{"id":9263,"date":"2021-08-09T13:05:45","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T13:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/what-working-from-home-means-for-downtown-real-estate\/"},"modified":"2023-11-14T01:59:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T01:59:41","slug":"what-working-from-home-means-for-downtown-real-estate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/news\/what-working-from-home-means-for-downtown-real-estate\/","title":{"rendered":"What working from home means for downtown real estate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Downtown cores across North America are enlivening, as the pandemic appears to be drawing to a close\u2014although there\u2019s plenty of trepidation about another wave of COVID-19 infections\u2014but will they bustle like they used to?<\/p>\n

The onset of the pandemic brought with it strong economic headwinds that resulted in interest rates plunging to historic lows, and by extension sparking a housing rush that spread to exurbs. Despite elevated activity in downtown condo markets, remote working configurations, whether part- or full-time, are here to stay and that obviates the need to live close to offices.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everybody is going to go back to the office. Even if only 25% of the working population worked from home on a regular basis, that has a significant impact on what\u2019s going to happen in some of the core centres,\u201d said Patrick Francey, CEO of the Real Estate Investment<\/a> Network (REIN). \u201cThere are lots of jobs you have no choice but to go into a location, particularly in the service sector, but for a lot of IT and tech and administration jobs, as we\u2019ve discovered, you don\u2019t need to be in your office.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Deloitte surveyed 275 of its clients earlier this year and found that 67% of organizations were still conducting operations entirely remotely, while 64% intended to physically return to offices either fully or using a hybrid model that requires employees to be physically present a few days a week.<\/p>\n

Although more than a third of surveyed organizations intended to retain the same office space they had in March 2020, 39% planned to reduce their footprint by 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose planning for a hybrid strategy are 4.5 times more likely to expect a reduction in office space greater than 10%,\u201d said Deloitte\u2019s survey report.<\/p>\n

The survey results bolster REIN\u2019s claim, and Francey believes removing workers from downtown cores will affect rental demand. Downtown condos do offer a , which is drawing purchasers back in, but Francey anticipates that the quality of the tenant pool could suffer, at least somewhat, because most skilled jobs can be performed remotely. Consequently, that could influence condo investors decide to keep.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will always move towards affordability. As much as we\u2019re seeing Toronto proper come back, we ask ourselves, \u2018Why is that?\u2019 Everyone moved out and smaller centres that used to be affordable grew, and now they\u2019re no longer affordable, so in many regards people are going back to urban cores because there\u2019s affordability, and with vaccinations, it\u2019s not so risky anymore. But what if there is another lockdown this fall?\u201d he asked, referring to the fact that a substantial portion of renters work in sectors that have borne the brunt of COVID-related lockdowns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will always be individuals who, because of affordability issues, will always be renters, and right now in many regions there is a shortage of rental housing, but because of COVID and people not going back to the office, real estate investors are well advised to consider who their tenant profile<\/a> is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Downtown cores across North America are enlivening, as the pandemic appears to be drawing to a close\u2014although there\u2019s plenty of trepidation about another wave of COVID-19 infections\u2014but will they bustle like they used to? The onset of the pandemic brought with it strong economic headwinds that resulted in interest rates plunging to historic lows, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9263"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30153,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9263\/revisions\/30153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}