> Will be interesting to see how many publicly traded companies are fully remote in 5, 10, 15 years.
I'm willing to take that bet. I've already suggested in numerous places on HN (pre-pandemic) that the commercial real estate market itself is going to collapse in the next 10 years because in a remote economy, office spaces have zero or even negative value, and I do see us gradually moving in that direction. Even tasks that traditionally require physical presence (working with CNC machines, materials engineering, etc) have found ways to work remotely using remote-presence robotics, etc., during the pandemic, and all the trustworthy research on the topic has pointed to remote = increased productivity, with FANG companies in particular spearheading the effort to publish bogus studies indicating the contrary.
So in the long-run I think we're going to have a bunch of empty buildings and skyscrapers. As far as the CRE market goes, all those empty buildings would be a great opportunity to create high quality low-cost or free public housing, as is already done with great success in the Netherlands and many of the Nordic countries.
Once remote becomes the norm, the obvious downside of offices (greatly increased cost for decreased productivity and grossly increased negative environmental impact) will do the rest of the work imo.
I partly disagree. There will be high demand for co-working spaces because employees like to go to the office once you remove the cons (commute, sitting next to your boss, etc). Companies will gladly pay for that too. Commercial buildings will just convert to co-working spaces.
I do see a problem for the centers where there's a high concentration of commercial buildings, esp if they are not nearby residential neighborhoods. Remote works want offices close to where they live, so co-working places need to be spread out and not all concentrated in one main area.
Right but that's assuming 100% of employees even want a co-working space when it's more like 40% if that. That would leave 60% of office building space still vacant, which would be enough to make most landlords / CRE brokers default after a few years.
Just wondering, how do you convert the large office buildings to residential when (at least in much of the US) a bedroom requires a window? A lot of office buildings have a lot more internal space then anything close to a window. It seems like that leads to long narrow shotgun type apartments.
I'm willing to take that bet. I've already suggested in numerous places on HN (pre-pandemic) that the commercial real estate market itself is going to collapse in the next 10 years because in a remote economy, office spaces have zero or even negative value, and I do see us gradually moving in that direction. Even tasks that traditionally require physical presence (working with CNC machines, materials engineering, etc) have found ways to work remotely using remote-presence robotics, etc., during the pandemic, and all the trustworthy research on the topic has pointed to remote = increased productivity, with FANG companies in particular spearheading the effort to publish bogus studies indicating the contrary.
So in the long-run I think we're going to have a bunch of empty buildings and skyscrapers. As far as the CRE market goes, all those empty buildings would be a great opportunity to create high quality low-cost or free public housing, as is already done with great success in the Netherlands and many of the Nordic countries.
Once remote becomes the norm, the obvious downside of offices (greatly increased cost for decreased productivity and grossly increased negative environmental impact) will do the rest of the work imo.