Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. The Man Who Said Ukraine Would Win

“Victory for the Ukrainians is coming very fast,” says Bernard-Henri Lévy. “And I was the first to predict it.” Mr. Lévy is on his fifth visit to the country since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in late February; his first was in mid-March.

““I am in the east,” he tells me Wednesday by WhatsApp, the least unreliable way to communicate from the front lines. He’s in Kupyansk, a town “just liberated,” then to Izium, where “Ukrainian families are just beginning to return.” Two days earlier, the Russians had bombed the heart of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, including a children’s playground. But he still feels “a strong wind of victory. A sad victory, of course. A victory in the midst of graves, but victory nonetheless.””

Mr. Lévy, 73, is conventionally billed as a “French philosopher.” That’s wholly inadequate to describe a man who’s also a journalist and filmmaker, a passionate crusader for democratic rights, and a freelance envoy of the Western world to war zones on almost every continent. We met last month, after his return from his fourth Ukraine visit, in Mr. Lévy’s exquisitely furnished and commodious apartment in the heart of Paris.

2. Analysis Shows Most Office Spaces, Even Fancy Ones, Are Vastly Underused

The return-to-office in the wake of the pandemic has happened in fits and starts, but a consistent theme is that offices are far less full than they once were.

“While building swipe data from Kastle Systems has shown that office occupancy nationally is still less than half of the pre-pandemic average, a new analysis by proptech firm Density shows how spaces inside the office themselves are being used — or, rather, hardly used at all.”

Density analyzed 500,000 working hours in roughly 2,000 workplaces across 13 cities and found that 71% of office spaces can accommodate four times more users than they do today, it said in a release.

3. Companies Pull Away Perks as Staff Return to the Office

Company perks are like icing on a cake. It’s not a must but it’s good to have — and it looks pretty bad when you scrape it off.

“But during COVID-19, the little extras were even more heavily emphasized. Perks (and amenities) were the thing that many on both the tenant and landlord side believed would induce workers to return to their fancy (and pricey) Manhattan desks.”

Now that the pandemic is over, according to President Biden — and considering the fact that many market observers worry about a recession possibly on the horizon that would give employers leverage they did not have a few months ago — does this still hold true?

4. People Still Quit Jobs, but More Office Workers Are Staying Put

American workers quit 4.2 million jobs in August, but one type of employee appears to be getting cold feet about switching employers or quitting to take a career timeout: office workers.

“People with jobs classified as professional and business services, including those who work in occupations such as accounting, engineering, office administration, legal services and consulting, quit in far fewer numbers in August than they had in previous months, according to the latest federal data. Worries about slowdowns, such as Amazon.com Inc.’s recently announced hiring freeze for retail corporate workers, may temper workers’ confidence about how quickly they could find a new role. ”

The 12% drop to 682,000 resignations in the sector was the biggest single-month decline since April 2020, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show. In the finance-and-insurance category, workers handed in 100,000 resignations, a 7.3% decrease from 109,000 in July. At the same time, resignations soared among lower-wage workers: The 956,000 August resignations in leisure and hospitality are the most recorded in a single month, according to records that go back to 2000.

5. Far From 'Easy Money': Experts On The Hurdles Facing Office-To-Residential Conversions

There is growing consensus that there is pain ahead for a large chunk of the country’s office market, but widespread conversion of commercial buildings into housing isn't going to be the quick fix some hope for.

““There are now potentially a lot of excited developers thinking that this could be some easy money,” Julie Whelan, CBRE head of occupier research for the Americas, said at the National Association of Real Estate Editors Conference this week in Atlanta. “But you have to understand location, and demographics of that location drive what the demand is in that particular area.””

The complexities and the hurdles can be hard to overcome, Cross & Co.'s Ed Cross said. Cross is in a partnership planning to turn a 1929 office building in San Antonio called the Tower Life Building into hundreds of mixed-income apartments. That building is just 40% occupied, he said, and is no longer economically viable as an office.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great and hugely impactful week!

Ken Ashley