By the end of the pandemic, many pundits were saying the end of the office was nigh. Three years later, the future is not so clear. Surveys show that in most of Europe, employees work from home anywhere from one to two days a week, but that may change: in one survey by KPMG, 80 percent of polled CEOs predicted most people will be working from the office full time within three years.

In the short run, however, developers, analysts and asset managers see two futures for the office, mostly depending on quality.

If you own a secondary, under-invested, poorly located office asset, times are indeed challenging. “Pre-pandemic, one might have been able to get away with a light touch capital expenditure programme, which could colloquially be referred to as ‘putting lipstick on a pig’. You would always find a tenant at a particular rental level. Now a landlord cannot get away with that; it’s become a lot more binary,” says Shiraz Jiwa, founder and CEO of London-based,