Can Remote Work Disrupt Real Estate Office Business ?

If I have to list something that most successful entrepreneurs have in common is the power to disrupt certain industries. Jeff Bezos by his Amazon was able to disrupt and redefine entirely retail industry, Brian Chesky Airbnb was able to give tourism industry other perspective. These are few examples of how business are evolving during the time.

Being force to stay home due to government restrictions to prevent spread of Covid-19, I wasn't able to go to event meetings. I spend important part of my day watching webinars and live stream events. Yesterday night I was watching a webinar " VC's view of series funding in a post Covid world " and suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. Not far from the present days I had strong believes in real estate office business. Due to lockdown measures many business have stopped their activities and some are continuing their activities even in this period of time. To keep social distancing many organizations were forced to take some unusual measures like to allow their employees to work from home. A new trend has appeared "remote work from home". Social media channels are bombarded with live stream events. Zoom application, Skype and Yotube live are few tools that companies are using even in this period to continue their business. 

Back to our main topic "Can this new trend be a real threat to office business ?" , and " How business will redefine after post Covid period ?"  I consider office real estate business solid business with good margin of profit. Dublin is important tech hub in European Union, many important tech companies and not only have offices here. I remember october 2019 when Green REIT shareholders have decided to sell the business. For me was a sad news in that period, first a source of dividend was cutted and second to own a piece of that business  was something that not many people have this opportunity and have tenants (customers) like: Bank of America, Vodafone, Barclays, AIB and so on was something special.  In the late of november 2019 the transaction was made Henderson Park bought Green Reit plc in 1.34 billion euro , 1.9135 euro/share for each shareholder. That transaction was the largest real estate transaction in 2019 and the largest real estate ever sell in Ireland.  

Since the transaction was ended many important things have happened the world entered in lockdown. The next office real estate developers should ask: "How office real estate business will look in post covid period ?"  Can developers face the imaginable scenario where tenants (business) will redefine , instead of looking huge offices with many square foot many companies will look for more small offices and more dynamic. For them the lockdown and the new trend of work from have created a dangerous perspective.  For many organisations the perspective to allow their own employees to work from home can be cost effective in special in this period of time. If the business will find this solution efficient and cost effective will apply this solution in the future which might represent a real threat for real estate office developers.