Office is the New Retail

A Dynamic Property Sector Faces Painful Adjustments and a Bifurcated Recovery

Despite wholly different market dynamics, the office property sector is confronting some challenging adjustments coming out of the pandemic that eerily mirror those buffeting the retail sector.

American office workers are preparing to venture out from their home offices and return to their company offices. But the workplace will not be the same. Most of us won’t be commuting in every day. More of us than ever before will rarely return to the headquarters. And many central headquarter offices will go away, replaced by smaller, more dispersed offices.

This reality invites the disingenuous strawman argument from some that “the office is dead.” It’s not, not nearly, and no one seriously believes it is. But the industry does face some daunting challenges that promise to alter fundamental market dynamics.

Read my article published in the Counselor of Real Estate’s Real Estate Issues journal here.