With work-from-home trends continuing, commercial real estate in the United States will see a slow recovery and office values are unlikely to regain their peaks even by 2040, according to an economist with Capital Economics.
Raichura said the recovery could take longer than the 15 years that economists penciled in, perhaps into the mid-2040s. There are three sectors in commercial real estate: office, retail and warehousing. While office and retail are suffering, there’s tremendous demand for warehousing, said Megan Fox, a commercial and residential real estate agent at Compass Real Estate in New Jersey. Converting existing commercial space takes time and money for the property owners, and towns have restrictions as to what it will allow, Fox said.