Remote work could cut the value of office buildings by $800 billion by 2030 — with San Francisco facing a 'dire outlook,' McKinsey predicts
Remote work could cut the value of office buildings by $800 billion by 2030 — with San Francisco facing a 'dire outlook,' McKinsey predicts
Will someone think of the landlords?!
Let's not kid ourselves. The Landlords create holding companies and leverage the shit out of their investments, so that when they make bad bets, they can simply walk away leaving the banks holding the bag.
And who pays when the banks make bad bets? If you said "the 99%" then good job paying attention the last time this happened. We'll see higher interest rates, lower returns on savings accounts, higher downpayments, and higher taxes when we inevitably bail out the "too many bribes to fail" corporations.
So they definitely over leverage their assets, but you can't just make an LLC and get a loan to buy a house. You either need to bring in outside capital or personally co-sign the loan. Once you get cash flow and assets in the LLC name you can start getting loans subject to underwriting requirements. Additionally, if you plunder the LLC you risk inviting an attempt to "pierce the corporate veil" which can make you financially liable for debts owed by your business is you under-capitalized the business.
However for most large corporate real estate holdings, they have likely been in operation for years and regardless of how big or small their debt load, they probably would have some sort of crisis with a industry wide collapse of property values.
Which is fine. Make them into affordable housing. But the owners aren't walking away without taking a financial hit.
Hmm maybe our downtowns don’t need to be giant concrete eyesores anymore.
I'm cool with that... But when the fuck did we start taking anything McKinsey says at face value?
Those fuckers couldn't forecast the future of the question was"what do you want for lunch this afternoon". Those dipshits thought what Rikers needed was more violent guards.
They're saying this because some CEOs want to hear it
This is why all the politicians pushed so hard to get everyone back to work in London too. Scumbags!
Keep in mind that's not a bad thing. Owners of the properties lose, people who might use the properties for other things (a much larger group) win.
A related note It’s extremely difficult to transform office spaces into apartments.
Yeah, I mentioned the main problems in another comment. Plumbing has to be updated, and windows are often non-opening. The footprint itself might be so large the center doesn't have adequate access to windows anyway. Am I missing anything?
There's other possible commercial applications too, though, and then whatever spaces the restaurants or clothing stores have moved out of might be simpler to convert to housing.
can't they print slop like this in their rich people yacht magazines instead of pretending to present it as something sympathetic to the public?
I hope we can convert them to apartments fairly easily. That'll help put downwards pressure on housing and apartment prices.
Video by Stewart Hicks on why it might be difficult. https://youtu.be/imyPVFFACTk
Cool video!
I know the plumbing can be retrofitted in some cases, but I wonder about the windows. From a complete laymen's perspective it seems like you should be able to swap out every few with some sort of emergency exit. The interior of the building might have to stay commercial, which could actually be nice for the residents. I'd love to live across the hall from a grocery store.
Good.
Convert to affordable housing.
Well ok
Good