REAL ESTATE SECTOR INSIGHTS 2020

Even before the global pandemic hit, our world was already undergoing various disruptions. Our lifestyles, along with working practices were evolving, with the retail sector experiencing a significant structural transformation, offices breaking conventional barriers towards more collaborative working and mass-digitisation altering methods of customer engagement and purchase.

The spaces in which we live, work and play were developing into an interconnected, sophisticated infrastructure, which now is challenged and complexified by the pandemic.

Real estate was evolving by increasingly combining multiple sectors and services within one space. From a retailer with café areas, to a co-working office space with a gym and restaurant to a mall with a theme park…. Real estate was being re-imagined, as consumers expectation raised the bar for brick and mortar experiences, blurring the boundaries of different sectors and subsequently, creating the catalyst for urban disruption.

The pandemic has affected the various real estate sectors in different ways. Here we explore what those are.

Offices & Co-working Spaces

Corona disrupted workplaces heavily from a cultural, structural and design perspective.  It is affecting corporate hub location strategies, office design and organisation as well as new employee practices.

A report by MIT in April 2020 confirmed that 34% of Americans who previously commuted to work were staying home. Before COVID-19, the number of remote employees remained at 4%.

Moreover, according to the Savills Global Sentiment Survey of research heads in 31 countries around the world, 84% of respondents expected home working to somewhat increase, the remaining 16% expect it to greatly increase. Supporting this, is Cushman & Wakefield research that has captured more than 2.5 million data points from workers all over the globe in the pre-COVID-19 era and a further 1.7 million data points from more than 50,000 respondents in the current work from home environment – based on this, 73% of the workforce believes companies should embrace some level of working from home.

It is fair to say that office working will come back but not completely; the rise of digital adoption has played a significant role in transforming the way people work, given the flexibility it allows. Moreover, numerous employees have been liberated from time-consuming and expensive commutes, finding more productive ways to use that time. As for organisations, working from home and digitisation has made them realise that they can access new pools of talent without location constraints, embrace innovative workflows and significantly reduce real-estate costs.

Whilst it seems, many have enjoyed ‘working from home’, it is not the case for all. Every company and culture is different, and the ‘WFH’ set up has been propelled by an unprecedented pandemic, thus it is hard to say whether – corporate cultures and communities will dissolve over time without physical communication, and whether the current success of ‘WFH’  has been because people have considered it as temporary. However, the key aspect to note is the role of the office, which caters to human connection, culture and community; these aspects have gained greater importance after the emotional and mental impact of the pandemic.

Read more at https://in.i-amonline.com/real-estate-sector-insights-2020/