The commercial real estate industry is in for a rude awakening if it expects workers to flock back to downtown workplaces, according to Mark Dixon, CEO of flexible office giant IWG.
Employees became accustomed to working from home during the pandemic, Dixon said on CNBC's “Squawk Box Europe” last week. That represents a “massive change” and a “fundamental seismic shift” that’s “a shock coming” to the real estate business once the implications sink in, Dixon said.
“There’s sort of this assumption that people like commuting into a central business district,” he said. “They don’t. It’s a complete waste of time and money and they don’t want to do it.”
Of course, Dixon probably has a bias because his IWG and other flexible office providers are looking to benefit from a dislike of trekking into city centers. Some coworking companies have been putting new shared office space outside main urban areas to try to capture workers who don't enjoy commuting.
Even so, he said, technology has enabled people to not only work home instead of their offices but to be more productive “than they’ve ever done before,” according to Dixon, who founded IWG, formerly called Regus Group, in 1989.
The repercussions of the change in work habits can already be seen in the United States, according to Dixon.
“You’ve got some of the largest property companies in the world handing back properties to their banks,” he told CNBC.