Peter Grant
Appearances
KILL TONY
#698 - SAM TALLENT + ARI SHAFFIR
Must get the poison out. I have to make rational decisions. Holy fuck, I almost bought a BMW.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
By and large, with a shrinking government, a shrinking workforce, things do not look good for Washington in the immediate future.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
Well, it is a small amount compared with the overall office market, but the government is one of the largest tenants in the U.S., and it does have operations throughout the country. Obviously, most of the operations are in the Washington, D.C. area where the impact of a contraction would be felt the most, but the government is in many, many, many cities, and even adding 1% or 2%
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
of office space to these markets could have an impact, especially considering how hard the office market has been hit in recent years.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
D.C. was one of the hardest hit markets, primarily because the return to office by government workers was particularly slow. And there's just a lot of underutilized space. And there was a lot of surplus space even before the pandemic in D.C. So it was never that great. But the vacancy level soared during the pandemic and has really not come back. But by and large, D.C.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
is going to get hurt on a number of different levels by all this obsolete space. And it's going to hurt the government because of tax collections. It's going to hurt small businesses because if workers aren't there, they're not going to be going out to bars and restaurants and stores.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
Well, New York has a lot of U.S. government offices. Ohio has a lot of U.S. government offices. Denver does. They're really all over the country. And it does seem the Department of Government Efficiency has its target on a lot of these offices, especially the ones that are underutilized as a way of saving money.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
There is a little bit of push and pull here. On one hand, it would be good for the office market if the government does require workers to come back into the office at a higher rate than they were attending the office during the Biden administration.
WSJ What’s News
DOGE’s Next Target: Government Office Space
On the other hand, the fact is that they are cutting employees and shrinking the government at a much higher rate than they're requiring people to be back in the office. So it's overall negative for office space.
WSJ What’s News
Political Crisis in Germany as Merz Fails to Win First Vote as Chancellor
What Mayor Wu has tried to do, she tried to do this last year, was because the system would naturally shift the tax burden from the commercial property owner to the residential property owner, she tried to pass state legislation which would shift that burden back to the commercial property owner and was unsuccessful in doing it. That's Journal commercial real estate reporter Peter Grant.
WSJ What’s News
Political Crisis in Germany as Merz Fails to Win First Vote as Chancellor
As you can imagine, the commercial landlords weren't very happy with that. They were saying, hey, you're kind of hitting us when we're down. The office market is getting crushed because of the slow return to work and because of high interest rates. And now you're trying to hurt us more by increasing our tax rate. Meanwhile, the residential owners were saying, hey, we don't want this either.
WSJ What’s News
Political Crisis in Germany as Merz Fails to Win First Vote as Chancellor
So the politics of this are very much heating up in Boston, and they will likely heat up in other cities as well. They can do what Boston is doing. They can cut services. They can try to impose new taxes. But they're going to have to deal with these problems in a certain way.