Working from home and capital growth

In the current climate, most CBD businesses have gone virtual with their workforce working from home.

With the cost of commercial offices in the CBD, one could imagine a number of businesses keeping more staff working remotely to reduce costs.

Do you think the buy and hold for capital growth (typically based around proximity to CBD and scarcity) will continue to be a viable strategy moving forward?

Food for thought

 

Dont know anyone who thinks social distancing will last forever. Property should be for the long term.

 

Smaller, boutique office buildings in the right locations should continue to do well.

 

Working from home for the majority (if not all) of the week is becoming more acceptable these days and will likely continue to be the case after the world recovers from Covid. As a result, I wonder if people will be less attracted to proximity to CBD and/or transport and more attracted to bigger houses further away from the city with a proper city, more room for the family etc. Particularly if they only need to travel to the CBD for part of the week.

 

For me living close to the city has nothing to do with work, I have to drive away from the city for work.

it’s more to do with lifestyle, bars, restaurants, city walks, rivers, people & parks.

 

Same, now live within 6km of the CBD but have never worked there. Nicer suburb, less crime, better schools.

 

This is the line of thought that sparked me to post this thread for discussion

 

I am always nervous about making a 30 year investment decision based on 30 days of data (to paraphrase Warren Buffet). Yes, there will be more working from home, but I can't see any evidence that this will change the fundamental economics of property investing - things like close to transport, close to amenities, close to employment. Yes, most of the employment will remain in the CBD, and yes, there is only one CBD.

I do think the WFH trend will actually be a boon for residential real estate, while commercial office space will shrink. If our homes become our place of domicile and our place of work, then residential real estate will become more important not less. For resi, it means you buy that unit with the extra bedroom as a study (look out for three bedroom units).

Going forward, even if WFH increases, it will still not completely replace the workspace.

It's a good thought though, and time will tell. These meta trends do come around once in a while, and this might be one of them.