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🇨🇭 Switzerland /Economy & Trade

Why the office market did not collapse despite the rise of remote work

From Le Temps · () French

Translated from French and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Switzerland’s office market remains under pressure more than six years after the pandemic began, but it has not suffered the collapse many predicted, a Raiffeisen real estate study says.
  • Rents have fallen and companies have optimized their use of space, while limited supply and strong employment have helped sustain demand.
  • Some market indicators are improving, although the resilience has surprised the study’s authors.

The catastrophe forecast for offices never materialized. More than six years after the pandemic began, Switzerland’s office market remains under pressure, but it is far from the collapse once expected, according to a Raiffeisen real estate study.

Rents have declined and companies have made better use of their existing space. Yet demand has held up, and some indicators are beginning to recover. The market has taken a hit, but remote work did not empty offices on the scale many had predicted.

This resilience is a little surprising.

· Michel FleuryFleury, a co-author of the Raiffeisen study, described the office market’s performance after the pandemic.

“This resilience is a little surprising,” Michel Fleury, a co-author of the study, told Le Temps. The study was published on Thursday. Fleury said remote work had been expected to permanently reduce the need for workstations and release large amounts of office space.

Instead, he observed, “the market did not collapse at all despite the disruption caused by Covid.” The study points to weak office supply and strong employment as factors supporting demand. The sector is still feeling the effects of the post-pandemic shift, particularly through lower rents, but the feared market breakdown has not occurred.

The market did not collapse at all despite the disruption caused by Covid.

· Michel FleuryFleury said the market had withstood the shift toward remote work better than expected.
About this summary

Originally published by Le Temps in French. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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