Why would a company care about a rented property losing value?

You asked a salient question and it’s truly unfortunate that no one is answering it. The first thing to know is that nearly all of the Companies pushing RTO either own Commercial Real Estate (CRE) directly or are otherwise tied to it by investment or peer group.

Companies like Amazon, FedEx, Twitter, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, JPMorgan, SalesForce, Zoom and hundreds more all know that the United States is about to experience a CRE collapse larger than the 2008 Financial Crisis and they have a strong financial incentive to stop it or at least soften it. Here’s a look at the problem.

During the pandemic many buildings were empty of workers either due to RTW or companies going under. Either way tenants weren’t paying which meant that the Commercial Property Companies(CPC) were struggling with the mortgage payments. The lenders (banks) not knowing what else to do followed a policy of “Extend and Pretend”, where they extended the loan terms and pretended that everything would get back to normal when the pandemic ended.

It didn’t go back to normal though and the CPCs are starting to go bankrupt because the banks won’t re-finance their loans, or if they will the payments will be much higher due to higher interest rates. These CPCs increasingly can’t afford the modest terms they have now so higher mortgage payments simply aren’t possible.

So as the CPCs go bankrupt and their mortgages go into the default the banks are left holding more and more CRE that isn’t worth anything NEAR what it was five years ago due to lack of demand. I’ve seen estimates of CRE dropping in value by 40%!

If this was only a few buildings in a few cities it wouldn’t be a problem but we’re talking about tens of thousands of buildings all across the United States. For example New York City has over 90 Million Square Feet of empty office space, Los Angeles has 54 Million Square Feet, and Chicago has more than 60 Million! You could bang in with any large city but here’s a good report on Seattle.

With nearly 900 BILLION dollars of CRE Mortgages coming due in 2024 alone a 5 % default rate has the banks taking losses of 45 Billion. By contrast at the height of the 2008 crisis the rate hit nearly 9%, which would put 2024 losses at over 80 Billion dollars. Then it happens all over again in 2025 when another 20% or so of CRE Mortgages come due!

In short the proverbial shit is about to get real deep and with no life jackets available the Companies pushing RTO are trying to save themselves and their buddies from drowning.

As an aside the Cities also have a strong financial incentive for RTO. They’re already losing staggering amounts of tax revenue and if CRE takes a 40% pricing plunge they’ll be even further underwater. Like turning off the lights in City Hall during the day to save money kinds of under water.