“The operative word is flexibility. Office landlords have to cater for some flexibility. Companies need their employees to come in, because you cannot function for an extended period of time without the company working together,” Joshi observes. “Landlords will have to cater to the fact the interior of the office in 2021 may not be what it was in 2019. A common theme is core and flex,” she explains.
For commercial real estate, the issue moving forward is demand and new structural trends like working from home (WFH) and ecommerce, notes Nupur Joshi, CEO of the REIT Association of Singapore (REITAS).
CapitaLand Commercial Trust (CCT) has indicated that only 24% of its office space is currently being used actively. While WFH is being recommended as the default mode of work by the Ministry of Manpower to curtail the spread of Covid-19, it is becoming increasingly evident that it cannot be a permanent feature.
