Just waiting for the “WFH – Bad!” articles popping up everywhere as a ramp up
There are two tiers to this market. High quality, sustainable, well located offices with good amenity like gyms, cafes, outside space etc are letting at record rents across the country. Older poor quality offices which have been under invested by lazy commercial landlords continue to struggle. It’s nothing new, the pandemic is just accelerating this dynamic.
My local shitbag commercial landlord (who is single handedly stifling economic development of an entire town but that is another story) has so many 250 sqft offices to rent on his business park its a joke. He can’t grasp that your 4-5 guys in an office type company just doesn’t exist any more.
somebody fetch my tiny violin.. Won’t somebody please think of the landlords!
Lots of them being converted to residential where I am for this reason
And this is why we are hearing that WFH is bad even though everyone is anecdotally preferring it other than a few outliers.
the use of the names landlord and landlady is well overdue a revision imo, it affords these people too much gravitas for their function, and as such it leads them to believe that they are in fact ‘lords’ and we are ‘serfs’, to them we’re mere undeserving serfs for whom substandard accommodation is normalised.
call them what they are, mortgage-rate gamblers and property hoarders.
I have heard that they do not want to lower rents as their valuations for the property are based on rental prices. Lowering rents so people are interested will lower the value of the property and cost them equity.
[deleted]
I thought for a moment ‘oh, I guess I don’t really have a beef with commercial landlords’ right before I remembered they’re the ones building the ugly high rises around my town. I hate that. I go to the next town over and it has none, it’s wonderful. You can see the damn sky. Plus these people are definitely pushing back against the work from home rhetoric
Lower the fucking rents you corporate ghouls.
Commercial landlords suck the life out of cities by demanding more than most can pay. My largest outgoing after stock is fucking rent.
It drives me mad.
Edit: to the “lol just move” wankers
Ever wonder why there are so many more empty shops? Its because the rents are in general higher than the market can stand. I can think of at least half a dozen shop fronts that have been derelict for at least 3 years in the medium sized town I live in
And its because the rents are delusional.
Hence why Boris keeps banging on about people going back to the office
I’ve seen many office buildings converted to flats. Almost rented one too.
Aww, is someone finally finding out that all investment carries risk? Bless them. My heart bleeds.
Awww, boo fucking hoo.
I don’t have a tiny violin to play for them.
I await the legislation that enables landlords/business to compel their tenants/employees into the office.
My company’s trying to change office buildings to better suit the employee’s needs but prices are still 💩 for what they offer.
> “What businesses want and need from their office has been steadily evolving over the past decade, but the pandemic has kicked the pace of change into overdrive,” said Wybo Wijnbergen, CEO of infinitSpace.
Someone tell Regus. They took over the building and then started stripping facilities, and making everything else chargeable.
We’ll be cancelling our contract at the first opportunity.
I’ve talked about the office building my company decided to not renew the lease on before. It’s still unrented, but I did just go and check and *gasp* it’s actually being refurbished apparently! Who’d have guessed people don’t want stained 1970s wall panels.
As someone who doesn’t know a damn thing about the laws on these things, how easy, legally, would it be to convert these buildings into flats?
Free market working as intended: increase your demand by lowering your prices.
No surprise here
Shpuld change use to social housing
I’m currently looking for a new office building for my job. They’re wildly overpriced!
The square footage is either tiny or massive, with no inbetween (like 200sqft or 3000sqft) and the price per sqft is stupid. They keep adding things like gyms and coffee shops in the building to justify the price. I’d rather they take those things away and half the damn cost.
Landlords going through a hard time? Excuse me while I play the worlds smallest violin. That I rented.
Incomming Tweets from Alan Sugar saying how we’ve all been spoiled by working at home but now it’s time to stop being lazy and come into the office and help out the(his) economy.
What a cunt he is.
Oh no!
Anyway, not my problem, if you can’t survive in business, your business model is clearly poor.
>Most commercial landlords are struggling to find tenants for their office buildings
#Please stop, I can only get SO erect!
Oh my heart bleeds for them(!)
They made an investment, crazy stuff happened, way of the world, the way of any other investment one might ever make. These parasties refuse that reality.
Good job there’s a housing crisis or these offices would remain empty!
Welcome to the world of permitted development
In other news, water is wet. Wtf did you think would happen?
I’ve heard that in the City organisations like law chambers are refusing to pay rent and demanding rent decreases.
Just to balance-out the whole “our city centres are dying because of WFH” nonsense, i want to point out that local, independent businesses in my area are absolutely thriving, and any lunchtime business with sense is moving out to where the business is.
I am under no obligation, be it moral or otherwise, to prop-up the lives of hedge fund property investors, or multi-national coffee shops, or Spar, or Subway, simply because you believe you are owed a living.
Now that i can shop during my lunch, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker around my local area gets all my money now, not Tesco.
The High Tech company I work for offers WfH as standard, their philosophy is: we don’t care how you get the work done, when you do it or where, as long as it is delivered on time, to budget and high quality.
If companies start to force people back into offices, people will vote with their feet!
Each city should have an area of government owned commercial properties to encourage new businesses to start up and lower the cost of rents. Essentially “council shops”.
Until there is a government supplied option, the landlords will continue to control the prices. Same with council houses needs to be way more before the rental prices can come down to a reasonable price.
Too many shitty commercial landlords and shitty properties with poor heating, poor location, poor connectivity, etc evidently.
Our landlord hasn’t had an issue keeping his site full the entire pandemic, it’s still at full occupancy and despite one of his larger tenants moving out soon he’s already got replacements lined up. However in the past 2 years he’s:
– Given everyone a rent-free month in 2020, as long as they were up to date on payments
– Let a number of tenants off their (long) leases
– Replaced every unit’s lighting with new LED panels, and is currently putting in insulation pillows above the ceiling for those that don’t have it
– Regularly cuts deals with existing tenants who want to get a better short or long-term rent, despite them being locked into their leases but just wants to see them succeed
– Actually uses the service charge to improve the site and anything unused goes back to us at the end of the year
– Has on the odd occasion appeared at our door with some custard slices from the food van that pops round the business park, though he has stopped doing that now there’s like 4 or 5 of us in the office rather than 2…
– Spends his autumn months driving his box van around picking up Shoebox Appeal parcels
Good landlords do actually exist, it turns out. Most though? Fuck them. Before we rented here we looked at renting with the guys that took over the local Uni campus, who really wanted tech companies in. We wanted to ask about the connectivity we’d get and they said that “anything regarding internet connections, running leased lines or what we’ll provide can be discussed when solicitors are at the table”. Do fuck off, that’s not how you get tech companies to let with you.
It took us a long, long time of looking for premises before we ended up where we did. There were a *lot* of shitty offerings.
35 comments
Just waiting for the “WFH – Bad!” articles popping up everywhere as a ramp up
There are two tiers to this market. High quality, sustainable, well located offices with good amenity like gyms, cafes, outside space etc are letting at record rents across the country. Older poor quality offices which have been under invested by lazy commercial landlords continue to struggle. It’s nothing new, the pandemic is just accelerating this dynamic.
My local shitbag commercial landlord (who is single handedly stifling economic development of an entire town but that is another story) has so many 250 sqft offices to rent on his business park its a joke. He can’t grasp that your 4-5 guys in an office type company just doesn’t exist any more.
somebody fetch my tiny violin.. Won’t somebody please think of the landlords!
Lots of them being converted to residential where I am for this reason
And this is why we are hearing that WFH is bad even though everyone is anecdotally preferring it other than a few outliers.
the use of the names landlord and landlady is well overdue a revision imo, it affords these people too much gravitas for their function, and as such it leads them to believe that they are in fact ‘lords’ and we are ‘serfs’, to them we’re mere undeserving serfs for whom substandard accommodation is normalised.
call them what they are, mortgage-rate gamblers and property hoarders.
I have heard that they do not want to lower rents as their valuations for the property are based on rental prices. Lowering rents so people are interested will lower the value of the property and cost them equity.
[deleted]
I thought for a moment ‘oh, I guess I don’t really have a beef with commercial landlords’ right before I remembered they’re the ones building the ugly high rises around my town. I hate that. I go to the next town over and it has none, it’s wonderful. You can see the damn sky. Plus these people are definitely pushing back against the work from home rhetoric
Lower the fucking rents you corporate ghouls.
Commercial landlords suck the life out of cities by demanding more than most can pay. My largest outgoing after stock is fucking rent.
It drives me mad.
Edit: to the “lol just move” wankers
Ever wonder why there are so many more empty shops? Its because the rents are in general higher than the market can stand. I can think of at least half a dozen shop fronts that have been derelict for at least 3 years in the medium sized town I live in
And its because the rents are delusional.
Hence why Boris keeps banging on about people going back to the office
I’ve seen many office buildings converted to flats. Almost rented one too.
Aww, is someone finally finding out that all investment carries risk? Bless them. My heart bleeds.
Awww, boo fucking hoo.
I don’t have a tiny violin to play for them.
I await the legislation that enables landlords/business to compel their tenants/employees into the office.
My company’s trying to change office buildings to better suit the employee’s needs but prices are still 💩 for what they offer.
> “What businesses want and need from their office has been steadily evolving over the past decade, but the pandemic has kicked the pace of change into overdrive,” said Wybo Wijnbergen, CEO of infinitSpace.
Someone tell Regus. They took over the building and then started stripping facilities, and making everything else chargeable.
We’ll be cancelling our contract at the first opportunity.
I’ve talked about the office building my company decided to not renew the lease on before. It’s still unrented, but I did just go and check and *gasp* it’s actually being refurbished apparently! Who’d have guessed people don’t want stained 1970s wall panels.
As someone who doesn’t know a damn thing about the laws on these things, how easy, legally, would it be to convert these buildings into flats?
Free market working as intended: increase your demand by lowering your prices.
No surprise here
Shpuld change use to social housing
I’m currently looking for a new office building for my job. They’re wildly overpriced!
The square footage is either tiny or massive, with no inbetween (like 200sqft or 3000sqft) and the price per sqft is stupid. They keep adding things like gyms and coffee shops in the building to justify the price. I’d rather they take those things away and half the damn cost.
Landlords going through a hard time? Excuse me while I play the worlds smallest violin. That I rented.
Incomming Tweets from Alan Sugar saying how we’ve all been spoiled by working at home but now it’s time to stop being lazy and come into the office and help out the(his) economy.
What a cunt he is.
Oh no!
Anyway, not my problem, if you can’t survive in business, your business model is clearly poor.
>Most commercial landlords are struggling to find tenants for their office buildings
#Please stop, I can only get SO erect!
Oh my heart bleeds for them(!)
They made an investment, crazy stuff happened, way of the world, the way of any other investment one might ever make. These parasties refuse that reality.
Good job there’s a housing crisis or these offices would remain empty!
Welcome to the world of permitted development
In other news, water is wet. Wtf did you think would happen?
I’ve heard that in the City organisations like law chambers are refusing to pay rent and demanding rent decreases.
Just to balance-out the whole “our city centres are dying because of WFH” nonsense, i want to point out that local, independent businesses in my area are absolutely thriving, and any lunchtime business with sense is moving out to where the business is.
I am under no obligation, be it moral or otherwise, to prop-up the lives of hedge fund property investors, or multi-national coffee shops, or Spar, or Subway, simply because you believe you are owed a living.
Now that i can shop during my lunch, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker around my local area gets all my money now, not Tesco.
The High Tech company I work for offers WfH as standard, their philosophy is: we don’t care how you get the work done, when you do it or where, as long as it is delivered on time, to budget and high quality.
If companies start to force people back into offices, people will vote with their feet!
Each city should have an area of government owned commercial properties to encourage new businesses to start up and lower the cost of rents. Essentially “council shops”.
Until there is a government supplied option, the landlords will continue to control the prices. Same with council houses needs to be way more before the rental prices can come down to a reasonable price.
Too many shitty commercial landlords and shitty properties with poor heating, poor location, poor connectivity, etc evidently.
Our landlord hasn’t had an issue keeping his site full the entire pandemic, it’s still at full occupancy and despite one of his larger tenants moving out soon he’s already got replacements lined up. However in the past 2 years he’s:
– Given everyone a rent-free month in 2020, as long as they were up to date on payments
– Let a number of tenants off their (long) leases
– Replaced every unit’s lighting with new LED panels, and is currently putting in insulation pillows above the ceiling for those that don’t have it
– Regularly cuts deals with existing tenants who want to get a better short or long-term rent, despite them being locked into their leases but just wants to see them succeed
– Actually uses the service charge to improve the site and anything unused goes back to us at the end of the year
– Has on the odd occasion appeared at our door with some custard slices from the food van that pops round the business park, though he has stopped doing that now there’s like 4 or 5 of us in the office rather than 2…
– Spends his autumn months driving his box van around picking up Shoebox Appeal parcels
Good landlords do actually exist, it turns out. Most though? Fuck them. Before we rented here we looked at renting with the guys that took over the local Uni campus, who really wanted tech companies in. We wanted to ask about the connectivity we’d get and they said that “anything regarding internet connections, running leased lines or what we’ll provide can be discussed when solicitors are at the table”. Do fuck off, that’s not how you get tech companies to let with you.
It took us a long, long time of looking for premises before we ended up where we did. There were a *lot* of shitty offerings.
My humble-rant is over.