Office is a plummeting disaster that has no future, and the sky is going to fall. But is it? Is everyone who was in an office going to work from home constantly and never return? Or will companies get everyone to come in at least two or three days a week and then realize they need someplace to simultaneously put them all?

Don Peebles, chairman and chief executive officer of Peebles Corporation, told CNBC in a interview, "We're an opportunistic company, so we look to develop when markets are supply-constrained, and then we like to buy when we think there's tremendous value. And what we're seeing here in the commercial office space is essentially a once-in-a-generation opportunity to buy. Nothing like this has happened since the early 1990s, when we had the banking crisis that resulted in almost 900 banks being closed in less than three years."

That was when the FDIC closed 12% of the institutions it insured. And it was a time when Peebles' company got a major boost to business. "We were buying buildings at 20 cents on the dollar," he said, noting that it was what really boosted his company into new levels of business.

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.