When All This Is Over Will There Be An Increase In People Working From Home?
What I'm really hoping is that someone can send me a graph of people working from home 1-2 days a week, over a period of time, preferably 15 or more years.  Something similar to this chart, which I believe is people working from home full-time.  I remember seeing a chart a number of years ago that showed that while the number of people working from home full time was growing, what was increasing at a much faster rate was people working from home 1-2 days a week.

Some people have said that in the post-pandemic world we'll see an increase in square feet per worker, as people want less densification.  I think it might be just the opposite.  There are many workers that never worked from home before this because companies weren't set up for it.  Now every company and even state agencies have to be set up to work from home.

And now that employees have gotten a taste of working from home, I think many are going to try and not make the commute 1-2 days a week.  Employers are set up for it and may have seen that there was not a great drop in productivity (obviously there will be cases to the contrary) and perhaps even an increase as has been shown in some previous studies.

Assuming that is true, will firms move to the model where you don't have you're own cube or office?  You keep your stuff in a locker, or rolling suitcase type thing, and go to whatever space is open that morning.  People definitely like having their own dedicated space, but if it means saving an hour or more commute (one way) a few times a week, I think it's a trade-off most people will make.  Assuming that happens, it could lead to a 5% to 10% reduction in office demand when these leases roll.  What does everyone else think?  And please send along that chart if you have it!

https://preview.redd.it/q9mzxmw837u41.png?width=769&amp;format=png&amp;auto=webp&amp;s=a8064db0322e29ba1bf2b27f6339fb24592c411e
[{"id": "fo34uo9", "text": "I don\u2019t see huge shifts in work from home dynamics. Perhaps more companies will be ok with it in an ad hoc basis, but I don\u2019t foresee huge shifts in physical office space demand.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo38b65", "text": "My stance is that this has made me want to work from the office more than ever. \n\nI already was working from home maybe 1 day a week which felt like a luxury, however now it feels like a prison.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3av7c", "text": "Would you feel the same if you weren't stuck in your house at all other times?", "replies": [{"id": "fo41pa8", "text": "If you are in the US, you arent stuck in your home 24/7.  Esp if you live outside a major metro area, there is plenty of outside space to move around.", "replies": [{"id": "fo41pee", "text": "Happy Cake Day realestatedeveloper! I hope this is the beginning of your greatest, most wonderful year ever!", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo38zbg", "text": "I work closely with a lot of people in tech and own a tech business as well. I see a huge shift coming. I don\u2019t see how people can honestly expect to \u201creturn to the offices\u201d after a year of working from home. People have bought desks, companies have set up entirely new frameworks. Facebook for example has shut down all events until June 2021. Companies will follow suit. It\u2019s an incredibly large task to bring an entire company remote and an even larger task to go back to non-remote. \n\nEach day this lasts the harder it will be to return to \u201cnormal\u201d.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3gabf", "text": "People have been saying for years that traditional working hours should change to support improved work/life balance. For me personally, I like the idea of working in bursts between the hours of 9am and 9pm. \n\nObviously I'm not sitting at my desk for 12 hours, but my productivity is scalable as necessary. \n\nBusinesses benefit by having longer access to employees. Employees benefit by escaping traffic jams/accidents/fatalities and can spend more time with their families or running errands. \n\nI do think this will hurt us from a social aspect. Video conference calls don't quite replace face to face experiences and businesses already struggle with communication. Isolating staff to their homes prevents \"overhearing\" things that can be corrected on the spot.  \n\n\nAlso, regarding productivity, I find it strange how people can dismiss working from home while I see so many people gossiping at watercoolers, taking personal phone calls, or surfing their phones and other non-productive activities at the office.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fo3qucm", "text": "This will be highly job dependent. Some more cookie cutter jobs like accounting may be able to be done from home, but more innovative or sales related jobs will not. For a lot of job functions there is real value in having people working in a physical office together.\n\nLook at Apple, who spent $5B on a new HQ. They certainly have the tech to allow most of their people to work from home if they wanted, but find over $5B in value in having them work together.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo39j6c", "text": "Work from home means work from lower cost of living areas. So super expensive markets will get cheaper and super cheap markets will get more expensive. Open floor plan hopefully dies.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3gl0q", "text": "The open floor plan is a den of distraction and disease. I hope it dies as well.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3da9r", "text": "People miss the office. Craving it more than ever. Two sides to the coin", "replies": [{"id": "fo3v3fb", "text": "I'm not. I've been an advocate for more remote work for years, and my productivity is  through the roof now that EVERYBODY is remote and everyone has been forced to catch up to how to make it work. I'm never going back to full time being-in-an-office work.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3v883", "text": "How? Doesn\u2019t your company need you back?\n\nAlso what makes you more productive at home? You wake up and work in the same spot? Doesn\u2019t that getting sickening? Aren\u2019t you craving a new work area? How don\u2019t you get distracted?", "replies": [{"id": "fo3vu18", "text": "It's great. I can get into a zone and just fucking WORK without distractions. People are less likely to schedule meetings disguised as work. When we do need meetings it's for a reason. \n\nMy team has never missed deadlines but now we are just smoking - way ahead and getting so much more done. Love it.\n\nWhile some work is better face-to-face, most of the time 'being in an office' is what people use as a metric to show they are working. It's bullshit and I've fired a good number of people over the years when those types of people landed on my team. But I've always run my divisions or teams based on goal-oriented results metrics. I never gave a damn if employees were in the office or not, just cared if the work got done. So moving to 100% online was easy for us.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3whru", "text": "Fair argument. I just think that face to face is important. Maybe I can see people doing 1x WFH. I\u2019ll do that if I could. Problem is most\nCompanies won\u2019t let once things get back to normal.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3wzrb", "text": "I'm not going to rent an entire office just because some person wants to play solitaire and chat in the break room. If there's a legit reason (there are a few), we can rent some space but companies have been wasting thousands of man hours and money on office space when they should be just working and getting on with their lives.\n\nI once worked for a company where my boss was two states over, and I only saw him in person twice in my entire time there. There was never a problem.", "replies": [], "depth": 6}], "depth": 5}], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fo3v994", "text": "I know I certainly miss it. Seasons 3 and 4 were awesome. Oh wait.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3eoie", "text": "People may miss the office, but business owners are realizing the savings they could have setting up people to work from home. I work with A LOT of commercial property owners and management companies and many of them are terrified.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3un1d", "text": "At the very least it reduces pressure to lease new space for fast growing companies.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3fbxj", "text": "I imagine most prefer to work at home part of the week. Studies show that many mangers feel insecure about their employees giving their 100%.", "replies": [{"id": "fo3rv60", "text": "I think there is a difference between having people work from home, even 100% after they've had time to bond in a physical office for months or years, and having a brand new hire who has never spent time with his coworkers to build that rapport in informal settings. It's not the same level of trust/connection.", "replies": [{"id": "fo51gvj", "text": "Completely agree. I can\u2019t imagine starting a new job during this and never physically meeting your coworkers.  Seems like you\u2019d feel very disconnected to the company and it\u2019s culture.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3gq3s", "text": "short answer: yes, of course\n\nlong answer: offices will still be in demand, but probably a lot of re-locations and downsizing of space", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3jx81", "text": "Office broker here.\n\nThe office is going to change. If it gets smaller or bigger is going to be difficult to tell with certainty. Right now I expect it to get smaller. I think you are correct in that there are largely three main forces pushing and pulling on the space. For the expansion side, it is health reasons. Cushman and Wakefield did a study ([Office](https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/netherlands/six-feet-office)) in which they are arguing for an expanded foot print so that people are not on top of each other. The factors for a smaller foot print are that work from home (WFH) policies are here to stay and lastly, if companies can save money, they will. The whole Covid-19 merely accelerated a trend that was already occurring. \n\nMy personal experience with the open office and hoteling option is that it sucks hands down in terms of productivity and focus. There are simply too many interruptions going on to really dive into a complex problem so things take longer. What I see possibly happening are larger conference areas or sections for teams where individuals are assigned a desk area to share. This avoids the problem of hoteling where you can never find a space or a person. This also allows for teams to work efficiently together as well as know who is sick or not. \n\nThe impact of all of this Covid health stuff on marketing space for lease is that janitorial companies will have to substantially step up their game. Currently janitorial crews do a quick little clean - aka take out the trash, wipe down the bathrooms, and pretend to vacuum. In the Class A office buildings, you will see cleaning become a differentiator in the market or companies even hiring special crews to wipe everything down properly\n\nPeople are happiest when they have a choice. If you give employees the option or privilege to work from home then there is less turnover and companies save money from the reduced turnover on top of the potential reduced footprint. That being said the sales group typically does better in a group rather than as individuals. This is coming from friends that are sales managers for tech companies. People do well for three months and hit their numbers. Get the work from home option and totally miss their numbers. The software groups - probably can work from home 2-3 days a week depending on projects. Finance groups can be on the same program except for close of books.\n\nThe space market is going to take a hit. Normal companies that were looking at expansions have put everything on hold for the next 120 days to see what all happens. Companies that do not survive  \\*cough\\* WeWork \\*cough\\* are going to give back a lot of space. Major metros with a lot of co-working space are going to be hardest hit as they are going to struggle from both a demand and supply standpoint. \n\nThe good news is that the market - at least where I am at - was not over heated, over priced, or over built. In theory, there will not be a massive amount of product sitting for several years, but it will be a strong tenant market. Ultimately though whether these groups are taking smaller spaces because of a change in business or change in operations will be difficult to determine in the near future. This trend will not be made apparent for at least a year.\n\nHappy to discuss more as I am trying to work through the same issue.\n\n\\*edited for clarity", "replies": [{"id": "fo3rcgd", "text": "&gt; My personal experience with the open office and hoteling option is that it sucks hands down in terms of productivity and focus. \n\nBingo. People act like this is a magic slam-dunk solution, and it's not. EVERY single person I know who's office has gone to this model hates it. Not great for employee retention/productivity.\n\nAlso totally agree on WeWork. With Softbank withholding their bailout cash and now this, they are in deep trouble. Their entire business model revolves around maximizing the number of people per sf in their locations. That's fundamentally incompatible with social distancing. Combined with long term rent obligations matched to short-term subtenant leases, I don't think they survive.", "replies": [{"id": "fo42rpw", "text": "Working from home sucks. I struggle to focus in my apartment. For those with the discipline more power to ya but many need a specific place to work.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}, {"id": "fo5z36v", "text": "WeWork was doomed before the crisis. Fixed costs supported by variable income not a solid foundation.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fo587az", "text": "Saw that Cushman thing, too. Complete nonsense to think that will be the \"new normal\". No f'ing way are companies going to add square footage and rent cost. If safety and health are the priority, company's will switch to WFH. Then again, there's a scenario where a certain % of companies convert to WFH which would depress rent prices, thereby allowing for more square footage per person...Ok, I've confused myself now.", "replies": [{"id": "fo6u7k7", "text": "I was not sold on companies spending more on space but then... what about property or company liability? Is the building unsafe because the density of the use is too high. Should decision makers have reasonably known that hoarding people in a small space would lead to a sick working environment. I do occasionally see limits on person per sf and expect to see more of these clauses in the future. \n\nBut yeah your analysis I think has merit. It will depend on the market and on what forces win out overall.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fqopd98", "text": "Also a broker here....\n\nI very much agree.\n\nThe best way I\u2019ve been able to describe the change is going from a college library format where everyone has their own desk and there\u2019s a conf room + meeting rooms to something that will resemble a student union where there space to work, collaborative rooms, and a place for meetings.\n\nThe world of we are \u201cAcme Inc.\u201d and this is our office that makes us look like a BSD company is dead.\n\nAs for companies that go entirely work remote (like Twitter), they can pay their employees less if they\u2019re not in the Bay Area and they don\u2019t have real estate expense.  Even if productivity is reduced their profit margin may not reflect that.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3kkug", "text": "It's going to be a combination of a couple days at home and a few in the office. The collaboration that happens in an office is vital to any organization. The \"hotelling\" model may die - you don't know who sat there last and how well the area was cleaned. Instead we may see oversized offices where a group (or team) of  8 - 10 can share  4-5 desks. Scheduling would be easy and you know who your sharing the space with, giving confidence that there isn't some random Pigpen using it when your not. More drywall &amp; hvac = more TI = higher rents.\n\nI'd be interested in that graph too if it exists.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3q471", "text": "&gt;Assuming that is true, will firms move to the model where you don't have you're own cube or office? You keep your stuff in a locker, or rolling suitcase type thing, and go to whatever space is open that morning. People definitely like having their own dedicated space, but if it means saving an hour or more commute (one way) a few times a week, I think it's a trade-off most people will make. \n\nSome companies already do this, but there are a few problems with it:\n\n1) Employees hate it. People usually have their desk configured for the way they use it, pens available, external monitors set at the right height and angle, chair adjusted, etc. Having to reconfigure all of that every day you come into the office could take as much time as those with a shorter commute.\n\n2) You are more likely to spread disease when you don't have a dedicated workspace. Lots of different people using the same cube can lead to transfer of infection unless cleaning is absolutely flawless everyday, which is not realistic.\n\n3) It can lead to reduced office efficiencies. Think of a typical large office where you know where everyone sits, so if you have an issue, you can pop over to their desk to quickly resolve it. If people are sitting in different spaces everyday, and certain teams/functions are used to working together, but need to reserve sections of the office to avoid having randoms sitting in the middle of their workgroup, this leads to a lot of time wasted on policies and logistics.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo3tep9", "text": "&gt; Assuming that is true, will firms move to the model where you don't have you're own cube or office? You keep your stuff in a locker, or rolling suitcase type thing, and go to whatever space is open that morning.\n\nThis is called hoteling. My spouse works at a Fortune 100 tech co, and even before this they had people walking around all day counting how often you were at your desk. If less than around 55% then you get told you need to work remotely and use hoteling desks when you need to come in. Seems like they want to remote everyone they can already, just because of growth.\n\nAnecdotally, her boss is old school and doesn't like work from home. But after this they've all had to learn how to do it, and he likes it now. So he would probably not resist pressure from HQ to make their team all remote nearly as much as he would before. I suspect there are more middle managers just like him who have learned how productive remote work can be.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo4it2s", "text": "I think this will change how people will work and this entire situation will help wework and similar companies to bloom. People still need situations where they have face to face meetings with teams and clients but they\u2019ll realize they don\u2019t need it nearly as much and can save money on office space. I think companies such as wework are in a great position to sell office space as-needed or wanted.", "replies": [{"id": "fo51xif", "text": "Except they signed a lot of long term leases with the expectation to be able to sublease that space out on a month to month basis to tenants. If the economy goes into a deep recession those startup and smaller companies WeWork leases to will die, and WeWork will die with them", "replies": [{"id": "fo532rt", "text": "And another wework like company will spring up once the economy recovers to continue the concept. The concept isn\u2019t a bad one and I think matches more of the office type spaces we\u2019ll see in the future.", "replies": [{"id": "fo55vyv", "text": "Yeah I agree. I think WeWork was a poorly run company and bound to fail whenever there was any type of downturn. I think there\u2019s a place for coworking but it was overbuilt in a lot of cities.", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fo67nxd", "text": "I think a larger point is often missed in this work from home/office debate.  A lot of companies are learning through this pandemic that some of their positions can be permanently eliminated.  In some sectors companies employing 300 people in a work center will learn that they can run with 200 or 150 and not suffer production loss.\n\nFor independent workers or small companies with four or less people, gone is the stigma of not having a main and main address.  These folks wont be looked down upon if they work from home.  \n\nI also don't believe working from home will make us less productive.  It may in the short run but things like fax machines, laptops and blackberries all changed how we worked, decreased our social interactions and need for larger work spaces yet greatly increased our productivity.  \n\nI recently had a Board of County Commission meeting and a pre-development meeting with another city on the same day.  Two months ago this would have taken most, if not all of my day.  Both were conducted via video conferencing and took less than an hr of my time.  The BCC meeting ran over a three hour period but it was broken out in 30 minute sections and you were told your place in line.  My sections didn't start until 10:30.  I was in attendance for less than 30 minutes.  The pre-development meeting was less than 20 minutes.  This will become the new normal.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]