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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

I'm on the business side of the house, we keep waiting for rent to drop so we can find more space for growth, and it's not dropping because folks in real estate think there will be a rebound. As soon as I try to get into a negotiation, it's almost like they're MORE sticky on the price than they used to be, I guess because everyone is looking for a deal. I don't know what will happen but it makes no sense for me to pay premium for space when we can just hire people remote, and landlords are still not negotiating in a lot of markets (SF and NYC aside) exacerbating the business side of the house want to push hard into remote.

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My understanding and it could be wrong is that they can't lower their rates, (and might actually have to increase to compensate for more vacancy) because it will affect their ability to finance the buildings if they have lower rates from whatever math is used to calculate the soundness of the loans. That could be causing the stickiness on price you are seeing (if it's not apocryphal).

My understanding is your understanding is correct. I've also been told that's why NYC tends to be quite unique, the buildings are mostly owned so there is more leeway in finding something as you can go directly to the owner. That said, a startup I consult to is in the basement of a building in Vancouver, I talked to their landlord who owns the building free and clear for 3 generations, same deal, no reason to rent it, just let it sit till the market rebounds. Curious to see what will happen.

Must be the area you're in. In Melbourne, office real estate is practically on life support and they'll happily discount

Melbourne Australia is in the third year of population decline now. I know on top of this population shift that a huge number of the major employers have shifted towards much more work from home arrangements due to the pandemic and due to the the 263 days of lockdowns that were imposed I think many of these changes will last for longer than in places that were less disrupted. That said I still think commercial real estate prices here are artificially high/in a bubble because of the high number of vacancies even if there's already been a pullback in prices. Just structurally speaking the demand side for commercial real estate here has substantially fallen, but I'm not sure the same can be said for other parts of the world right now. I'd be curious to know more about what's happening in other locations as I feel like Melbourne is a bit of an outlier in many regards.

I've been keeping an eye on London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal for about 5 months now, really not seeing much movement at all unfortunately. Toronto and Vancouver are particularly holding on strong, stuff will sit empty for 3 months I'll go back and ask the brokers, owners are still not willing to lower the rent a cent, they really think everyone is coming back Q1/2 next year - it's pretty interesting to me.

What type of office space are you looking for your company?

Ah! Yeah you're right... I guess the lockdown has given me a bit of a bias.

Slightly on topic speaking of commercial real estate, I was sad to hear York Butter Factory is in liquidation :(

I can't say I'm entirely surprised, occupancy rates in Melbourne's commercial real estate are exceptionally low at the moment: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/ghost-town-warni...

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