Office and retail space demand could drop 38% by 2030

Office attendance is 30 percent below pre-pandemic norms, and demand for office and retail space could decline by 13 percent to a whopping 38 percent by 2030, according to a McKinsey Global Institute report.

The behavioral shifts have already had major effects on real estate in “superstar” cities — roughly speaking, cities with a disproportionate share of the world’s urban GDP and GDP growth.

In superstar cities’ urban cores, the percentage of office and retail space that is vacant has grown sharply since 2019, and home prices have increased more slowly than in the suburbs and oth