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Comment by jppope | Hacker News Reader

Considering most of those houses in question here were bought at 3% interest rates it seems unlikely that the wealthy would sell at a loss rather than just switch from STVR to medium-term or long term rentals where they would make less money. The housing market is still short on supply and at the purchase prices/ interest rate combo they have a lot of room to be able to ride it out.

Besides, its not residential homes that are a ticking time bomb, its commercial properties... Office workers are not going back to the office.

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>>Office workers are not going back to the office.

I am not seeing this. Major companies are forcing the issue, and employee can pound their refusal all they want but at the end of the day I think we not going to see a normal fully remote work force.

At best you are going to see a hybrid where you get 2 or 3 days a week of WFH, and the balance in the office.

Further from personal experience I somewhat agree with the management because I have seen LOTS of abuse of WFH from employees.

At first I was concerned about abuse of WFH by employees too, but then I realised, people in the office often aren't particularly productive either.

From my own team, if I had to guess, the actual number of productive hours are similar.

Granted, I think it probably varies dramatically by company / team, and I get the impression that some places take WFH much less seriously than we do (as in, not goofing off).

Absolutely. Everyone in my office is pretty considerate, but all it takes is one pair of people in the bullpen and the quiet is gone. We all get to listen to the discussion. When I first joined, I learned a ton by eavesdropping. Now it just stops my workflow by distracting me. I'm easily 10 times more productive at home.

For us it varies dramatically by team, but the problem is a WFH policy needs to be company wide for the most part. All it takes is for a few teams to cause a problem for everyone.

>>people in the office often aren't particularly productive either.

Some of that depends on how you define "productive", having non-work related conversations while in the work place may not be "productive" but it is team building

Watching netflix, or doing your laundry when you should be working on a report is neither team building or "productive"

Further lots of informal conversations are how many many many many business decisions are made, and how lots of information flows through a company.

So many times I have been made aware of new projects, changes, or other things happening in the company simply because I happened to see someone in the hall and they happen to mention it... That would never happen on a formal call. meeting, etc in a fully remote environment.

Those hallway conversations are less productive compared to someone doing laundry while thinking about how they will approach issues.

Those hallway conversations are wasted time. You should be at your desk doing your assigned working not socializing. Corporate team building is a guided exercise run by experts not doing work hours

Informal meetings exclude stakeholders and don't allow for documentation. Informal meetings are duct tape over process issues.

>>Those hallway conversations are less productive compared to someone doing laundry while thinking about how they will approach issues.

No not really, as you have clearly misunderstood the point I was making. It is not about brainstorming how to solve a problem.

>> Corporate team building is a guided exercise run by experts

I really hope that is sarcasm.

This is it. I’ve actually found it’s down to the discipline, like our tech team is fully remote and that works super well even though the sales team is in-office.

Not only is our tech team fully remote, we’re spread out in the US so there’s no small part of our team that’s more often meeting up in person to work.

Work from office is absurdly expensive for society.

5/7 of the days, relocating an entire city worth of knowledge workers across town to a computer screen is fairly nonsensical.

You force everyone to live within a radius of economic hubs if they want job mobility, or you have to be comfortable relocating your family every N years for upward mobility in your career (or take the career hit, wait for internal promotions, and risk the company folding).

It’s socially not great. It’s economically not great. It’s environmentally not great. Working from the office is just all around not great.

Speaking personally, I live in a good community, with a good quality of life, a good school district, I can afford a good home here, and I can provide for my family. I’ve setup roots and intend to raise my kids to adulthood in this house.

I’d be surprised if anyone could afford a competitive package that would convince me to relocate my family, pulling my kids out of school, selling my home, and paying the toll of a daily commute.

The rest of my career is remote. Companies can do hybrid. They can return to office. They can do whatever they want. Unless they support full remote, I’m not part of their talent pool.

I know many people who think this way. And that number is growing.

Yeah it’s plain silly. As a remote worker for going on 3 years, I can’t ever see myself going back to a commute. You could double my salary and I wouldn’t do it..

Yep, I don't care what they do. I've been remote for 7 years now, I made it work before COVID, now it's like playing on super easy mode.

My Dad was a work from home pioneer, from back in the early 90's. We got all the latest modem and other tech growing up. If he could make it work with a 2400 baud modem, we can make it work for pretty much every office job.

>>I’m not part of their talent pool. .. I know many people who think this way. And that number is growing.

you enjoy that freedom due to low unemployment, and stable(ish) economy currently.

Unfortunately the fundamentals of the economy are not sound right now, and very likely we will start seeing companies fold, and unemployment numbers go up.

It is very easy to have a hard stance on fully remote when you have 2 jobs for every employee on the market... if that flips I have a feeling peoples demands will change.

> Work from office is absurdly expensive for society.

That assumes everyone lives in American suburbia with one extra room for your home-office. Guess what, most of the knowledge workers live in dense cities with tiny apartments. Average flat sizes for various cities (sqft): Bangalore (1260), Singapore (667), Tokyo (710), Paris (520) etc. See this image for more details: https://files.buildworld.co.uk/average-home-size/03_Average-...

To make it permanent remote would involve a huge restructuring of those societies and that cost is much greater than maintaining office towers.

Who the hell is trying to work remotely from their shoebox apartment? That's the point of WFH -- you can move out of Tokyo to rural Japan and live in a larger space for cheaper. Or rural France. Plenty of space in rural India.

Not much luck for Singapore tho, but that's the nature of the city-state.

> To make it permanent remote would involve a huge restructuring of those societies and that cost is much greater than maintaining office towers.

bollocks. MS Teams or Slack is cheap, and the cost of moving to a rural locale isn't hard. Smaller towns will develop their own amenities, and 2nd and 3rd tier cities would do well.

But I have been told for a very long time that no one actually wants to live in a rural space, that people are just forced to do so because of cost, or some other such thing..

or that people that live in rural spaces should not be allowed that because it harms the eviroment or something.

I have had many many many conversations where people tell about how wonderful urban life is, as how that is the best way for people to live, in shoeboxes where everything is in walking distance from them...

seems WFH is in direct odds with the "walkable cities" movement

> you can move out of Tokyo to rural Japan

> the cost of moving to a rural locale isn't hard

It seems you don't have any family and friends near where you live? Or you don't have any hobbies which are possible only in the cities (eg. being a foodie with a taste for various types of cuisines)? Or you are a native born who will find it easier to blend into rural communities who are typically more homogeneous? Unless you can only see costs in financial terms but not in social or personal terms?

Cost of urban to rural transition is HUGE, first at individual level due to social ties and personal preferences. And then at societal level due to personal preferences of the electorate. Dense cities are here to stay in most of the world.

The office complex I work in was hard hit by COVID and still hasn't recovered. It's a AA-prime commercial ghost town.

There are all sorts of renter protections that come into play once you are no longer a short term vacationer. I think these protections will turn “investors” off.

The deciding factor here is if the owner can find a cash flow source that covers the mortgage payment, property tax, and maintenance costs. NYC lease rates have surged since the state revamped rent control laws.

> it seems unlikely that the wealthy would sell at a loss rather than just switch from STVR to medium-term or long term rentals where they would make less money

isn't that the point?

force these to be rented in med to long term, or at least 1 year leases, so to open up the housing market for people who want to, like, live somewhere.

I guess the question is how many of them were bought with ARMs, and when do those ARMs adjust?

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