Return-to-office policies are driving people to sell their homes - even at a loss
Return-to-office policies are driving people to sell their homes - even at a loss
Other reasons that are driving people to move include wanting more space, being closer to family, and lowering costs, according to a survey.
My wife's work is making people come back in office, and she's above the 50-mile limit they set. (Not only that, she's worked from home for 10 years now). She brought that up, and they said they were looking into possibly expanding it out. She told her boss if that happens, she's gone, and they lose someone with almost 19 years of experience who literally writes their training manuals on how to do what she does, lol.
The shear stupidity of these people is astonishing. If I ran a company, it would be nothing but WFH, and I would poach so many good workers, lol.
But how will you make sure their every waking moment is devoted to work? Gotta invest in some ridiculous office space and middle managers to crack the whip.
That's the thing - if I'm being forced to come into an office when my work doesn't require it, I am 100% a clock watcher, and outside my scheduled work hours, I an unavailable. You sent me an email at 5:01 PM on Friday? I'll read it at 8:00 AM on Monday.
Take away my flexibility, and I take away yours.
There is a guy in our group who had a special arrangement because his wife was sick so they allowed him to WFH regularly as long as he came in for certain things.
After Covid, they decided everyone needed to be back in the office NOW and didn’t want to have to deal with people whining because some people got a special pass that was in place before Covid, so they took it away from him.
Instead of answering the hard (obvious) questions and being irritated for a finite amount of time, they made this guy upend his whole life (he lives many hours away) and that of his family - to return to work on a regular basis.
Failure of fucking leadership right there.
I've set up 'informal working arrangements' for a few people in my team because of family arrangements, health etc.
I might have also told one of the execs that I thought the return to office policy was BS while tipsy one night. He did agree though...
if that happens, she’s gone, and they lose someone with almost 19 years of experience who literally writes their training manuals on how to do what she does, lol.
She openly told her boss that if they tell her to come into the office she will willingly quit the job and forfeit unemployment so they can downsize that headcount and spread around the work to other employees?
Gotta play 3D chess, don't show them your hand. They now have an easy way to fire her on demand without cause and without having a mark on their employment numbers.
Have to go with the angle of: if you make me move you need to pay my relocation costs because you have asked me to move. After all, this isn't new and they have known your home address for 10 years. Make them cover the increased cost or they get to pay unemployment for laying you off. That's the only real angle you probably have anyway that gives them a cost.
That's a really small bubble. My employer has a 125km range before we can request an exemption to the 2-day-a-week policy.
Hopefully things don't change for your wife!
*sheer fyi
Shear is a verb
Also two nouns.
Crash the housing market to save the office building market
I'm OK with that, the housing market is in a giant bubble and it needs to crash. I say that as someone who bought a house at the lowest price point right at the start of the pandemic, combined with an incredibly low interest rate. Theoretically my home is worth almost 50% more now, 4 years later.
Thaaaaat's a bubble.
Theoretically my home is worth almost 50% more now, 4 years later.
Yep, and having your house have a higher paper value doesn't help you much at all as a home buyer that lives in the place. Your taxes go up in most localities, and it makes upgrading that much more impossible because everything else went up in price too.
It only helps if you want to move to some other place where prices are much lower, which I'm good on moving to Idaho or whatever.
It's great for your paper net worth.....yay. 🙄
tbf, this is probably suburban / rural areas to move back into urban areas that are already having crises. Won't fix any of the housing markets in high population centers.
Yes, please do!
I know lots of companies are handling the wfh and return to office situation poorly. But to provide a counterpoint, at the start of covid, I led all the engineering teams in a large organization with dozens of sites. When we went to wfh we made it clear that we were authorizing remote work with the contingent that the team could be called in as needed, not to move outside of the area, and not to travel more than two hours away when on call (1 week every two months) etc. Sometimes things break bad enough you need the team's to be physically present at a location, or doing major border device work, etc.
Either the organizations didn't message properly, or a lot of people moved despite being told that the wfh wasn't a permanent remote work accommodation. I'm all for remote work and hybrid, etc, but on a personal level buying a house outside your commute range while knowing you might get called in someday and being brown to your job... just poor decision making.
Fwiw, I approved permanent remote with for all my staff who didn't have any physical responsibilities. For those whose jobs involved any physical infrastructure, the best a could do was hybrid with no minimum number of days in office, just come in as required for the work.
Either the organizations didn’t message properly, or a lot of people moved despite being told that the wfh wasn’t a permanent remote work accommodation.
A lot of employers straight up lied. In some situations, management said employees would be permanent WFH but they didn't have that authority. In other situations, employers changed their mind and the employees have no recourse other than trying to call the employers bluff.
Yours is a sane and reasonable approach. Sometimes you need to drive down to the datacenter and push a button, or there's special equipment you need that is cheaper to have in one place. These jobs should be in person when necessary.
Pushing people to commute outside of this framework puts unnecessary strain on transportation networks and useless emissions in the environment.
At my previous role, I ALWAYS wanted to be onsite at the datacenter if I was doing upgrades of critical systems. I'd sit in the lobby where it was quiet instead of on the datacenter floor but there was comfort knowing that if a button needed pushed I didn't have to drive 30 minutes to do it.
That wasn't poor decision making. That was knowing their worth. They knew if the company demanded a return to office they could simply continue working remote for a different company, likely with an increase in pay. Only a fool would alter their life plans for some company that might require RTO. Now they're enjoying improved quality of life while living where they prefer.
The article is about people who are moving back after work from home is ending at their company. I'm sure there are people in the situation you describe but that isn't what this article or my comment are about.
I wonder with these types of stories. The people were either lied to by the company, which I don't ever see mentioned, or settled down without making sure they could. If you're signing a mortgage and not thinking beyond a few years then it's partially on you. Partially because covid lockdowns were a crazy time, companies weren't communicating well because they didn't have a plan, and recent RTO policies aren't for the reasons the company claims.
Given the prevalence of bad management, I'm sure some people were lied to, or the manager believed wrongly that it would end up being permanent, etc. However, anyone who moved and signed a mortgage without a signed remote work agreement was making a heck of a gamble. None of my folks did that, and in my overall division I only knew of one person who moved without a signed agreement, and they ended up being let go of. The funny thing was, for that person, they likely could have gotten a full remote work accommodation if they had put the request in because as a developer they had no physical infrastructure to touch.
"My sellers both work at the same company, which told them they have to be in the office three days a week or they'll lose their jobs. They have six months to make the move. They'll probably have to take a $100,000 loss on their home," Pendleton said.
Pretty sure I would rent out the home instead of taking a $100,000 loss? Rent something to live in where you're moving to until it's more favorable to sell.
Six months is plenty of time to find a new job these days.
Right?
In a lot of these WFH communities, the rental market softened with the rest of the housing market, so you might not have renters or have to take a hit on the rent. Also, being a landlord more than a commute-able distance away from your property sounds like asking for trouble, unless you hire a property manager, but that's another hit to your income.
Even if the market in some of these more remote areas softened a bit, I think taking a $100,000 hit over one year is crazy, though. Even if you lose $100 or $200 per month renting it out, that's a long ways from $100,000. Meanwhile, you're paying off the mortgage and building equity.
Yeah, that's nuts. Also, as a couple you both probably shouldn't be working for the same company from a risk reduction POV.
I’m pretty sure I’d stay put and not move back. Let’s be honest. An employer can and will terminate you for practically any reason or no reason at all. Selling a house you bought in a place you want to live in hopes of maintaining a toxic relationship that will end on a whim (your job) barely makes sense from an economic perspective and makes no sense from any other.
To put it in perspective… if you had an emotionally abusive boyfriend who insisted you had to sell your house and move in with him, would you do it? If you relied on him for half your income, would you do it? If the answer to those questions are “yes” then you’re gonna love selling your house because of RTO. If you have any self respect, the very notion of this would make you dust off your resume and resignation letter.
I definitely agree. I was just commenting from a purely financial perspective. Doesn't really make sense to take a $100,000 hit when you could rent it out and move and probably at least break even while continuing to build equity.
After seeing the headline, I thought it would be people moving farther away to be outside of the RTO radius. Instead its people moving closer to work because they are cities/states away with WFH.
A lot of companies (Amazon) don't have a radius. It's RTO or nothing.
nothing it is, then
I told my boss the other day my upper limit for in office time is one a week. We were 3 days a week before COVID, 0 during COVID, 1 a month after COVID, and just this month they upped it to twice a month.
Hell, if I stopped coming in at all right now there is no way in hell they'd fire me anyway. We have too much stuff to do and not enough time to do it. I know people think that but we've got contractual obligations to fill and new regulations to follow. It'd cost them way more to fire me and miss those deadlines waiting for new hires to get up to speed.
Dude, just don't go. If you're doing your job from home, why are they asking you to burn fuel and your time on earth sitting in fucking traffic???