Welcome, prop.text readers!

In issue 34, we dive office vacancy vs remote workers and the cities attempting to lure them.

publicly.traded → return to the office push continues
industry.chatter → equity hit a record $17.8 trillion beyond.the.curve → Delinquencies rising

Impact of Return to Office Mandates Is Complicated

Much as the “housing market” is largely a local phenomena, as proptext wrote last month, the return-to-office mandate is a function of where workers live and their job titles.

The New York Post’s Steve Cuozzo has regularly criticized the media for underestimating the recovery in the New York City office market. A recent story said a real estate outlet had misinterpreted a finding from the Partnership for New York City that only “57% of Manhattan office workers had returned on the average workday.”

Cuozzo points out that the Partnership said in March that 57% of workers in offices at the time “equates to 76% of respondents’ pre-pandemic attendance.” Pre-pandemic offices were not 100% occupied — it was more like 75%. So the 57% number represents 76% of the pre-pandemic vacancy rate, according to his math.

Yes, midtown is busier during the week, as New Yorkers can attest, but Fridays and Mondays are pretty slow. The institution of congestion pricing has eased traffic, but the drive from 32nd and Park to 53rd and Broadway, a distance of 1.7 miles, can still take 20 minutes.

Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has been a vocal proponent of employees returning to the office 5 days a week. Amazon, Starbuck’s, Dell and Citigroup are among the companies calling for the same, while many others have adopted a more flexible approach, with hybrid 3 days in office and 2 remote becoming normalized.

As for the full-on office experience, Dimon and others have an unexpected ally: Gen Z. Only 23% of remote-capable Gen Z employees say they would prefer fully remote work, compared with 35% among each older generation, according to a recent Gallup survey. (Though 5-days a week in office is the least popular option across all age groups.) 

This younger generation is coping with a post-pandemic hangover of loneliness and they see the office as a path to enhancing their career. 

The question is how do all these forces impact the housing market and where should investors look for opportunities. In the olden days, close-in suburbs were the most desirable places to live and the most resilient if there was an economic downturn. The so-called exurbs, where commutes were an hour or more, were more sensitive to a recession and home values would be impacted.

But now that hybrid work appears here to stay, despite the protestations of Mr. Dimon, the longer commute for only three days does not feel so onerous. The picture has grown more complicated for deal hunters in the single-family residential space.

Just how complicated can be traced to the rise of tertiary cities, many of which have been aggressively courting digital nomads and other high-value workers who have the luxury of going fully remote.

These programs have grown rapidly since Tulsa, Okla., introduced Tulsa Remote in 2018. MakeMyMove now lists 108 communities in the US that offer cash, concert tickets, office stipends, down payments, moving expenses and other perks to lure digital workers. Tulsa Remote, designed to attract talent, boost the economy and reverse a perceived “brain drain,” offered $10,000 to remote workers who relocated to Tulsa for at least one year. 

These investments have paid off, studies show. Tulsa Remote generates more than four dollars in local economic benefits for every dollar invested. The Economic Innovation Group reported an even higher return, estimating that each dollar invested creates $13.77 in local labor income.

A report from McKinsey acknowledges the remote vs. in-office paradigm was more nuanced, even before the pandemic, with some working from home before it became fashionable. Its latest America Opportunity survey shows an uptick in respondents who report working fully on-site compared with 2022, but the change has been modest. Slightly fewer American workers were working fully remotely, and slightly more were working fully on-site, compared with the AOS survey in 2022.

The upshot for the real estate industry and investors is, according to the McKinsey report: 

Not just that offices need to be reimagined for a new era. It also means that providers of residential and retail spaces have the opportunity to adapt by offering a range of new features and services. For example, residential markets increasingly need home offices, high-speed internet, and other infrastructure to support working from home. Residential and retail spaces can fill socialization gaps as more people work remotely. Suburban mixed-use environments can increasingly provide the goods and services that people used to get when they commuted to work in downtown areas.

If an investor is looking for a template of a place where it makes sense to buy, the synopsis above offers a pretty solid start.

There are five forces shaping housing and multifamily real estate, according to Greystone, a private commercial real estate finance and investment company in business since 1988: 

• The Regional Divide Is Now the Defining Feature of Housing: Real estate markets have grown increasingly localized. (Sound familiar, proptext readers?)

• Rising Inventory Alone Cannot Solve Affordability Challenges: Both buyers and sellers appear to be stuck in a state of hesitation, waiting for clarity on where the market is headed. 

• Climate Risk and Insurance Are Reshaping Market Viability: Natural disasters and rising climate-related insurance costs are creating fundamental shifts in market dynamics. 

• Urban and Transit-Oriented Markets Are Regaining Their Appeal: Homebuyers are looking for neighborhoods with proximity to jobs and transit without outside high-density downtown cores. Suburban areas surrounding these cities are benefiting most, with strong home price appreciation and buyer interest. 

• Multifamily Markets Face Diverging Fortunes: Multifamily real estate is showing signs of resilience but is under pressure from macroeconomic forces. Construction starts have slowed due to high interest rates and ongoing labor challenges, which may limit future supply and support pricing power in select regions. 

Total equity hit a record $17.8 trillion for American homeowners at the end of June and mortgage originations were the highest since 2022, with cash-out refinances and purchases close to three-year highs, according to ICE Mortgage Technology. About 48 million mortgage holders had equity that could be tapped while maintaining a 20% cushion, and the average homeowner had $213,000 in accessible value. Equity levels remain high, but growth has slowed to its lowest rate in two years, largely because of falling home prices in key Sunbelt and Western markets.

Home price growth has slowed nationally, according to the housing analytics firm Cotality, with year-over-year numbers nationwide falling to 1.7% in June 2025, below the inflation rate and an indicator that the market is becoming more affordable. The monthly increase in June was up 0.1% compared to May, the smallest since 2008. West Virginia saw increases of 5.5% year-over-year, one of the top 5 states with the highest growth, which included Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Illinois. Florida, Texas, Montana, and Washington D.C. all had negative growth rates.

Just Because

If you’ve dreamed of Carrara marble in your kitchen or bath, it might be time to bust a move. The so-called “resource curse,” in which places with resources such as oil or mineral wealth experience slower economic growth, applies to luxury stone as well. A nearly 3,500-word piece in The Dial, an online magazine of culture and politics, detailed how this particularly pure marble deposit in Italy’s Apuan Alps could be mined out within 50 years. The profits of the billion-dollar industry are mostly controlled by multinationals and private investors, while the city of Carrara, located at the foot of quarries, is wracked with debt and poverty. And the area’s biodiversity and water quality has been ruined. Quarried since the first century BC, Michelangelo made it famous after he used Carrara for works including David and the Pietà. It’s estimated that more marble has been removed in the last 30 years than during the previous two millennia. Current annual extraction rates are about 4 million tons, compared to less than 300,000 tons a year a century ago. According to those who have worked in the local quarries for decades, the finest white variety is gone.

Sales & Marketing roles:

Director of Sales, Flex, New York, NY

Marketing Coordinator, Compass, Dallas, TX

Director, Retail Media GTM + Operations, Bilt rewards, New York, NY

Product & Engineering roles:

Senior AI/ML Engineer, Dealpath, New York City

Applied AI Engineer, Permitflow, New York City

Head of Hardware Test Engineering, SPAN, San Francisco, CA

Operations roles:

Chief of Staff, Placemakr, Washington DC

Platform Operations Associate, EliseAI, NYC

Homes Project Manager, Opendoor, Nashville, TN

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