NYC skyscrapers sit vacant

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-18/nyc-skyscrapers-sit-vacant-exposing-risk-city-never-predicted

by mirthlessend • 3 years ago

185 408 3 years ago

908B64B197• 3 years ago

Time to retrofit into housing!

dpratt• 3 years ago

Nobody predicted this except pretty much everybody who thought about what the long-term effects of COVID would be on commercial real estate around mid-2020 or so.

brightball• 3 years ago

Exactly.

Within about a day of “two weeks to flatten the curve” a large amount of people predicted exactly what was about to happen to the entire country because they understood economics. If you pointed any these things out, routine accusations of wanting people to die were thrown your way.

It was a weird time.

_ea1k• 3 years ago

IDK, it seems like only a subset of people could have predicted it. People who think remote work isn't good wouldn't have predicted it. People who thought it was good might think it was just accelerating the inevitable.

I'd guess there are still a lot of people who think returning to office life is inevitable. There's certainly a big push for it from a certain subgroup now.

spookthesunset• 3 years ago

Covid did nothing to cause this. Our response to covid caused all of it.

fknorangesite• 3 years ago

Do you feel that this level of pedantry improves the discussion?

skippyboxedhero2• 3 years ago

Something similar to this would have happened without COVID. SF was in massive oversupply, London is in massive oversupply, all these cities had massive growth in supply fuelled by debt (CRE is probably one of the biggest benefactors of low rates, Blackstone Real Estate was basically finished in 2008, they were doing huge deals at the top of the market...move-forward ten years, fastest growth area of the business, the guy who led the division in 2008 is now second in line to run the firm).

COVID definitely took the edge off but you are seeing the same thing in residential (particularly people moving into single-family) and it isn't of the same magnitude.

This isn't unusual (NY had a similar downturn in the late 80s, you don't even need to go back far) but it was multiple things at once. COVID is a very easy get out for people who did extremely stupid things with other people's money.

aynyc2• 3 years ago

As someone who knows nothing about commercial real estate business but lived in NYC for a long time. Why can't they convert to residential? Is the cost of conversation so prohibitive that it is a non-starter?

JumpCrisscross17• 3 years ago

Is the cost of conversation so prohibitive that it is a non-starter?

Having asked the same question of developers, it's a combination of cost and code. Many office buildings are old, with tiny windows surrounded by load-bearing walls. They're also laid out with an office, not home, in mind. (Think: plumbing.) This combination means extensive renovation, retrofitting and–if you find a previously-unseen problem–rebuilding.

That said, it's New York City. My first two apartments were illegally subdivided and subletted, the first having no window. There are people who will happily take an apartment with a tiny (or non-existent) window in exchange for cheaper rent. We just need to update the code to remove aesthetic requirements while ensuring that doesn't mean skimping on safety.

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

Aesthetic requirements aren’t the big issue, things like plumbing are. Office buildings don’t need to distribute water infrastructure the way residential buildings do.

chimeracoder7• 3 years ago

We just need to update the code to remove aesthetic requirements while ensuring that doesn't mean skimping on safety.

There are very few "aesthetic requirements" that prevent an office building from being converted to residential. Most of issues with building code - including the window issue - are in fact motivated by safety concerns.

willcipriano3• 3 years ago

Windows aren't for aesthetic reasons. They are required in bedrooms by most codes for fire egress purposes.

milsorgen• 3 years ago

We're already deep in a mental health crisis, particularly among the city folk, I don't think ignoring the aesthetic experience of where one lives is a wise idea. People aren't widgets even if they themselves don't realize that.

cmonagle• 3 years ago

Many office buildings are old, with tiny windows surrounded by load-bearing walls.

Just a nit-pick: older buildings with windows and load-bearing walls are actually better candidates for residential conversion than newer buildings with glass curtain walls and structural columns. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...]

aynyc2• 3 years ago

I used to worked by FIDI, most the apartments there are old converted office buildings. Visited a lot of friends and coworkers in those buildings, I felt fine inside. But I supposed midtown buildings are a bit different in terms of girth versus old brick and stone buildings.

skippyboxedhero2• 3 years ago

NY has already begun changing the code to facilitate conversions.

mschuster913• 3 years ago

They're also laid out with an office, not home, in mind. (Think: plumbing.)

Plumbing is easy, pressurized pipes and pumps can deal with that just fine. The real challenge is air conditioning: showers create lots of humid, warm air - introduce that into your building's HVAC and you'll get issues with rust and mold - and cooking isn't much better, people generally don't want to smell the curry that someone at the other end of the building is cooking. Or they don't want to hear their neighbors having sex through the air vents.

jasonjei• 3 years ago

I’ve heard to do plumbing work to convert office to residential would be so ridiculously expensive it would be easier in some cases to tear the building down and start anew

JumpCrisscross17• 3 years ago

plumbing work to convert office to residential would be so ridiculously expensive

If you require plumbing to every apartment. Dorm-style lay-out would sidestep this problem.

un1xl0ser• 3 years ago

I can see this in progress. Needs windows, but we also need more residential, so happy to see it.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/24/longtime-nyc-home-of-the-daily...

yellowstuff• 3 years ago

Basically. There are a ton of logistical problems, but a major one is that the big office buildings in Midtown have a lot of interior space with no windows, and apartments need windows.

A recent study in NYC found:

"Most conversion projects would only become financially feasible if buildings could be acquired at significant discounts, in many cases at prices that valued the structures as having negative value."

https://cbcny.org/research/potential-office-residential-conv...

TremendousJudge3• 3 years ago

If the trend in office usage keeps going, it's not long before these white elephants in the middle of cities will be considered of "negative value". Empty monoliths in very valuable lots, that you have to spend money to make useful? Sounds like negative value to me.

hedora3• 3 years ago

Negative value isn't really possible in this scenario. I'll buy a floor of one of these buildings for $1, and promise to pay for its upkeep.

I'm sure I can find someone willing to rent a 10,000+s.f. downtown manhattan apartment for more than the cost of maintenance (and the property tax on the $1 the floor of the building is apparently worth).

onlyrealcuzzo2• 3 years ago

Seems like they could make decent mixed use spaces - with some of the space being converted into retail / malls, some of it being used for on-shoring / light industry, and the rest remaining office space.

Another solution for cities with astronomical land prices (like NYC) is to look into moving some of their city buildings into sky scrapers, and then selling their buildings & land to be re-developed.

Like why can't the police "building" just be 30 floors in a sky scraper? Why can't a hospital just be a bunch of floors in a sky scraper? Why can't a high school just be a bunch of floors in a sky scraper? Etc...

jamies• 3 years ago

Plumbing is a big one. Most commercial floors only have a few hookups and drains. Each apartment typically has at least 6.

Building layout is another. You could only reasonably put apartments on the outside with windows. There would be a lot of wasted space in the core of the building.

It's all possible, but the question becomes is it desirable to live there? Will the rents justify the cost to convert? I doubt it...

nickthegreek• 3 years ago

In Columbus, Chase is doing just that. Converting 23 of the 25 floors into 253 residential units.

https://columbusunderground.com/office-to-residential-conver...

rco8786• 3 years ago

Why can't they convert to residential?

They can, and will, but it is not an easy process (yet).

I would guess that within 1-3 years we see major cities changing their codes and zoning processes specifically to fast track commercial -> residential conversions.

nyc_data_geek1• 3 years ago

It's not, they're just dragginf their feet hoping they can pressure the workforce to stuff the genie back in the bottle. It ain't happening.

Financial district has a number of converted office buildings, which are now residential. If anything, that area is now more vibrant and cool, certainly not an apocalyptic thing.

noughtme• 3 years ago

Floor plate size. Offices are very deep and the elevators are far from the windows. Condo towers are small so that natural light can penetrate. You can’t just convert an office tower to condos. Also, office towers don’t have the plumbing to put in a shower and drain for every 500 sqft.

JoeAltmaier2• 3 years ago

Many things can be converted to office space. Old hotels for instance - they have common bathrooms, small rooms, lots of doors. Pretty compatible with offices.

The opposite is harder. Adding bathrooms, combining rooms, adding kitchens and drains and individual utilities costs maybe more than the building is worth.

potatolicious3• 3 years ago

Looking beyond the regulatory hurdles (others have covered that, plus it's being worked on), there are some real practicality problems:

1 - Windowless rooms are heavily undesirable in residences but pretty normal in office settings. In many areas they are also illegal (all bedrooms must have natural light) - but regardless of legality they are shunned by most buyers/renters.

Offices however have lots of windowless rooms in the form of supply closets, utility rooms, freight elevators, conference rooms, storage rooms, etc. This combined with the popularity of open floor plan offices means that office buildings are really deep dimensionally. You can easily find modern office buildings where a desk is 50+ feet from the nearest window.

This makes them nearly impossible to divide into residences, because the resulting apartments are dungeon-like, with only the very outer reaches getting any significant natural light.

2 - Cost of conversion is high but the resulting product is worse than purpose-built.

Keeping in mind the natural light factor above, a lot of office-converted apartments are less pleasant to live in than purpose-built residential apartments, but the conversion costs are very high, and the two opposing dynamics cannot be reconciled. The cost of converting an office demands a level of rent that it cannot achieve in competition with actual residential buildings.

3 - Utility usage increases in residential buildings. A lot. Electrical, water, and sewer needs in residential buildings are much more intense than in commercial buildings. This is non-trivial to retrofit - since additional conduit and piping has nowhere natural to go. Conversion projects often have to punch through the concrete floor plates in order to create new top-to-bottom shafts to run all of the additional utilities. This is intensely expensive.

4 - Commercial buildings have over-built elevators relative to residential buildings. Office workers move from floor-to-floor a lot more than residents, and so for the same floor area commercial buildings would have more elevators. They take up valuable floor space that can otherwise be rented, and removing them to recover the floor area for residential use is incredibly costly. Many modern commercial buildings are in fact built around their elevator cores, so removal may not even be feasible.

There are some successful conversions - but as others have brought up, they tilt towards conversion of pre-war office buildings where, because they didn't have powered HVAC, there are more windows and no office is too far from a window, creating good opportunities to convert into actually pleasant spaces. Modern offices with their gigantic floor plates are a whole different story.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 3 years ago

Apartments are quite difficult in the footprint, I think. Depending on the size of the unit, it becomes impossible to give everyone a window, and not have some overly narrow floorplan. And that's not even taking into consideration the need to build out the plumbing to some x10 or x50 scale of what it currently is. Every unit needs a wet wall for kitchen and bath. Evacuation routes suffer.

Retrofitting should certainly be possible, but neither cheap nor quick, and you either run into the problem of the resulting monthly being too high (and having trouble getting occupancy up above 95% where you want it), or it goes too low and you can't make back what you spent,

lvl102• 3 years ago

After 9/11, they tried doing this in downtown NYC because no one wanted work there. It was not good at all.

the_only_law2• 3 years ago

That just sounds misguided from the start. No one wants to work there but they’d be willing to live there?

ortusdux• 3 years ago

This explains the RTW push.

theandrewbailey• 3 years ago

Every time I've heard someone say "we need to go back to offices", I wonder how much money they have in commercial real estate. Businesses always want to cut costs (shareholder returns and whatnot), and office space is a large cost that has proven to be largely unneeded. But an executive telling the public at large to go back to offices is overreach.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

Not really. If you rent, letting you lease expire is cheaper. If you own it outright, you'll pay less in upkeep for an unused building and less in property taxes. If you borrowed money and are under water, you can walk away and save money. The only companies who care are ones who were already thinking about selling the real estate. And commercial real estate companies.

Spotify leases floors in 4 WTC until the end of the decade, so it's a sunk cost. They're paying regardless, but it's cheaper if it's vacant since there's less janitorial work, electric, etc.

PKop• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/Hm9vk

voicedYoda• 3 years ago

Bloomberg is writing these articles about every big city. These old buildings are the workforce of yesteryear, but so much money is invested in these monoliths, and the audience Bloomberg writes at wants to know about their money, thus we get articles lamenting the fact that these big, expensive buildings are vacant, and if we can't force workers back into them, there will be catastrophic repercussions

TremendousJudge3• 3 years ago

Maybe people will start living in them and real estate costs will go down. Truly catastrophic for the readers of Bloomberg.

JohnFen3• 3 years ago

There are real logistical and engineering difficulties in making those buildings suitable for habitation. In many cases, it would be less expensive to tear them down and build a new building for that purpose.

kobalsky• 3 years ago

NYC is weird.

Been there a few times and it always gave me the impression it's one of those fake cities in Disney.

A sea of people on the streets but some buildings seem like 90% empty.

Some shops are highly suspect too. My wife wanted a selfie stick and we got one in an electronics shop in 7th avenue, a couple of blocks from Times Square, big store but completely empty.

We went in, browsed, bought one selfie stick for few bucks (not expensive) and left, no other shoppers in sight. Later that day we went to exchange it because the button didn't work, same ordeal.

I'm not an economist, but I pretty sure that a business in that location with that rent cannot be profitable without a continuous stream of shoppers, no way.

The whole city seems like a money laundering operation.

vdnkh• 3 years ago

Goes to time square
The whole city seems like a money laundering operation

Classic

skciva• 3 years ago

As someone who lives in NYC, there are a lot of "sides" to it. What you're describing definitely exists, but to generalize the whole city as a laundering operation would be akin to generalizing a large tech org based on your experience with one small team.

tedunangst• 3 years ago

Approximately what percentage of the whole city do you believe you've seen?

Aunche• 3 years ago

What do people get from making up narratives like this? Bloomberg literally writes thousands of articles a day. This topic is just one of the few that HN happens to care about.

The main audience of Bloomberg aren't executives who need validate their comercial real estate purchases. They're analysts who just want to be informed about the current economic landscape.

Do you expect that someone will read this will think "welp, better start commuting to the office because I don't want my city's budget to be cut!"

michaelteter6• 3 years ago

Neckties were an essential business requirement for ages. At some point, people had had enough of the mostly pointless ritual and began rejecting the norm. Even still, stodgy companies required it with the argument that it was necessary for being considered professional.

Startups certainly saw differently, although admittedly many startups are not remotely professional (no pun intended).

Now we have remote work vs office work. In an information age where physical items passed around from worker to worker are a thing of the past in most industries, the need to spend $$$ for a high profile location is going the way of the necktie.

Many workers have tasted the freedom of no commute, or at least a pleasant walk/bike commute to a nearby coworking space. They don't want to go back, and like myself they will reject any job which has a firm requirement for such. Companies are torn between the old-school management notion that worker will only work while being observed and the realization that they can save a ton of money by not having a big fancy office.

The day of the office is passing. There will always be offices, but they will be, like food trucks, existing where and when they are useful. The real estate world better clue into this.

And beyond the office topic there is the residential topic. As prices for city apartments increase dramatically, people lose interest in living in those cities. Better to live someplace pleasant and less expensive, and then spend the saved money on trips to many different nice places.

JohnFen3• 3 years ago

Many workers have tasted the freedom of no commute, or at least a pleasant walk/bike commute to a nearby coworking space.

Yes, although I say it a different way. Working in offices has always been fairly terrible, and had been growing increasingly terrible over the last decade or two. People put up with it in part because they had no option.

But once they worked outside of those spaces and realized what hell they were, of course they resist returning.

So it's not just about discovering new "freedom", it's about discovering that a major thing that makes life suck doesn't have to be a thing at all.

bsder• 3 years ago

Working in offices has always been fairly terrible, and had been growing increasingly terrible over the last decade or two.

Offices don't have to be terrible. IBM, GE, Bell, etc. knew how to put together offices that didn't suck. Occasionally the architects got out of hand and produced some monstrosity, but the offices were mostly fine.

It's only the whole dumbass "open office plan" bullshit that made everything suck. Given that's the "standard", is it any wonder everybody wants to work from home?

muglug• 3 years ago

Neckties are a great example.

They're a good rejoinder to Musk's recent farcical argument that since most blue-collar workers cannot work remotely, it's immoral for white-collar workers to resist Return-To-Office mandates [1]. Some jobs still require neckties, but that does not mean we should all be obliged to wear them too.

I personally enjoy commuting — a 35-minute journey in a big city via public transport. It gets me to an office full of friendly faces who also enjoy the commute. The people who prefer remote stay home. It's a happy medium.

RTO mandates in US cities with poor/non-existent public transport options are bad ideas all around.

[1] https://www.mediaite.com/tv/elon-musk-calls-remote-work-bull...

pb7• 3 years ago

They're a good rejoinder to Musk's recent farcical argument that since most blue-collar workers cannot work remotely, it's immoral for white-collar workers to resist Return-To-Office mandates.

One of the dumbest things he’s ever said (and that’s saying something). Most people can’t fly private either but it doesn’t seem to stop him.

incompatible• 3 years ago

It's hard for me to visualize why some jobs would require neckties. It's not a piece of useful equipment, like a safety helmet. What would offices lose by having workers wear whatever they like?

bombcar3• 3 years ago

There's also a "status" thing for people and for companies - companies are not immune to "fake it until you make it" and many pour billions into status-buildings that are perhaps not technically necessary.

And those things can change, suddenly having a huge tower in downtown NY becomes a sign of a out-of-date "old" company; perhaps the new hotness will be something like a small company "town" in the outskirts somewhere.

akomtu• 3 years ago

Skyscrapers are those neckties of the corporations.

ragingrobot• 3 years ago

the new hotness will be something like a small company "town" in the outskirts somewhere.

So the "new hotness" will be kind of like the old days where you worked for Pullman, and with those wages you earned, you: paid rent to Pullman, bought your goods at the Pullman general store, and so on in effect giving much of your earnings back to the company.

SoftTalker2• 3 years ago

companies are not immune to "fake it until you make it" and many pour billions into status-buildings that are perhaps not technically necessary.

Cities too. My city government offices are located on some of the best real-estate in the city and in elegantly refurbished turn of the century buildings.

Government offices should be pre-fab cheap as possible in brownfields or on other low-value land. High value land should be used for at minimum something that will generate property tax revenue.

lisasays2• 3 years ago

A hollow analogy, unfortunately.

Unlike neckties (which are entirely about appearance and perceived norms) -- there are very considerable intrinsic benefits to having people onsite. They just don't outweigh the very considerable negatives, many are coming to find. So it's fundamentally an argument about tangible tradeoffs -- not social norms.

An entirely different argument, in fact.

michaelteter6• 3 years ago

hollow

I think "hollow" is a bit heavy for the judgment, but I agree they are not the same in terms of tangibility (although I'll bet if I dig enough I could find some practical use for neckties (in the office, at least)).

However, like neckties, many companies do the office thing because that's what you're supposed to do. "Everybody knows this." Some (many?) offices exist without a tangible benefit.

eldavido3• 3 years ago

Narrowing down a bit, I think it's the "downtown business district" that's on the way out -- and the accompanying high office rents, long commutes, etc.

My home is a place of rest and family, not work. Work happens at a dedicated location five minutes from home, on foot.

I think we'll see more of this in the future--mixed neighborhoods with a lot of residential space next to offices. What I think we won't see as much of, are huge office blocks very far from residential areas, where the majority of the workforce commutes an hour+ every day, each way, to work.

majormajor2• 3 years ago

Central business districts were created by trains which let people move to suburbs; then hung around for a while due to concentration of office effects even as many commuters moved to cars. Interesting tho think about what transit looks like in a world without them. Public transit would need to move more away from the hub/spoke model, which possibly dooms new rail construction in existing car-centric cities; busses already go much more point to point with a lot more route options, but if you have less commuters, do those fail to maintain their current timetables as well?

Yizahi2• 3 years ago

Moving offices outside of the downtown doesn't really help. The only visible benefit is less load on the city center (often tourist and historical destination).

It simple 2D geometry - if you live 1x from the office your commute is 20 minutes, if you live 2x from the office, your commute is 50 minutes, 3x from the office - 90 minutes commute, and so on. If you move the main cluster of the offices outside of the city border, then the commute time would change for people, for some it will decrease, for some it will increase. There would be exactly the same percentage of people living 1x, 2x, 3x etc. from the office, just the people would be shuffled between the quartiles.

jksmith• 3 years ago

Yeah, living in these legacy markets has become clunky, and the markets can't be changed. If I found out that I no longer needed to swallow rocks to digest my food, why would I ever go back to doing so?

zitterbewegung5• 3 years ago

I don’t totally believe that remote work is going to go completely away . I think that personally for me never going into the office wasn’t really a great experience. It made me much more sedimentary (which in tech is almost a work hazard) but that was my fault . I do like being hybrid (but also the team I was a part of basically stopped existing) so while I think it could be a combination of working from home and the team imploding made me lonely.

I rather have the option to going to work and I think companies should still offer a solution for that if they are able to. I do like traveling into the city so maybe I just like neckties.

I am definitely against all of this rhetoric about how remote work is horrible and the laptop crowd isn’t doing good work when we don’t really give people enough time for childcare or elder care which I think is a much bigger problem that motivates people to work remotely. Also real estate markets are way overvalued.

kerkeslager6• 3 years ago

I don’t totally believe that remote work is going to go completely away . I think that personally for me never going into the office wasn’t really a great experience. It made me much more sedimentary (which in tech is almost a work hazard) but that was my fault . I do like being hybrid (but also the team I was a part of basically stopped existing) so while I think it could be a combination of working from home and the team imploding made me lonely.

I think a lot of people ran into these problems, but there are solutions. Work doesn't have to be your only source of community, and in fact, it can be problematic when it is, because then your community only lasts as long as your job. On the one hand you might lose your job, and on the other hand you might not quit when you should. Having connections outside work is pretty key to having work/life balance IMO.

prepend3• 3 years ago

I rather have the option to going to work and I think companies should still offer a solution for that if they are able to.

I love being in the office. I hate the hour commute. And I hate doubling or tripling my housing price. I prefer showering at 745 and connecting and being productive at 8 over showering at 645 and driving into work to be productive at 8 (while being in zoom meetings all day anyway).

I like records too. They are so cool with nice artwork. And I like record stores. But I listen to music 99% of the time digitally.

The office is the same way. It’s not that it isn’t nice. It’s that the cost of using it over better alternatives is madness, especially at scale.

Imagine all the pollution saved from people driving to work.

Gigachad4• 3 years ago

Company I work at has taken to running most large meetings in person, booking out a large meeting room for half the day, and then often structuring social events around the day as well, often with paid for drinks and food.

I feel like these in person get togethers are far more interactive and productive than a day of calls where most people go camera off and fall asleep 30 mins in. Actually doing work remote works mostly fine, but god I hate group calls, the latency, the bad audio, etc.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

It made me much more sedimentary

You probably mean sedentary. Sedimentary would be quite extreme. :)

actionablefiber3• 3 years ago

As prices for city apartments increase dramatically, people lose interest in living in those cities.

I would argue that the prices reflect at least an incredibly persistent demand to live in those cities.

Just for different reasons than before. For instance, since the pandemic many cities have invested heavily in bike infrastructure and pedestrianization. E-bikes have become extremely popular. And as the post-COVID reopening has progressed, people have been organizing local hobbyist meetups, many of them having acquired those hobbies during the depths of the pandemic.

There is a huge lifestyle appeal to living in cities, and it will not go away anytime soon. Cities need to recognize that both the massive increase in residential demand and the massive plunge in commercial demand are incredible opportunities to differentiate themselves by converting their dead-after-6pm business districts into thriving, walkable mixed-use hubs.

funnymony• 3 years ago

Mega yacht costs bazilions.

Yes, lot of people would not reject idea of having it, but at the same time actual demand (i.e. actual number of people who would think price is worth it, is quite lower compared to spagetti which is much cheaper but has many more buyers)

All in all. high price does not necessarily mean huge demand.

fnordpiglet3• 3 years ago

Great! Then we don’t have to fill the city with offices and we can have places for humans instead of employees.

ghaff3• 3 years ago

I think we'll have to see what the demand for living in big/dense cities looks like in light of at least somewhat reduced demand for living there because of employment. Certainly, there's some demand--especially among younger people in the college-educated demographic.

But it's less obvious what tradeoffs people make in general to the degree that employment isn't part of the equation. I certainly never lived in a city when my company was located well outside.

emodendroket8• 3 years ago

It's too crowded, nobody wants to go there anymore.

onion2k2• 3 years ago

I would argue that the prices reflect at least an incredibly persistent demand to live in those cities.

Decreasing demand for an asset that has a fixed cost to the supplier (mortgage payments) pushes up prices just as much as increasing demand.

mountainb• 3 years ago

A lot of that demand is for the house/apartment as an investment vehicle or for the idle rich for a party pad. Alternatively, it is a place for people directly or indirectly on welfare of some kind to be funneled to. Those two uses have become increasingly more prominent in US cities. You have to be addled in some way to think these cities are for middle class people, which is why many of them have seen historically massive waves of middle class outmigration in recent years.

Is an American city for you? Are you a( indigent; b( a literal aristocrat or rich enough to be one; or c( a "financial domination" enjoyer who desires to give everything they earn to some combination of landlords and governments when you are not giving all your time to your boss? If you answered yes to any of the above, an American city is for you. If you are a working stiff, the city doesn't want you anyway.

mrangle• 3 years ago

That's an inspirational narrative. However, offices aren't significantly vacant due to remote work. Advancing the narrative that this is the reason will in-part hide economic decline, and will help allow important people to escape the political consequences of the worst economic decline in ninety years.

michaelteter6• 3 years ago

Some have apparently downvoted you, but I think you make a good point.

The workers may have rejected the onsite companies such that it is difficult to fill the expensive offices. But also, it is likely that the COVID forced out-of-office situation has caused companies to re-evaluate the value of prime office locations.

Fashion is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. If the scenario is visible and hyped, others will believe they must follow it to be relevant. And then it becomes stronger, and effectively relevant. Soon every real US finance company needs a prime Manhattan office... unless it's a commodities company, in which it must have a prime Chicago location.

Aside from inflating finance company performance via tax laws, I don't think politics really has so much to do with this. Actually, the global upward wealth redistribution policies do mean that a smaller group has a more difficult time finding places to park money, so that indeed does inflate propertly values.

tick_tock_tick4• 3 years ago

Many workers have tasted the freedom of no commute, or at least a pleasant walk/bike commute to a nearby coworking space. They don't want to go back, and like myself they will reject any job which has a firm requirement for such.

I assume some many continue to exist but employees will also have to get used to large pay cuts if that's a hard requirement for them.

As prices for city apartments increase dramatically, people lose interest in living in those cities. Better to live someplace pleasant and less expensive

No one wants to live there too many people live there......

jvanderbot• 3 years ago

I've gone over to the darkside. I live in a suburb 20 minutes from my favorite neighborhood for entertainment, 30m from my parents, 20m from endless fields, 1 hr from the rest of my family and friends. I have a yard, access to a lake, a riding mower, and no utility lines in my backyard so I can dig and build to my heart's content.

I also have Gbps internet and a job at a startup as a principal. This literally is the best of both worlds for me. I'm not particularly wealthy and not particularly clever - I'm sure everyone is doing this and the best part is, there's _room_ out here, at least in the USA.

gedy• 3 years ago

employees will also have to get used to large pay cuts if that's a hard requirement for them.

I make more now in a remote position than when I commuted? I'm in California, not in a LCOL location.

aaomidi• 3 years ago

employees will also have to get used to large pay cuts if that's a hard requirement for them

Then these companies are going to have to get used to lower profit margins as time catches up and kicks them out with competitors.

pdimitar• 3 years ago

I assume some many continue to exist but employees will also have to get used to large pay cuts if that's a hard requirement for them.

How does that follow from anything? I am working remotely from the start of 2011 and never once took a pay cut compared to an on-site job, as far as I am aware at least.

marcosdumay4• 3 years ago

Well, yes, eventually companies will have to pay a premium if they want people to actually move there every day.

Relative to what is an open question, because the jobs that require that also don't currently pay a lot.

manfre• 3 years ago

I assume some many continue to exist but employees will also have to get used to large pay cuts if that's a hard requirement for them.

Some companies are losing their more experienced employees when they force RTO. If they want to compete for this portion of the talent pool, they'll need to offer more than the other remote first companies.

executesorder66• 3 years ago

I assume some many continue to exist but employees will also have to get used to large pay cuts if that's a hard requirement for them.

In my experience, the employees that have to go into the office are generally the ones that get paid less than the ones who can work from home. I'm not really sure how you came to that conclusion.

daveslash• 3 years ago

Reading the title, my initial thought was residential skyscrapers. Reading the article clearly indicates that it's discussing offices.

But back to residential: I understand that many wealthy people buy real estate for the prestige of having a certain address or as a way to "lock up" wealth in an asset. See Billionaires Row [0] [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaires%27_Row_(Manhattan...

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/08/05/nearly-half-of-luxury-units-em...

bobthepanda• 3 years ago

Billionaires and vacant apartments cause issues, but they at least pay taxes. An office building with no tenants will face plummeting property values and a corresponding dive in tax bills.

* Note: residential property taxation in NYC is in dire need of reform but the point still stands

michaelteter6• 3 years ago

Regarding property ownership, for a number of recent years it has been a challenge to find "safe" places to park money. Real estate in NYC and other prime locations is probably seen as pretty safe.

Also, if you have true "FU" money, then owning a piece of prime NYC real estate is just another mark on your bedpost, like your superyacht.

doubleg72• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, here in the real world, people have to go to work. Hospitals, stores, schools, manufacturers, warehouses, truck drivers, and builders/maintaniers of all the infrastructure that your lifestyle depends on.. even your car salesman with necktie: these are all places that need workers and always will. The small proportion of workforce that are startup employees dont make the rules. You're crazy to think that everyone wants to work from home, I know I sure as hell dont.

bloppe4• 3 years ago

When it comes to the office-vs-home discussion everybody is just plugging their own personal preference. Clearly there is a mix. Personally, I love going into my office: it's close to me and has amenities and coworkers I like very much, and I'm personally much more productive there than at home. I realize there are plenty of people who prefer and are more productive working from home. But clearly it's not nearly as superficial as a necktie. Onboarding in particular is demonstrably more difficult to do remotely. Maybe a happy balance for new hires is an extended in-office orientation followed by the option to go remote, although this also requires some senior employees to be in the office to help with orientation.

Ofc the benefits of this have to be weighed against real estate costs. Let's just stop pretending anybody knows exactly what the office situation will be in the coming years.

jaggederest3• 3 years ago

Onboarding in particular is demonstrably more difficult to do remotely.

Is it? I don't believe it is. At this point, people just plug right in - once you're used to remote work, it's a matter of learning which chat platform they use, getting access to email, and away you go. It's literally the exact same thing as in office these days, precisely due to needing to accommodate remote onboarding.

migf• 3 years ago

Which parts of onboarding do you feel like are pain points?

antonvs2• 3 years ago

Onboarding in particular is demonstrably more difficult to do remotely.

How would you demonstrate this?

I’m with a funded SV startup that’s been remote-only since its founding, a few years before covid. We have staff in at least five countries, and in the US, in at least five states (just based on the people I can think of offhand.)

The company is the leader in its field, which involves significant real innovation, and has many major enterprise customers.

I’ve helped onboard many employees, and I’ve managed one of the key product teams.

When I hear people talk about all the disadvantages of remote work, I just internally roll my eyes. As you say, they’re plugging their own personal preference. But that seems to be exactly what you’re doing with the quote above.

Aeolun2• 3 years ago

But clearly it's not nearly as superficial as a necktie.

Not sure about that. Working without a necktie can feel like working naked. It takes some effort to change your feelings on that.

usernew• 3 years ago

It's great how you're more productive at the office. Now picture this: instead of your office with people in it who live within an hour commute, your team now consists of candidates literally anywhere in the US. You had 20 qualified people interview for your job, and you got it as the best, most productive person to get it done? Now the company picks from a pool of candidates 200x the size. You are now the 180th best qualified candidate. The guy who beat you, who lives 3000 miles away, is the best. Now do that for literally everyone you see when you do a little spin in the lunchroom. And it's not about the resource pool averaging out the same, because all companies can pick from anywhere. The guy who beat you isn't superior to you - his skills and experience and personality just more perfectly align to your job. And yours will align better to a better job. Both of you are now happier and making more, while the company makes more by saving on rent.

Also, ghmm, that nice long shit I used to take while browsing reddit... Go ahead and send me a meeting invite for timeslot.

raverbashing2• 3 years ago

Onboarding in particular is demonstrably more difficult to do remotely.

More difficult, doesn't mean it's impossible or shouldn't be done.

Do not confuse one's inability to do something with a general impossibility.

Now yes, it does take a different mindset and we probably need to try different strategies for 'breaking the ice' over remote

Yizahi2• 3 years ago

The majority of offices are located in the biggest cities >1mil population. Every such city has huge size and insane traffic jams, where people are wasting a lot of their lives. Regardless of my preference to work from office (some days I do want to see my colleagues), the sad reality of commute is going to be a major factor in preferring remote work. I do not want to waste 15 full days every year at sitting in traffic jam, or standing in a bus packed with people. And neither do most of the people with such option. Having an office in <30 minutes commute or even walkable distance is a luxury really, and very few people have it.

prmoustache• 3 years ago

Onboarding in particular is demonstrably more difficult to do remotely.

I think it is only the case in companies where there is no proper onboarding process or it is an afterthought.

I was hired as a remote worker in a company in late 2021 and it was the most seamless onboarding process I ever had. I remember in a lot of companies having to chase people, trying to find them or waiting for them to get back from a meeting. Or the unpleasant experience of spending hours with a new hire and literally feeling his breath behind your neck while I would show him something and not being able to multitask at the same time on other things, especially those that had a private matter or were too confidential for that person at this stage. I am currently doing a lot of knowledge transfer for a new member of the team while I am moving to another one and I spend hours in video call with that guy. I am sharing one screen, while I can still do other tasks, reply to emails/instant messages in a separate screen. It is more walkie-talkie approach than a real videocall. But I can work on something and I don't have to tell him "look I have to do something urgent and confidential, let's discusss in a bit again" and then get dragged by millions things and not being able to get back to him.

DrBazza2• 3 years ago

It really just boils down people wanting a quiet place to work, or not, and employers wilfully ignoring that.

It's documented ad-nauseum that developers (or any other job that requires concentration and reasoning) are far more productive in quiet surroundings.

I've worked in my own office, with a door, for a couple of years out of a 30 year career, and those two years were by far the most productive. Apart from the last 3 where WFH has been even better.

Open plan offices are awful for most, and commuting 90 minutes each way, standing for the full 90 minutes on a rush hour train into London is also a waste of time.

I'm sure it's the same in the US, but substitute car and traffic jams for trains.

The tl;dr here is, if there's so much office space available and going cheaply now, isn't about time employers add proper offices for those that want them, and entice a large number of developers back to the office?

This industry is rich, pays $$$, pays $$$ bonuses, employs smart people, will supply you with $3k, $4k, $5k laptops, desktops, $1-2k monitors, peripherals, free lunch, standing desks, send you on 1-2k conferences and travel, and so on and so on.

But not personal offices. WTF.

BluePen7• 3 years ago

I also preferred working in office. My company had a really nice one.

But due to covid forcing remote work I was able to go from renting a basement, to buying a home (and renting out MY basement).

House cost me the same as a city apartment, but I only qualified for the mortgage due to the added rental suite income. So if I'd stayed, I'd be unable to buy and have to continue renting.

Compared to staying in town, since I made the move in 2020, the difference in my net worth is now more than the entirety of my untaxed salary over that time.

tldr: I prefer office work, but working remotely has been the equivalent of earning 2.5X my salary the whole time.

hettygreen• 3 years ago

Serious question: If I'm working from home, what's stopping my employer from replacing me with some dude in India or something for 1/3 the price?

I'm just having a hard time believing that we're at this moment in time where life suddenly got better for workers.

embwbam• 3 years ago

English as a first language. Implicit shared cultural values. Time zones. You are way less work to manage than someone across the world from another culture.

Some companies do outsource everything but it’s HARD.

inowland• 3 years ago

A half answer here is, given "agile devops" software development (i.e. developing with iterative tradeoffs on both features and operational stability), then regular meeting time matters a lot to resolve conflict, and so working time zone matters a lot. The more spread, and the more you get people blaming "not good enough processes" on what is really just "not enough common time to meet to collaborate".

Now the other half of that is what remote-first, "all I need is more time to code" developers really don't want to hear, is that in resolving conflict, in-person communication is much higher bandwidth than even zoom communication, both for the whiteboard, and for the fact being in-person de-escalates emotion. This is particularly true for early career developers, where some pushback (i.e. conflict) in their naive assumptions is actually how they are going to learn better from senior developers.

So while 5 days a week in the office is dead, its way too early to say what the eventual outcome will be. But I do agree less days a week will force some amount of square-foot downsizing, so I am glad I don't own any office buildings.

flexie• 3 years ago

A few things:

1: Indian wages are going up. The difference gets smaller every year.* Note that many of the best Indian developers are paid in USD, and even for the developers that get paid in Rupees, the company they are hired by locally often does get paid in USD by the American company that buys their services, so the fact that the Rupee goes down doesn't necessarily offset their wage increase for the American company that hires them.

2: American workers can still meet in every Tuesday. It's hard from Hyderabad.

3: Time difference can be a real issue (but of course it can also be an advantage).

4: It's often easier for Americans to understand American English than Indian English.

5: American developers might understand the American market and competing products better.

* https://www.statista.com/chart/25729/india-annual-average-sa...

onion2k2• 3 years ago

If your boss can save on your wages and the cost of office space by hiring a guy in India you'd think employing you in an office would be even less appealing than employing you to work from home...

sensanaty2• 3 years ago

Has this meme ever been a real thing? I know quite a few people who've made entire careers off of fixing the mistakes these outsourced "cheap" Indian make in their work, cheap being in quotes because the end result is that you have to pay someone more, for far longer to fix up the crap they leave in their wake.

Besides if it's cheap enough to hire someone overseas (who by definition would be remote), how would it not be cheaper to just pay their current workforce to work remotely?

eru• 3 years ago

Neckties were an essential business requirement for ages. At some point, people had had enough of the mostly pointless ritual and began rejecting the norm. [...]

Neckties are still widely worn.

Have a look at the demise of hats throughout the 20th century for another example.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

I believe both in the flexibility of remote work, and in the benefits of learning and collaborating with people in person.

I think we have gained and lost things in the remote shift. I feel bad for young people starting their careers who will never know what it's like to make acquaintance with their coworkers and feel at ease with them, to work on problems together.

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

It's not so much that the days of the office (and neck ties and other nonsense) is passing but that the economies of scale that made such environments economically viable are changing.

It used to be that companies had to have lots of people around organized in hierarchical processes working to certain uniform processes to produce value at scale. These days, you can outsource a lot of these things, automate a lot away, to the point that many businesses are scaling down to human level.

Many companies exist that are only a handful of people working together. They do business with other companies or sell to consumers directly via the internet. Instead of doing things in house, they partner with other companies for things that used to be done in house. HR, accounting, marketing, manufacturing, logistics, etc.

And in so far people still need to be internal, they no longer have to be in the same place or even on the same continent. Remote work is here and still somewhat controversial. But it works and has liberated a lot of people from going to an office on a daily basis. These people are often acting more like independent companies rather than employees. Often that's exactly what they are: independent contractors, freelancers, etc. And of course, a large and growing part of the workforce is no longer permanently employed by anyone.

So, having all these people come to some huge sky scraper in New York isn't that logical or productive anymore. You could do it. But it doesn't really add that much value. And it actually costs a lot of money and time to do it.

up2isomorphism• 3 years ago

I found most of this kind of argument quite unnecessary.

Most of the people want less work and more pay, that’s a reality.

On the other hand, staying competitive is most company’s reality too.

So it is really not about you as a employee or employer’s will but rather than the market supply and demand that determines the work location flexibility. If I am employer and I have 2 candidates with similar skill level, of course I will prefer the one who can come to office everyday. And if I am an employee with two job offers with similar pay and working items of course I will choose the one with remote flexibility, because having choice is always better.

mtalantikite• 3 years ago

I've been working remote from NYC since 2008, and for a chunk of that time I had rented a cheap, no-frills loft space in Brooklyn with some friends. I had space to have a soldering setup, another area for a shared work bench, storage for tools, bookshelves for CS/math books, space for some couches, a sink, etc. I think we paid around $400/month each to split amongst the 5 of us. It was a lot of space.

Finding that now in NYC is pretty difficult without paying a ton, even with all this unused commercial space. Co-working spaces have all these amenities I don't want and charge $1200-2000/month for a closet you can kind of fit a few small desks in. A lot of these buildings are holding out to get one or two big corporate leases. I'd totally rent a small space in Manhattan if the price was right, just to have the option to head into the city when I want to get out of the house, but I don't think anyone is trying to cater to a bunch of hacker/artist types anymore. Until then I'll just work from home.

gen2202• 3 years ago

Those places still exist out in bushwick / east williamsburg. If you hang out with the right people, or go to the right facebook groups you'll find them.

The living or working arrangements are often illegal, so they aren't visible in the "above-ground" market (Zillow, Streeteasy, IRL ads, etc.), but they're still there.

lyapunova• 3 years ago

I'm looking for something like OP's description. If you see this, I would really appreciate a couple pointers on where to look!

tornadosoup+hn@gmail.com

henry2023• 3 years ago

Do you have fb group references? I leave in greenpoint and my lease ends in Sept. I'm looking for something like what you've mentioned.

nerdponx• 3 years ago

Not for long. The old "punk lofts" are finally being kicked out for redevelopment.

robotburrito2• 3 years ago

A few friends of mine are also trying to do something similar here in SF. We want somewhere else to work other than our cramped apartments, but don't necessarily want to go into a real office.

tristanb• 3 years ago

Man theres a ton of warehousey spaces on Mission. I used to rent a great on around 21st. Check out craigslist.

BoorishBears• 3 years ago

There's multiple free coworking spaces in SF

tick_tock_tick4• 3 years ago

Finding that now in NYC is pretty difficult without paying a ton, even with all this unused commercial space.

NYC makes renting most of the unused commercial space to random people illegal or highly impractical.

soupfordummies2• 3 years ago

Even in Atlanta, it's like that.

My company has a couple of suites in a small one story building.

I'd say it's only about 30% full now (down from about 90% last summer or so). Even so, they were unwilling to budge on the rent for one of the suites my company leases. Now it's sitting empty too.

ghusto• 3 years ago

I love going to the office, but recognise I'm in the minority (at least in our industry). What's always puzzled me regardless, is the insistence of all going to the same city.

Alright, offices, sure, but why do we need them all in London? Are businesses _visiting_ each other? What was the rationale?

paxys2• 3 years ago

People were historically drawn to urban centers because it was just easier to live that way vs making do on your own in the middle of nowhere.

Business saw a large number of people collected together and went, well, might as well set up shop here.

Now we have come all the way around where people want to move away, and businesses are going nope, you stay right here, because we need you to survive.

sbierwagen2• 3 years ago

Aggregation effects. You're more likely to switch to a different employer if it doesn't mean moving. Startups will put up an office near a larger company to poach their employees. Etc etc. This is how you get an industry crowded into a single city even if they're not actually transporting physical items around.

rr8082• 3 years ago

Its also for if you quit and work for a different firm you can stay where you live.

DiscourseFan• 3 years ago

Ok, I will be the first to say that I hate offices: the culture, the aesthetic, the rituals and customs. But I'm not necessarily sure that--especially for young people--work from home is the best option. Someone who is married, has kids, has a whole social world in their neighborhood, that person would enjoy and promote work from home, but that person is usually in a higher power position. A young person just starting out or at least earlier on in their career doesn't really have the opportunity to make friends, meet people (romantically), or otherwise make social connections while working from home.

eldavido3• 3 years ago

I think this is right. I'm married with kids and have little desire to go to an office. It was indeed different when I Was younger -- I didn't cook at home as much so enjoyed office lunches with coworkers, I lived in a smaller apartment which was easier to find closer to work, etc.

It occurs that shows including "Call my agent", "The Newsroom", and to some extent "Madam Secretary" depict the better version of office life (particularly for young people) pretty well.

JoeAltmaier2• 3 years ago

It's often frowned upon to make romantic arrangements with workmates. But the rest, sure. I guess some new social construct will be needed. Like in the old days - balls, cotillions, clubs?

km3r• 3 years ago

I think we as a society would benefit from evolving the "third place". A place that is neither work nor home where you can socialize. Like it or not, lot of people want remote work, so the best path forward is to adapt.

progrus• 3 years ago

This is traditionally called “the pub” in the UK or “the bar” in the US.

Maybe it’s time for society to work on that drinking habit, eh?

xen2xen1• 3 years ago

That used to be called church.

Gigachad4• 3 years ago

Probably what we will end up with is school from home, work from home, everything from home. Socialisation will move entirely online where you meet up on VR Chat or whatever is popular at the time. Many people will almost never leave their house.

tick_tock_tick4• 3 years ago

The Bar or Church they haven't gone away.

nsplayer• 3 years ago

that's called the pub mate

Sai_3• 3 years ago

India really struggles in this regard. We don’t have a widespread pub/bar culture so everyone meets out on the streets…just knots of people sitting on bikes and chatting with each other.

This is traffic nuisance but also makes the streets relatively safe (on average).

I just wish a “third place” culture would spontaneously arise if only to decongest the roads.

vitehozonage5• 3 years ago

My job dictating my friends, romantic attachments and other social connections is incredibly disgusting and dystopian to me. Meaningful social activity has only occurred outside the workplace, to me. Being forced to commute to an office decreases the chance for that by stealing even more free time, and it pushes many people to move away from their friends/family to entirely different cities or countries!

jcelerier• 3 years ago

My job dictating my friends, romantic attachments and other social connections is incredibly disgusting and dystopian to me. Meaningful social activity has only occurred outside the workplace, to me.

last stats I found is that 43% of marriage come from the workplace so it's most certainly not something to discount that easily

erulabs• 3 years ago

Your job isn’t dictating your relationships - it’s giving you an opportunity at making some.

Disgusted? By… a company… having an office? We have shockingly different interpretations of dystopian!

potatolicious3• 3 years ago

It's also IMO a significant part of how some companies retain people.

In years past there's always been a persistent strain of criticism of perk-heavy offices because "it's a ploy to get you to work late" - I think the criticism has actually been off the mark. It's actually a little bit more sinister than that: the perks create a culture where your entire social world exists at work, and massively raises the barrier to quitting.

If you've worked at a perk-heavy FAANG like Meta or Google you've met them: the people for whom nearly all of their friends are from work, who relish going into work for the social contact. For them leaving the company isn't just leaving a job, or even colleagues they like, it's the near-total obliteration of their social world.

I don't begrudge people for making friends at work - you have to do a job, you may as well make the best of it, but I would heavily caution people against forming the bulk of their social world around their workmates.

Having a life outside of work isn't just good for you personally, it's IMO pretty critical to your career's success.

65• 3 years ago

Replace office with school. They're extremely similar in concept. Is making friends at school dystopian to you?

qgin• 3 years ago

It’s easy to find friends in a group of people you have things in common with and spend lots of time with. I know not every job is like this, but some of my best lifelong friendships started at workplaces. (And outlasted the companies that they started at)

MyneOutside2• 3 years ago

If I could upvote this more than once.

Been working 12+ years remotely in a company that has been doing it even longer in some departments. It works and you can get around all the complaints no problem. I understand some people prefer to work in an office and I understand it also depends on the type of business you are it. I get that but people also need to remember times change.

actionablefiber3• 3 years ago

A young person just starting out or at least earlier on in their career doesn't really have the opportunity to make friends, meet people (romantically), or otherwise make social connections while working from home.

Sure they do - if they live in a city. I am a young person who started my first FTE job last year and am WFH. I have an incredibly bountiful friend group that comes from hobbyist meetups, social bike rides and dating apps.

mschuster913• 3 years ago

A young person just starting out or at least earlier on in their career doesn't really have the opportunity to make friends, meet people (romantically), or otherwise make social connections while working from home.

Oh, we Europeans have no problem with that. The difference we have is that we have employee protection laws that put a hard cap on working hours to 48h a week on average over a year (with some rare exceptions, usually for crews of offshore rigs, boats, public health/safety, military and private security) - and that this stuff gets audited, especially on complaints. And when the government looks at a company, they audit everything, not just the person who complained...

afavour3• 3 years ago

I don’t really understand how that’s at all relevant. The point is that social connections are more difficult with remote work irrespective of how many hours you’re working.

paxys2• 3 years ago

Human civilization existed without office culture for many millennia, and we managed to socialize and reproduce just fine. Even in modern times a very tiny percentage of people in the world are white collar office workers, and the rest somehow don't have any of the problems you mention. Heck I'm willing to wager that people who don't have these kinds of office jobs do better socially and romantically than those sitting behind a desk all day.

ilyt4• 3 years ago

Human civilization existed without office culture for many millennia, and we managed to socialize and reproduce just fine.

Because they worked together outside of office.

You couldn't remote in into a cow. Before office being a place to work together there was factory floor, and before that it was the field

rr8082• 3 years ago

I work for a big corp with a big grad intake. We are RTO 4 days a week and I think its great, lots of young people working together, going out after work. I feel kinda sad for those at home.

lotsoweiners• 3 years ago

Cool. I WFH and so does my wife so I get to spend more time with my favorite person. My kids' school is a very short drive so I get to see them 5 minutes after I get off work. I guess I no longer get the appeal of going out after work with young people.

lo_zamoyski2• 3 years ago

I think the assumptions many are making incorrectly is that the workplace is the center of one's social life. This is truly the triumph of a bizarro and dreary corporate capitalist individualism and an indictment of the state of our families and communities. Certainly, the workplace is a part of our social lives, but the argument that WFH leads to isolation should lead the arguer to reflect on what is wrong with the way he is living his life rather than condemn what I think is a welcome change. IMO, remote work can amortize the affects of market changes so that people aren't forced to uproot their lives to find work. They can work in the vicinity of their children. They can save time by avoiding commutes. All of this seems to contribute to the formation of community because it reduces social churn. Once communities form, the other aspects of community life can come into existence that open up the possibilities that are attributed to the workplace but that are not proper to it. The notion that you cannot make friends or find a spouse or whatever without the workplace or corporation being the social organizing principle is truly horrifying. This echos the WEF's ideas of how social life ought to be organized. I think that remote work will also cause a redistribution of other kinds of labor that office workers have long benefited from (like the restaurant industry). All of this seems to enable better social conditions.

knallfrosch2• 3 years ago

Most people have a 40 hour/week contract and it would be a shame to spend that in solitary confinement.

You can go to the office, play ping-pong, rant about your boss, flirt with coworkers and then "go home" and socialize some more (if you want that.) It's not either-or.

I've found that if you spend all time together at home, at the end of the day, you have nothing to talk about with whomever you happen to live with.

sensanaty2• 3 years ago

I'm someone who entered the workforce fully, 100% remote (ignoring jobs I had as a teenager anyway) at 19 and I couldn't disagree more.

I actually have (and especially back then, had) a life outside of work believe it or not, and the thought of all of my social interactions (especially back then) being tied to the office sounds absolutely disgusting and completely dystopian.

I don't particularly care for anyone in my company or any of my past ones bar 1 or 2 people, and I much prefer keeping it that way, where my work life is a completely separate universe to anything even resembling my personal life.

MyneOutside2• 3 years ago

I've been working from home 12+ years and been working since 2001 in an office outside of that.

I am the same. I've only ever met 1 person who I would want to hang out with outside of work.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

Commercial rent isn't collapsing like I'd expect under this pressure. Seems like folks are holding out for something.

sbierwagen2• 3 years ago

"Extend and pretend." In some cases, lowering rent would mean defaulting on your bonds. Might as well wait for those bonds to roll over naturally rather than get sued by your bondholders.

betaby• 3 years ago

Bailout are coming in 1,2,3...

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

The solution to this problem is converting those office buildings into apartments. This would save a lot of downtowns. However, city zoning rules and real estate investors absolutely do not want this because it lowers the cost of their housing. If you look into why this isn't happening there are some ridicuous rules requiring all units to be able to open out to the outside. I'm of the belief that affordable units are affordable because they don't have amenities like an outward facing window. In places like NYC, people want places to sleep that are affordable. Oh well, these are all self inflicted wounds which will lead to an inevitable collapse in CRE.

mentos• 3 years ago

Why isn’t the solution lower the price to rent office space?

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

The real reason is that there aren't enough businesses out to fill it. Sad but true.

pcurve2• 3 years ago

"Asking rents in Manhattan offices averaged $75.13 per square foot"

I rented a nice office on 25th / Broadway near Madison Square Park back in early 2000s for a few years and it was about $45 per square foot. All utility included.

I'm surprised the average isn't higher.

bombcar3• 3 years ago

Are those prices quoted per month or per year?

pcurve2• 3 years ago

per year. e.g. 1000 sq ft office at $72 sqft = $72,000 / year or $6000/month.

It's no chump change, but most Manhattan 1000 sq ft apartment with 2 bedroom will cost more than that, especially with common charge.

daxfohl• 3 years ago

Are things any different in, say, Dubai?

kylehotchkiss• 3 years ago

Yes. Dubai serves as a finance hub for the entire region, and there are hundreds of thousands of people in southeast Asia who would take an offer to move there at the drop of a hat. Towers are culturally more significant too. (Source: spent years living in the SE Asia region) Plus the war has resulted in many people and companies relocating to Dubai.

diebeforei485• 3 years ago

I couldn't care about the building owners. Low quality office buildings should be destroyed and replaced with housing.

dxxvi• 3 years ago

I use ublock origin and adding this https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filter... to it does not have any effect on bloomberg.com.

cebert2• 3 years ago

My employer is requiring mandatory RTO Tuesday thru Thursday for all employees within 30 miles of an office stating in June. It does not matter if your manager or most members on your team are remote. It does not matter if you are productive remotely. We have many employees distributed in many states and even countries. During COVID the number of remote employees exploded. I’m really curious how this goes down and who shows up in June.

ptmcc2• 3 years ago

My company is instituting a similar policy in July.

Half my team, including my manager, do not live in a city with an office. Real curious how this will play out.

I don't mind an occasional on-site day when there is a purpose, but LMFAO if you expect me to commute in on days where I will mostly be dialing in to calls or doing solo work, reaping zero benefit of face-to-face time.

Seems like they are setting up for a reckoning of some kind.

cebert2• 3 years ago

I think there’s a least a number of folks with a similar mindset, but time will tell if they push back or just accept the change. The economy has softened too, so there aren’t as many options as there were in the past.

knallfrosch2• 3 years ago

This incentivizes a mailing address that's more than 30 miles away from any office.

eric-hu• 3 years ago

Sounds like a change of address to somewhere just outside 30 miles is in order.

freen• 3 years ago

The whole “bullpen of cubicles” mode of offices created office building floor plans that cannot easily be repurposed for residential.

Less humane office spaces lead to less versatile buildings and now the chickens have come home to roost.

Animats• 3 years ago

(Link in the middle of the article: "NYC’s Record-Breaking Rents Squeeze Tenants Across Boroughs".[1] That's residential, of course.)

I've been expecting "peak office" for years now. Offices originally existed to contain paper records. Look at pictures of offices from 1700 to 2000. You'll see much paper, and much paper storage. That's dead. If everybody in the office is using a screen and keyboard, the classic function of an office is gone. It may still be useful as a social business space, but the age of the clerical plant is over. (Outside of some Government agencies.)

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-18/nyc-s-rec...

chrisbolt• 3 years ago

How much of this has to do with paper storage vs digitization of records? Yes, paper would be stored near the people who use it, but that’s not the only benefit of people being in one place.

jazzyjackson2• 3 years ago

that’s not the only benefit of people being in one place.

fair enough, but it may be the only necessity

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

I used to work from an office I just have no idea how I managed to; mainly due to having to do things for my kids and house. School gets out at 2, work ends at 5:30 and then 45 minute commute. Don't always want to be the first one out of the office. Kids have boxing at 4:30 and math tutoring after and bed time is at 8:30. Other sports as well. Constantly people in and out of the house for deliveries, repairs, etc. When do we go to the grocery store and run errands? Logically I know I could figure it out but I don't really want to.

r00fus2• 3 years ago

What’s really lame is that parents have to become chauffeurs for their kids activities all damned day.

That is an Americanism I hope the rest of the world doesn’t emulate fully.

washywashy• 3 years ago

Yeah I don’t really understand this. I would ride bus to and from school. Stay after school for activities and find a ride back with friends or siblings or some other way without my parents needing to get involved. Anecdotal but whenever I see school buses now, they mostly seem empty and whenever you pass a school there’s a huge drop off or pick up line.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

I'd rather spend the time driving my kids than sitting in traffic driving to work and back. Getting them from school is not a big deal, school is 5 minutes away and they often walk. Real issue is to sports, to far away to walk. But yes, getting kids to activities and back is a lot but I enjoy sitting there and watching my kids have fun. Few things better in life than watching your kid do something they are proud of.

benjaminwootton• 3 years ago

Aren’t you supposed to be working from home and getting paid for it whilst doing all of that?

I can see why employers want people back in offices if that is what the working day looks like for some people.

joe_fishfish• 3 years ago

My day is similar to the poster you’re replying to. It’s easy to make up the time in the evenings if you’re already set up for working from home. Also some employers who have embraced remote working have also learned that results matter more than time served, and no longer care where you are or what you’re doing as long as you’re achieving what you need to.

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

Considering the time I have to put in over the weekend occasionally and at night, they are more than getting their money's worth.

doodlebugging2• 3 years ago

With so many hi-rise office buildings vacant and so many employees today trying to maintain a work-from-home arrangement maybe we should take note of the recent news that Manhattan is sinking due to the trillion ton weight of all those buildings and just demolish all the vacant buildings and consolidate businesses in the remaining units.

We mitigate some of the subsidence issues and we free up a lot of real estate for new parks and quiet spots where people can reconnect with nature in the bowels of a huge city without having to go to Central Park, etc.

This looks like a win for New Yorkers.

givemeethekeys• 3 years ago

You want me, the owner of a vacant skyscraper (and possibly the land that it sits on) to do what? Donate it to "we"? I don't think "we" are going to compensate me adequately. I think I'll just turn the buildings into condos as soon as "we" let me.

doodlebugging2• 3 years ago

My post was a bit tongue-in-cheek and was intended to tie this story with the other badly written story in the news about how the weight of the buildings on the island could be causing subsidence. Proposing to demolish unoccupied buildings, haul the debris off the island, and convert the lots to usable park space was obviously a bullshit proposal.

Of course it we put some thought into it maybe good things could happen.

Lets think outside the box in a move fast and break things manner. If we moved fast enough and broke down enough of these buildings then the island could find an equilibrium much sooner. (As a geoscientist I am skeptical). Like in many things related to new software, services, apps, the whole part about how me make it pay off can be figured out later. Run at a loss long enough to fix all the defects in your business model and maybe your first adopters will be gullible enough to set you up for success later. The important part is to be first to the product space and to set the tone and tempo for those that follow. You're the leader, defining the narrative and all others must iterate on your model and brainstorm ways to improve the process while trying to attract funding for their dubious improvements.

I recognize that you and others may not be as forward thinking as I am. If something is to be broken you want to make sure it belongs to someone else or that there is a path to enrichment for you. Surely your investment has paid out many times over and you are ready for a new challenge in an exciting new market or product space.

Maybe you should call someone at HUD and explore your condo options. It may be better for society anyway if some of the commercial space were converted to affordable housing. That region could use more affordable housing. You are probably aware that conversion of commercial property to housing requires a lot of infrastructure improvements and building upgrades to be feasible. Fortunately HUD or other government agencies may have funds to soften those costs and get you right back into business as owner of the most conveniently placed residential property in the city. Just be sure to follow project guidelines in how the money is used to avoid legal problems down the road. People could live a block from their jobs in one of the not-vacant office properties.

Like at least one of our large news services, I'm just throwing shit at the walls here. Maybe some of it will stick.

seventytwo• 3 years ago

Pass a law that says if it’s vacant for a year, it becomes property of the city.

ChuckMcM• 3 years ago

Given that apartments rent for $77/sq ft and office space is $75/sq ft, getting the zoning fixed so that you could turn this into apartments might get it rented faster?

nologic01• 3 years ago

If the skyscrapers stay below required occupancy rates for too long the CRE securitisations they collateralize will default and they will become (mostly) bank property.

The new owners will try to offload them to the highest bidder. So I forecast an active second hand skyscraper auction market (with the usual lemon problems).

What will be the price? Well if people don't need and/or don't want to work in those places anymore, the price will be determined by the next best use.

For a low enough price I could imagine artist colonies turning them into cavernous post-modern studios where the sky-high rise and precipitous fall of a particular way of living and working will be documented with great artistic sensibility.

biztos• 3 years ago

And then at some point the artists will be pushed out in a gentrification wave after they made it cool to live in the skyscrapers. Those artists that had money to begin with, or made a lot really fast, will have bought a bunch of the property and stick around and make it seem like it’s still arty… but of course they’re actually real estate investors now as much as they are artists.

Exactly like it happened with the old industrial lofts in so many cities. NY, SF, Berlin just off the top of my head.

That said, it’s probably the best realistically possible outcome here.

soupfordummies2• 3 years ago

I'm really thinking/hoping that offices become the new lofts.

sgt101• 3 years ago

When I started work I had two huge desks with office furniture behind me - my own working space. Seniors and managers had offices to work in and to hold meetings in. I shared a meeting room with about 10 other people. One of my colleagues left because the crowding and noise were intollerable. I thought it was really nice.

After 25 years I had been promoted to Director level (6 steps) and now had a desk that afforded me 4 inches on each side of my elbows. There were maybe 50 people sharing the same meeting room space. All the offices were gone unless you were "executive" grade.

It was hell on earth to work in. In hindsight I got nothing done for about three years because the working environment was just impossible. "Execs" were happy because they got efficiency savings on the floorspace.

Then came covid. I was working from home. I cleared a space and set up a workstation (I was lucky to be able to do this I know). I went in on the monday morning I started work. I had cleared everything I needed to do by about 1:30 in the afternoon. I basically got 4 hrs a day back + travel. This improvement was sustained, and I was able to use it to actually contribute and create value and business rather than just putting out fires.

otikik• 3 years ago

City spending for the next five years on expenses including education, health care, pay raises for unionized city employees and the extraordinary and unexpected surge in the number of asylum-seekers is projected to grow 3.9% a year, exceeding projected annual tax revenues by more than a percentage point, Champeny said.

The list is technically correct but deceptive. It implies that those are the biggest expenditures (unless you read it carefully). The NYPD expenses, which is 10% of the total budget, the 3rd highest cost, and 5 times bigger than the asylum seekers budget, is left out.

NYC skyscrapers sit vacant

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