The real problem with commercial real estate is people not coming to work, says Bruce Ratner

Bruce Ratner, former New York City real estate developer and 'Early Detection' author, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the real estate market, state of commercial real estate, mortgage rate outlook, Ratner's personal crusade against cancer, and more.

[@user-ho1pj8vm8l]

When there is no good reason to drive to an office, or as you say "go into work" why should anyone? To float the values of your failing real estate investments? So businesses can pay your extortion high rent to building owners? I'll pass.

[@reedriter2]

There is still a good reason to go in the office. I learn so much from being in the office that one can't learn by sitting home alone isolate. I hear stuff, for example, that other business units are doing that our team can intersect with. I also build a stronger working relationship with the executive team.

[@user-ho1pj8vm8l]

@reedriter2 have you tried just asking around, browsing documentation, roadmaps on jira or confluence or github? google docs? reading other channels in slack or teams? you know: where all of this information is laid out better and available for everyone to see whenever and more searchable and easy to reference details from later?

[@nutsbutdum]

"Guys, remember how you worked from home for two years straight without major problems!? Yeah, we need you to forget all that and come back to rent our overpriced buildings. I got a mortgage on my third mansion in the Hamptons, it's not fair!"😂😂😂

[@stevechance150]

And then when you come back to the office, we're going to do our best to replace you with AI, so we can pay our CEO even more money.

[@reedriter2]

Except what's happening at certain companies is that once they figure out they can't get their local workers back in the office, outsourcing to India suddenly becomes more attractive again.

[@Vin-pd7mh]

We never WENT BACK to ride horses.... After the automobile.... Did we ? Convert the offices to housing or perish.

[@tysoncodes]

For the vast majority they cannot be "converted" to housing. But taking the complete loss and building a luxury residential property is in some cases feasible if they can get the capital to do it.

[@Alpha_David]

@@tysoncodes You're absolutely wrong. It is fairly straight forward to push water and sewage systems through commercial buildings - there's entire companies that have cropped up over the last couple years to support. The largest hurdle is Zoning/Enforcement/Regulatory in nature. Don't speak to things you have no expertise or actual knowledge about.

[@peterbedford2610]

Conversions only make economic sense if they can buy the property for at least 50% of current market prices...

[@elaishh3533]

@@Alpha_Davidthe plumbing in the building is not the only issue. The amount of water waste in an office building vs residential is massive and the city sewer may not be able to handle the increase in that part of the city. Also where do all the people park ?

[@Alpha_David]

@@elaishh3533 Parking is a legit concern. Agree there. In big cities not a lot of folks own cars though. SF and NYc for example.

[@amatuer2]

Since Covid, the company i work for allows me to work anywhere I want. As long as my assignements are complete its all good.

[@jonathanhart8046]

What a terrific guest. No BS . Very refreshing.

[@wnose]

1 hour driving to work, then another hour driving back. 2 hours a day.... 10 hours a week.... 500 hours a year. What could you do with 500 extra hours a year????

[@jemje2007]

I used to do it for 8 years. It was exhausting. Now I only drive 15 minutes a day.

[@reedriter2]

The downside is that you are more likely to be laid off as a remote worker.

[@HelloWorld-hb7yt]

at least he is honest.

[@geraldbrowne]

Love this guy

[@southrichmondtofl]

his brother had metastatic cancer but don't know what kind and he wrote a book about it? I have many questions about your lover!

[@emonemo4944]

Lets go back to office, lets ditch cars for horses, smartphones for pagers.

[@stevechance150]

Let's go back to the office, so we can teach some AI software how to do our jobs. (Fun Fact: an AI bot doesn't need an office to work in either).

[@EricHansen-fr3cz]

If you love your career ? It's not Work ..

[@EricHansen-fr3cz]

@wbay3848 100% whats your career ? Am retired & part time work now $

[@ravikurup8350]

Petrol prices are at an all time high and employers are not offering any compensation. Prices of food is also skyrocketing. Better to stay home, save money, and less carbon pollution is good for everyone

[@XxXenosxX]

No need to go back to office when the same thing is accomplished without huge real estate expenses

[@Andrew-3445]

He wants us to go back in so the Scrooge McDucks don't have to sell their 10th vacation home and yacht. It's so costly for us peasants to go into the office though, both in time and money.

[@stache1954]

It's a societal shift.

[@braven07]

Agree. Work from home isn’t going away

[@Lobsterdollar]

Or a wealth transfer

[@ericp4573]

People are willing to work for less money from home, and do more work. On top of that these big companies are saving tens of millions of dollars a year not having to pay these leases

[@Seanpfree]

This is THE END of first time home ownership and the slow death of the middle class in a generation.

[@jonathantaylor6926]

Most of these office buildings are in the downtown of rotting cities. People might not admit it but they don't want to walk past homeless people, drug addicts, and "migrants".

[@samuelmbowa6755]

Yet he also said the same cities have a housing shortage

[@w00deey12]

The guest didn’t let them muddy the water with macro rhetoric. Great job focusing on the micro factors!!!

[@Rob_G716]

No one is working in commercial offices anymore. It’s over!

[@CarlChiRealty]

You can tell he really is passionate about early cancer detection!

[@reedriter2]

unfortunately, he doesn't have the data on his side. There is no such thing as early detection. By the time these screening tests catch cancer, it's already too late, if it's usually too late. A lot of the 'cancer' that is caught early is very slow growing cancers that would never have caused any issue. Also, if ou die 7 years after your cancer was caught early, as occurred with my mother, you are considered to have 'survived' cancer, as survival rate is measured in 5 years. All that changed with early detection is that you lived with anxiety a couple of more years, but your date of death did not necessarily change.

[@Donkor640]

I Love the way he redirects the False-Positive narrative at the end. False-Negative is a much bigger problem.

[@damham5689]

Long before the pandemic we were all being told that corporations wanted to move to work from home to save money on office space. Then it happened and they said "hold the phone ! We own the building other corporations are sending employees home from to reduce their cost " Corporate rake stepping.

[@ronie6773]

Great content! ❤

[@darrenmccammon9636]

New York City's tax base is hollowing out: Apollo Commercial Real Estate (ARI) announced a $1 per share write-down on its Steinway Tower loan. The average whole floor apartment at Steinway Tower has an excellent view of Central Park and runs about $20 million. The Penthouse goes for more than twice that. If this kind of property in NYC is taking significant write-downs it implies a meaningful hollowing out of New York City's tax base.

[@seejendo3290]

When people report on new home pricing and numbers - are they generally inclusive of rent to build? And what does this mean in the context of new home inventory numbers we’ve seen?

[@User-pu3lc]

Businesses have more than enough data showing they get more productivity out of people working from home where it makes sense. The corporate real estate owners will keep crying but businesses aren’t listening. My company is counting down the days to drop our lease. Massively under utilized space. The tragedy in all this is investors are shifting from corporate to residential real estate and gaslighting people with “there’s not enough housing” across media channels. They are cornering desirable housing markets and manipulating prices of assets and rents to cover their corporate real estate loses.

[@SJ-lt6yf]

Great man

[@VegasVaron]

Real estate, especially REITS are in for a big surprise when interest rates come up readjustment.

[@Tesfas]

what about reducing the cost of these test and making them more accessible?

[@judewarner1536]

The real problem is that the people who run everything have an 18-month, profit-driven future perspective. They are never ready for change and just want things to carry on the way they always have. Their second preference, after things have changed, is to return things to the way they were before. There is a HUGE potential market for converting entire dead office buildings into accommodation, which is in short supply everywhere. This is beginning to happen apace in Central London, England with apartments going on the market at £2 million (do your own currency conversion).

[@MrSuperbluesky]

Becky still Furious cos she has to pay more to park

[@jalopy2472]

If the companies paid me more to live in the center of the city, then yes I’ll go into the office. Pay me more, or setup desirable company housing, with more than 1 bedroom in a nice part of the city. Then I’ll gladly come in.

[@joshm960]

Is the plantation empty?😂😂😂😂i mean offices

[@davidwilliams4498]

Its very simple an knew it would happen when people shop an buy online brick an mortar stores lose when so many jobs are just computor BS jobs many work at home. This will surely affect all real estate in time. People want this easy great technology though its a jobs an commercial real estate killer indeed...be interesting to see in another 10 yrs how this all turns out.

[@peterbedford2610]

Reduces value of commercial office space , while increasing the value of home office space. Less commuting = lower oil consumption, traffic and pollution ....many costs. But, tax revenues decline and local businesses decline. The US has a very large economy built around people going to an office. This will have impacts all over the place!!.

[@mikehundt4263]

Better to prevent it altogether

[@Bjamin9891]

Make cities safe, fun and livable until then who wants to go back into the office

[@herrwahnsinn4229]

Interesting title. Detoxing must be active every day

[@diamondbolton2944]

With the speculative 4-day work week, additionally people will need somewhere to go leisurely/entertainment.

[@user-fb6hy2eh5y]

The environmental impact of driving in to work is why we didn't see smog during the pandemic. Sock on that.

[@tioopuh]

Why wasn't the last part it's own section, it was more important than all of that jabber about housing

[@attinsona]

LOL the congestion pricing question and he shut it down.

[@uditkumar3255]

Cities are dabbling with congestion surcharges/Toll and on the other hand complaining about empty offices. Both can’t go hand in hand. If you want de congested cities (main area) let the employment not concentrated at one place and work from home is spreading employment opportunities. Accept it, embrace it, then there is no need for congestion Toll

[@lushlife6864]

Can't we print some money for these victim landlords?

[@stevechance150]

You literally made me laugh out loud. My question for the fat cat landlords is this, "What are you going to do when AI makes it easy for companies to layoff 90% of their workers"?

[@thehonesttruth8808]

People gotta live somewhere

[@mschief-central4940]

The problem with not coming back to the office don’t need to come to the office. Work from home was proven to be productive, saves on gas, car wear and tear, contributes to worker morale and work/life balance. It’s real estate and middle management that has to try to justify their position that were yelling for return to office. We’re short on housing in every income level from fixed income disabled, seniors, vets through to higher income earners. No need for all this high end luxury only, we need all income straight 30% of net income housing. Not HUD, not housing authorities.

[@dalepellerin]

And we never will!

[@dakadoodle6295]

Or could be that its become obsolete? Crazy idea

[@mulemule]

*"The real problem with commercial real estate is **_real estate developers ignoring the cultural shift of_** people not coming IN to work." (ftfy)*

[@TheWizard856]

Let people WFH and convert these offices into housing. Why do they resist dropping rents and peoples happiness? It seems sick to me.

[@cashcow4383]

What will turn into a nighmare is the vast amount of strip malls that have nothing but fast food, subs, tacos, burgers all these strip malls are nice i cant see them enough money when the economy slows down. Not everyone is gonna buy a a $12 sub or 14 dollar borrito bowl.

[@od2437]

4:37 someone farted? 😂

[@user-yg7fz5gq9x]

I'd rather quit than work for real estate renting anything property is a professional scam.

[@eliza5960]

People are going to work, they are just not chained to a desk

[@humanbeing5300]

Well you got rid of cubicles and expect people to sit at an open table and make it impossible to work. The office is the least productive environment for most tech workers.

[@DG-hw8it]

It's a temporary disruption! 🌻

[@kirkwoodbharris5110]

You can fall through the floor

[@MB4.23]

Worst show on CNBC. Unwatchable

[@damham5689]

Squawk Box is a show only Ayn Rand would like. 😂

[@michaels7258]

People are never going back. It’s more productive to telework.

[@gerardsison7610]

But people are coming to work, they’re working in their home office.

[@drakeblessum3466]

Let me help you with headline: Real Estate investors bet billions of dollars in debt that workers would ALWAYS go into work… they bet wrong!!!

[@jrgb9945]

We are absolutely in for an extended recession

[@lifevest1]

I’ve seen how executives work. They spend half their day talking/cracking jokes. Their type of work =/= the work of low level workers who are glued to their screens all day. This guy is full of if when he says “not coming to work.”

[@stevechance150]

Why go back to the office when they're going to replace us all with AI as quickly as they can? Call center workers should be running for the door. I wouldn't even know what to tell these people to get training for, maybe LPNs or RNs. Boomers aren't going to want a robot caring for them.

[@Sujaljaina]

this guy looks a lot like chuck schumer

[@DakotaFord592]

Make all of the empty skyscrapers available for free. So people can live in them. There you go, problem solved!!

[@tevtv3450]

Captain Freakin OBVIOUS

[@ravikurup8350]

I don't want to be micromanaged anymore. If my boss changes the wfh policy to onsite then I'm leaving

[@All_Walks_]

I'm short vornado lol

[@chadvaughan-ry8yp]

Don't forget the largest experiment in human population 3 years ago....

[@Dusty-Zafu]

What test are they talking about? Re: lung cancer?

[@brycesattler2301]

*Modular Subsided Rent Controlled Properties!*

[@MesmerAloofly]

greed greed greed greed greed greed greed greed greed

[@nickseccombe1357]

PREVENTION is the key...lifestyle

[@thetradersam6157]

IBRX

[@user-sh3rz7rl4f]

LOL

[@MichaelLewis-mg4go]

Looks like he hasn't slept in years or he's been crying what's going on

[@ianpatrick23]

Oof

[@jf9670]

Rent is also a great write-off for businesses. You can only deduct so much from home. Large corporations want to take advantage of this. More tax incentives will come to bring back office. It's down but not dead. Work from home does not work

[@angelachanellehuang5663]

Real estate is a joke

[@elpepelucho]

this guy is totally wrong about interest rates, it's the exact opposite actually. They go up slowly and come down fast. Just pull up a chart of historic interest rates before you open your dumb mouf.

[@Andrew-3445]

Right, when the crash comes they don't lower them 0.25% at a time. They drop them to zero.

[@coryproffitt8676]

Entitled conservative republican blames others for his failures, typical.

[@InnerCircleScalpHunter]

This is where the wave of layoffs will come from . High office leases with less workers in the office coupled with a lack of productivity by work from home employees. Come back to the office to work or get laid off unless companies decide to transition into work from home only model