It is not bullshit, though it does not apply universally either. In many cases it may just be managers who need to justify having spent all that money on their office spaces.

That being said:

Deflating a real estate bubble is painful, just ask China. By artificially keeping up demand for office spaces through unnecessary RTO, banks and governments avoid having to go through that, at least for the time being.

And yes, with (partially government-guaranteed) mortgage-backed securities and all that, large-scale devaluation of commercial real estate is going to be a huge pain.

In NYC where the vacancy situation is particularly dire, politicians have been banging the RTO drum for a while.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/wall-stre...