Most commercial real estate is done by medium term to long term lease. The problems are only beginning. People are not returning to offices when they do not need to. When leases come up companies will reduce space by half, that's going to be a big hit.
Huge commercial buildings in San Francisco are already selling for 35% to 40% of what was the asking price two to three years ago. One big commercial building just sold for $65 million and a FReeper observed that’s not a lot more than the most expensive residential estates on the San Francisco Peninsula.
So many cities are in death spirals. People don’t want to commute to the inner city, something they learned during COVID. BLM and antifa made many cities burned-out messes. Building prices collapse resulting in the tax base collapsing. City revenues to keep streets safe and clean aren’t there. Bums, druggies, graffiti, and excrement proliferate. Cops are fired. Cities become a lot more dangerous.
The result is people are even less inclined to commute to the city. Rinse and repeat.
Breaking cycles like that is extremely hard to do. It could take ten or fifteen years to climb out of this hole.
Maybe big city governments will come to their senses and hire lots of police, get rid of the bums, clean the streets, hire lots of tough-on-crime DAs, prosecute criminals, incarcerate them with long terms, and provide tax holidays to companies to keep their downtown offices open.
My corporation has transitioned to pretry much full virtual. Lots of buildings let go a little bit everywhere