Some days in the office, some days in the home office: This is what everyday work looks like for many office workers in Germany. This has serious consequences for the office market.
The trend towards home offices is expected to reduce the need for office space in German cities by over a tenth by 2030. This is the result of a study by the Ifo Institute and the real estate consultant Colliers for the major cities of Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf.
“Regular work in the home office has become the new normal for around 25 percent of employees and 69 percent of companies,” said Ifo researcher Simon Krause. “This leads to a decline in demand for offices, especially in large companies and in industries with heavy home office use.”
Twelve percent less space would probably be sought by 2030. This corresponds to a reduction in demand of around 11.5 million square meters of office space in the seven metropolises. The home office rate in Germany has been stable for almost two years, said Krause. The new working world is a “stress test for the office real estate market”. For the study, data from the Ifo home office surveys of 9,000 companies were linked for the first time with office rental agreements between 2013 and 2023 from the Colliers database.
At the same time, sales on the office rental market fell to the level of the acute Corona crisis in 2023, it was said. The vacancy rate of under three percent in 2019 doubled to over six percent at the end of 2023, while the proportion of subleases rose sharply from under two to almost eight percent. “There are currently no signs of a rapid recovery,” says Andreas Trumpp from Colliers, co-author of the study.
60 percent of all office properties affected by the home office effect
Office rental contracts in Germany have an average term of around seven years, it said. That’s why the home office effect only has a delayed effect. Overall, Colliers and Ifo assume that 60 percent of all office properties in Germany are affected by the home office effect and that companies in these properties are reducing their space by an average of 20 percent.
Because the home office trend means less office space is needed, the market for such real estate is under pressure in many countries, especially in the USA. In this country too, banks such as the Wiesbaden Aareal Bank and the Landesbank Helaba have to set aside more money for possible loan defaults on commercial properties. Bank supervisors are worried.
Source: Stern
