A lot of times, when people discuss the phenomenon of employers ending work-from-home and try to make their employees come back to the office, people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices.
I don’t follow the logic at all. How would doing this benefit an employer in any way?
There’s a lot of dumb answers here.
It’s not the sole motivation and it’s not even “a” motivation for some businesses.
Basically, wealthy people generally are going to have all sorts of investments. If you own any commercial property then you’re going to exercise whatever influence you have to support people continuing to work on premise. That influence is often in the form of shareholders putting pressure on management.
As far as I understand it, there are political interests too. Not just the obvious, ie a city council wanting to see economic movement within the city. Any regular person with a pension likely has money tied up in real estate. Ensuring those pensions maintain value is a concern for governments.
That’s true, but I didn’t go into that because OP didn’t ask.
Here in Aus local council revenue is a function of property value.
Why would the shareholders of a company want them to take on additional unnecessary expenses like leasing office space?
Or rather, why do real estate company shareholders have such ridiculous levels of influence compared to other groups who would logically prefer more wfh?
Because if you move up the ladder far enough, they’re all the same group. Mister X sits at the board for companies a, b and c, but he also has a real estate portfolio. He’s not the one spending the money for these companies to return to office but he has a vested interest in people returning to office in general, so he lobbies for it wherever he can. Simplified example but you get the gist.
That’s really not how it works. In the same industry sure. But not across vastly different industries like tech, legal, government, etc and real estate.
I would suggest you to check out warren buffets portfolio
Warren Buffet is not typical of CEOs. He’s an icon for a reason.
Warren Buffett is not directing resources from his position in one company to enrich himself in another company that he may have large personal holdings. That is one of the few ways shareholders can get around the safety of a corporation and sue a director.
More to the point, the board of directors are going to be extremely interested in the actions of Buffett if they think he is trying to enrich himself at the cost to their company.
Using him as an example that is.
It’s insidious.
It’s not influence as in “let’s have a logical and transparent discussion about wfh vs on premise”.
It’s rumours, back channel favours, manipulating numbers, etcetera.
Bear in mind not all companies are publicly traded. Plenty of closely held companies were started by grand dad and run on rumour and here say.
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