Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group said staff want to work from home so they can save money
The boss of the world’s biggest commercial landlord has accused remote workers of staying away from the office because it means they “don’t work as hard” and can save money.
Steve Schwarzman, the chief executive of investment firm the Blackstone group, made the claims about hybrid staff while speaking on a panel at the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In remarks first reported by Bloomberg, he said employees had kept working from home because “they didn’t work as hard, regardless of what they tell you” and also due to the savings they make on their daily commute, lunches and work attire.
The short version is yea, they (and we) are pretty fucked if they can’t fill their commercial leases.
The long of it: apparently in 2020 a whole lot of property owners took out new loans/cash-out refinanced when interest rates hit record lows before COVID hit. A lot of those (maybe most of them) were balloon loans, meaning they were short term (about 5 years usually) with small payments for the duration, and a larger balloon payment at the end.
We are coming up on the end of 5 years, and commercial real estate prices have still not recovered. They could be in a situation where they owe the bank more than what the property is worth, and if enough properties default because of that, we could be in a similar situation as in 2008.
Frankly though: they can fuck off. They gambled (again) with our economy, they don’t deserve to be catered to our bailed out for their reckless decisions. I say nationalize the defaulted properties and convert them to housing, much like we should have done in 2008 instead of bailing out the banks who caused the crisis.
I will happily watch them squirm from my comfortable home office