A Change of Plans 

Two years ago, I got clearance from my town to tear down my current office space in Delray Beach, an 11,000-square-foot storage building, and replace it with a 40,000-square-foot Class-A office building. The plan was to rent it to one or several of my businesses. That has been a very good investing strategy since I started building businesses 40 years ago.

Then the pandemic hit. Which brought on remote working. Which felt like it was going to be at least partially permanent. Which sated my appetite for acquiring more office space since I wouldn’t be needing more, even if the businesses continued to grow. So, I put the project on hold.

The same thing happened with the office buildings my partners and I have in Baltimore and London and Paris and other cities. The pandemic made us realize that the old model of centralized office locations, and the bedroom suburbs they spawned, may continue to exist, but as fractions of their former selves.

Notwithstanding the recent uptick from the bottoms hit early last year, I’m not bullish on office space right now. In Delray Beach or elsewhere.