‘Zombie Offices’ Spell Trouble for Some Banks
www.nytimes.com
Bank tremors serve as a reminder: Just because a crisis hasn’t hit immediately doesn’t mean commercial real estate pain isn’t coming.

This is the real reason for companies wanting people back to the office.

All this talk about collaboration and team spirit is just the publicly given reason for wanting people back to the office.

The real reason is that now the owners of the buildings are losing money.

Cry me a river.

  • sunbeam60English
    25·
    11 months ago

    Didn’t you and I already debate this?

    Your argument is no different than saying the stone chipping business will collapse because pesky bronze smelters are making swords.

    A broad portfolio doesn’t have a particularly heavy real estate position. Maybe some state pension schemes are - I think you mentioned the Canadian one last one - but it’s not like the office buildings become worthless from one day to then other. Some will remain occupied offices, some will convert into residential accommodation. Others will get torn down and redeveloped. The economy will adapt.

    • phillaholic@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      11 months ago

      A collapse of the commercial real estate market would spill over to the larger market and most certainly impact any investments you have. We don’t really want banks to go under in big ways, it always ends up hurting the poor and middle class the most.

      • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        Given the overwhelming amount of debt the general public has, having the rich share the load and lose their shirts too would be nice. At this point there isn’t much left for us unmoneyed people and watching the system they rely on burn them as much as it hurts is is fine. Let the rich lose.

        • phillaholic@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          The really rich can loose more shirts than any of the rest of is will own in 10 lifetimes and not be meaningfully impacted. Not only do they have other shirts, when the fire gets put out they still have the capital from other places that they will use to buy up the pieces at rock bottom prices and profit throughout the rebuild. Outside of situations like the whole GameStop situation from a bit ago, you’re not going to screw over ultra rich people by having markets fail. Everyone else will suffer why they are mildly inconvenienced.

      • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        It’s not really a ‘could’ spill over, it definitely would.

        A very high proportion of institutional investment is tied up in CRE. If enough defaults happen it might even be worse than 2008.

        Doesn’t mean we should tip the scales in favor of CRE or the banks, though. If it comes to pass, we should nationalize the assets and socialize retirement (more). If we didn’t have all our retirement accounts in private markets our exposure to this kind of error wouldn’t be so high.

        • phillaholic@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          Yea I was being as neutral as possible in my answer. I agree it absolutely would be worse than 2008. I don’t think nationalizing the assets are going to work in this environment. The best we can hope for is regulation, but in the specific situation no one really did anything wrong. A Global pandemic flipped norms on their head.

          • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            but in the specific situation no one really did anything wrong

            Banks invested in over-leveraged positions and lost liquidity, loosing their client’s savings. If they want the benefit of privatized banking and reap the profits, they should be prepared to accept the losses. I don’t think that’s a controversial opinion.

            • phillaholic@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              11 months ago

              There could be individual banks over-leveraged in commercial real estate, but those aren’t important. At this scale it’s large enough to cause a a major recession or crash. We’ve seen smaller banks fail recently.

              • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
                1·
                11 months ago

                No, I’m making a generalized statement about privatized banking. If we are constantly socializing the losses when private banking makes a critical error, then we should be socializing the profit, too.

                If they end up causing a crash, I think it’s time we socialize the assets left over rather than ‘bailing them out’ for continued private operation. You suggested that nationalizing the assets would be too controversial in this environment, but I actually think intervening on behalf of private financial institutions and commercial real estate landlords would be more so.