Managing Property

For investors and owners of office properties, 2020 was a roller-coaster year that left an unprecedented amount of office space empty for many months. Although working from home is a challenge for many knowledge workers, in a recent survey, 72% said they love it. Many employees wonder if the typical office might become a thing of the past.

At the same time, rents were paid at approximately 95% of normal levels during the year, and delinquencies of more than 30 days were consistently below 3%. All of this added up: office real-estate investment trusts lost 20% of the pre-pandemic peak of their unlevered value.

The unexpected experiment in remote working surpassed expectations because of the mass adoption of collaboration technologies. It reset expectations for the future because it opened up new possibilities for how much flexibility employees can have in choosing how and where to work. In fact, more than half of employees say that they would like their organisations to adopt more flexible models.


Remote working has not been an overwhelming success, however, as issues of burn-out and isolation have continued. A recent global study notes that 56% of workers surveyed said that job demands have increased. And the work-from-home experiment has helped certain populations more than others.

From “The Workplace Will Never be the Same: Imperatives for Real Estate Owners and Operators”