The Office Is Dead. Long Live the Office.

The narrative around commercial real estate has been maddeningly binary. Bulls insist the return-to-office wave will fill those empty towers. Bears predict a commercial apocalypse that’ll drag regional banks and pension funds into the abyss. Both camps are wrong, but not in the way you’d expect.

I’ve underwritten billions of commercial office buildings in my career and followed the markets for decades — what’s actually happening is far more interesting — and far more permanent. The ...