by anything that makes any real estate more affordable (i.e. less valuable).
Which is, of course, good. But they're going to try to prevent it any way they can.
Presumably less demand for space will reduce cost of that space allowing for smaller, newer, experimental businesses to be able to buy into that space.
Commercial space can become less about being a place to work or to store a bunch of products to sell, to places where people meet and hangout, to train and collaborate, and to build synergies between businesses that benefit from sharing resources.