Why are companies demanding employees return to the office?
Because politicians have been desperately begging them to force their employees to return. Commercial activity in city centers was almost completely dependent on the daily massive inflow of office workers. They haven’t been coming in and lots of businesses have died as a result. Commercial real estate is quickly going down the tubes as a result. On the horizon, the politicians see what they most fear. Employees figure why do they even need to live in the expensive city at all? Why not move far away where there is less crime, the roads are less congested, there is less pollution and taxes are massively lower?
When that happens residential real estate and the tax base in places like NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, etc completely collapses.
I think that is an excellent point. People are choosing to move away from cities. We did. Unintended consequences. Liberals are fearing the commercial and residential real estate collapses. The cities are starving for revenue too.
THIS
Excellent insight. My buddy is head asset manager for a huge bank. Commercial RE is cratering. The venerable Met Grill in Seattle stopped opening for lunch. Crime is so bad in Seattle Amazon stopped work on buildings there and declared they are moving to Bellevue.
Amazon reversed it’s RTW policy after two of their employees were attacked, with one dead.
Institution forfeited all of their moral authority during the covid scam.
I moved on to five acres in a rural county and installed Starlink. Excellent service.