Beyond the fact that mangers don't care, there are many, many businesses with zero commercial real estate holdings outside of a fairly short term lease (which is a sunk cost regardless) who also promote RTO. The argument that all these businesses care less about their core business than they do about their (often non-existent) commercial real estate holdings seems tenuous at best.

Feels like we keep trying to look for a conspiracy when in reality that answer might just be that leaders believe their teams to be more productive in office

(Note: I'm not saying I believe this to be true, that there's evidence for this, that it's right, or anything else along those lines. Just that the most plausible explanation is that people asking for RTO believe it's going to make the company more valuable, not their commercial real estate holdings.)