Hacker News Reader

What do you mean? Unless they plan to sell, all the real estate value does for them is increase their tax burden. It's the companies that lease out commercial real estate that need to maintain prices.

Once companies are established they also tend to insist all their investments are legitimate barriers to entry. I doubt Sears would have lasted as long as it did if people didn't fear its ultimately worthless real estate investments.

Amazon’s an outlier here, though. Most office-oriented employers lease most or all of their space.