I don’t know about other countries but the countryside tends to cost more than a “city” – or as least as much.
OK; if you move from Chelsea (ultra posh bit of London, I am told) to some back of beyond place in the darkest Kent which is 10nm from the nearest village shop selling stale bread 
then you will cash in.
WFH is extra hard if you have kids. I did it for 6 years. My then wife resented being “stuck with the kids” – even though I was bringing home enough to pay for a 5 bedroom house in 3.5 acres and 2 horses. How do you deal with that? She lived in a council house when I met her, but this lifestyle (oh I forgot the pool and the jacuzzi) was not enough. To this day I have no idea. There were specific “challenges” (that’s the modern word) e.g. one of the kids suddenly running into my office, shouting. So whenever I was on a phone call to a customer I would have a finger on the on-hook switch so I could instantly terminate the call. Then I would phone the customer back and apologise for the mysterious loss of the phone line…
The obvious solution to WFH if you have small kids is to have a separate building of some sort. That implies a fair size place.
Peter – I think you may be just a little out of touch. Albeit it might now start to change, prices in some parts of prime commuting London are extraordinary for really nothing very special. I know of a few who have sold up within the last few years and moved to places like Salcombe and Dartmouth and filled their coffers with the change.
Yes; I think I said something similar.
A 5 bedroom detached house in a reasonable bit of London is about £5M and that will buy you a “castle” almost anywhere outside.
Salcombe or Dartmouth is going to be massively cheaper. A nice village in Sussex, in the national park, perhaps mid-point between the two, say 1.5M.
After WW2, the Government encouraged saving and investment in industry. Housing expenditure was needed, but initially was minimal – tiny “prefabs” for families.
Both UK National and Scottish Governments plan to encourage spending after Covid-19. Roosevelt’s spending was likely within US.
Our spending will be on imports.
The only bright spot is the China-India spat. We might be able to sell them the 2 carriers and their aircraft.
If you think an employer is going to pay an invoice to ‘rent’ your home office space when you work from home then… well… that’s… interesting.
Lots of people work from home. Maybe not in your industry or company, but they do and their employers do not pay them rent. It’s normal. You’re entitled to your view, but it’s a minority one that is not reflected anywhere in the real world.
Peter wrote:
And most people cannot WFH at all; they just bugger off down the beach. This ball has been kicked around god knows how many times in the last few decades. It simply isn’t going to happen.
This wasn’t our experience with COVID, everyone got more work done, not less. No one buggered off down the beach.
Unfortunately our company is very invested in “presenteeism”, so although WFH has worked excellently, they are insisting everyone returns.
Peter wrote:
If the guy was working in the office, and had some issue, throwing it around a few people tends to quickly produce a solution. Well, an experienced programmer will work it out but they are rare nowadays
You can do that just as easily with something like MS Teams. For software development, text is about 10000% more effective than speech. We’re doing this very well.
Silvaire wrote:
I totally agree that commercial real estate will be affected, at least short term. However, if I were forced to work from home, I’d send an invoice for the space In actuality office space in my home is not available for rental, never mind for donation.
Commercial real estate is about to be a bloodbath. I know numerous large companies which are going to reduce their rental footprint by one half to two thirds and have people work from home on a rota system. Retail and hospitality are also a complete mess.
denopa wrote:
It’s a mixed experience on my side. The dev and product side of things has performed better than working from the office, sales a lot less (which to me means we need to think about their incentives).
Yes, in my businesses we have seen good growth in home-focused products as people look to improve their home environment via renovation etc. A number of sectors like auto are seeing a bounce which can’t last.
On working from home I think that will be a permanent feature for a lot of office/desk jobs. Sure they won’t pay you rent but equally you won’t have to commute at your own cost to an office.
I was discussing the commercial property market and what could be coming with the market. He pointed out an interesting thing I’d not thought about which was how heavily pension funds invest in commercial property. If it does collapse there I suspect it’d be very messy
Graham wrote:
If you think an employer is going to pay an invoice to ‘rent’ your home office space when you work from home then… well… that’s… interesting. Lots of people work from home. Maybe not in your industry or company, but they do and their employers do not pay them rent. It’s normal. You’re entitled to your view, but it’s a minority one that is not reflected anywhere in the real world
I have a nice office, pleasant view and lots of opportunity to get in people’s face without upsetting my family… My commute is 12 minutes each way. That’s my real world, along with bi-weekly bank deposits.
Obviously my point was that I’m not going to work from home and would not take a job that required it, regardless of whether I was compensated extra for allowing the company to use part of my house to make money.
JasonC wrote:
Commercial real estate is about to be a bloodbath. I know numerous large companies which are going to reduce their rental footprint by one half to two thirds
That’s what I’d guessed. Thanks.
It doesn’t take a large shift to WFH to damage commercial property for many years. Even say 10% would do it.
And once it starts, the long term approach will change i.e. when a company might be looking to getting bigger premises they will instead look at which employees can WFH. And they will recruit those who can preferentially.
That will work against “young” people because (a) they are less likely to have a place they can work and (b) as any employer will know, they present much greater challenges in the personnel management department.
I still think that we have an exceptional cross-section of the population here on EuroGA (highly motivated, organised, etc) and WFH is very difficult to do with many people. I have been employing people since 1978… One can always blame things on bad recruitment (as in the military saying: there are no bad soldiers; only bad officers) but unless you do it well you end up with a zoo. And if you aren’t very good at it, the most effective approach is not employing anybody (a) under say 40 (b) who has young children, etc.
