[bkjelden]

Hard to imagine that the US is not massively over-supplied with office space right now, given that some double digit percentage of workers will never go back to an office.

Every office space construction project right now is either paused or being driven forward by the sunk cost fallacy.

[davidkuennen]

I was in New York last week and couldn't believe how much office space is just completely deserted when looking out of my hotel window.

[paxys]

Still the most expensive office space in the country (https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/manhattan-office-space-...). Even though there is significantly more vacancy in Manhattan today than pre-2020, rents have barely gone down.

[marcosdumay]

Commercial spaces have this huge disconnect between occupancy and utilization. Just because nobody is there, it doesn't mean it's not occupied. And rents only ever fall when occupancy stays low for long periods.

So, well, wait a few more years before being surprised.

[pradn]

From what I hear, it's hard to reduce rents significantly as they're part of the financing arrangements with banks. Rents in general seems to be really sticky.

[htag]

I agree we are over supplied with office space.

I do doubt there are many available locations for 25,000 workers in Arlington. This is an indicator that Amazon is unsure about the amount of office space it will need near the capitol, not that they think they can get a better deal with a pre-existing building. Maybe it doubts that it will need as many workers as previously thought. Maybe it questions if they need as much space for the same number of workers. Maybe it is second guessing the value of condensing workers in large hubs.

My guess is that they recently lowered their internal projections for the size of future federal government contracts. Pubic sentiment has lowered since '18, and politicians might be more sensitive to awarding them contracts.

[reaperducer]

Hard to imagine that the US is not massively over-supplied with office space right now

Easy to imagine, since it's been in every newspaper almost every single day for the last two years. Last i checked, SFO had something like 30% office occupancy rate.

Where i live, landlords are paying the few remaining tenants in some skyscrapers to move into other skyscrapers to concentrate the remaining offices in fewer buildings so that the other towers can be shut down and mothballed, or turned into apartments.

[fraud]

This is very true. Relative is currently converting 4 story office building into apartments. Weirdly enough much of the space has been vacant since around 2018-2019. Not sure how much it has to do with the area but I think small businesses in general have started to lean away from office space as technology has gotten better.