Wall Street Journal (April 8)
“Landlords and their lenders held on to their office towers for years, hoping for a turnaround after Covid. Now, they are accepting enormous losses. Owners and creditors are capitulating to the reality that more employees are splitting their work time between home and office. They are also resigned to stubbornly higher interest rates, which lower property values and make it harder for buyers to borrow.”
Tags: Buyers, Capitulating. Reality, Covid, Creditors, Employees, Home, Interest rates, Landlords, Lenders, Losses. Owners, Office towers, Property values, Turnaround
Fortune (June 1)
“Home-sale prices in 11 of the 50 biggest U.S. metro areas are already falling, according to data from Redfin, which sees the nationwide median sale price declining 1% on an annual basis in the fourth quarter of this year. That’s as listings grow and mortgage rates remain high, while sellers outnumber buyers by record amounts.”
Tags: Buyers, Declining. Q4, Falling, High, Home, Listings, Metro areas, Mortgage rates, Nationwide, Redfin, Sale price, Sellers, U.S.
Washington Post (June 26)
“This summer marks 4½ years since covid-19 altered the meaning and location of work for many Americans. Most people are back at their place of employment…. But government workers remain largely at home, so much so that 17 out of 24 federal agencies were using only about one-quarter of their headquarters’ office space last summer.”
Tags: COVID-19, Employment, Federal agencies, Government workers, Home, Location, Meaning, Office space, Summer, U.S., Work
Tampa Bay Times (July 11)
“On Tuesday, Farmers Insurance informed the state it was dropping home, auto and umbrella policies across Florida, potentially affecting tens of thousands of people. It’s the fourth company to leave the Florida market in the last year — most citing rising risks from hurricanes. Farmers, a large company with a national presence, also has reduced new business in California, citing extreme weather and wildfire threats.”
Tags: Auto, California, Dropping, Extreme weather, Farmers Insurance, Florida, Home, Hurricanes, New business, Policies, Rising risks
The Economist (July 10)
“Remote work has a target on its back.” Many CEOs “are intent on making working from home a relic of the pandemic…. With bosses clamping down on the practice, the pandemic-era days of mutual agreement on the desirability of remote work seem to be over.” Around the globe, “plans for remote working by employers fall short of what workers want.”
Tags: Agreement, CEOs, Clamping down, Desirability, Employers, Home, Pandemic, Remote work, Target, Workers
San Francisco Chronical (May 27)
“State Farm, California’s largest property and casualty insurer as of 2021, stopped issuing home, business and casualty insurance policies in the state Saturday, citing wildfire risks and rising construction costs…. The state has suffered increasingly massive and destructive wildfires in recent years, leading to scarcer and more expensive insurance policies in wildfire-prone zones.”
Tags: Business, California, Casualty, Construction costs, Destructive, Home, Insurer, Massive, Policies, Property, Rising, Risks, State Farm, Wildfires
Washington Post (March 4)
“Cities across the nation face a dilemma: Downtown office buildings are empty as workers prefer to stay home.” Office-to-apartment conversion is an essential “part of the solution,” but “city leaders aren’t doing enough…. The longer cities wait to get conversions underway, the more tax values drop and crime goes up, and the more people see no value in living in the heart of the city — or even visiting.”
Tags: Apartment, Cities, Conversion, Dilemma, Downtown, Empty, Home, Leaders, Office buildings, Solution, Tax values, Workers
Washington Post (January 19)
“The nation is in the midst of one of the biggest workforce shifts in generations.” Many prefer working at home or at least “want a ‘hybrid’ situation of working two or three days remotely. Cities must adapt to this new reality or risk a downward spiral of falling commercial property values, lower taxes on those buildings and ghost downtowns that could lead to increased crime and homelessness.”
Tags: Adapt, Buildings, Cities, Commercial property values, Crime, Downward spiral, Home, Homelessness, Hybrid, Lower taxes, Reality, Remotely, Risk, Shifts, Workforce
BBC (September 12)
China “is the world’s last major economy attempting to entirely stamp out Covid outbreaks, claiming this is necessary to prevent wider surges of the virus which could overwhelm hospitals.” At present, “tens of millions of people in at least 30 regions have been ordered to stay at home under partial or full lockdowns,” with some of the impacted residents “complaining of shortages of food and essential items.”
Tags: China, Complaining, Covid outbreaks, Food, Home, Hospitals, Last, Lockdowns, Major economy, Overwhelm, Prevent, Residents, Shortages, Stamp out, Surges, Virus
New York Times (February 13)
“Covid has made us reconsider everything, the meaning of home and work, the value of public space, the magnitude and immediacy of death, what it truly means to be a member of a society. We are still finding the answers to those questions, but the America we knew ended in 2019.”
Tags: 2019, Answers, Covid, Death, Home, Immediacy, Magnitude, Meaning, Public, Questions, Reconsider, Society, Space, U.S., Value, Work
