/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>18181818
WITNESSED

On the chance that an extended social distancing program actually gets carried out (6-18 mo.), and this isn't a complete nothingburger that gets forgotten in a month, this will trigger another white/affluent flight within a year at most.

>Trendy stores, bars, and restaurants already close a constant rate in major cities because of increasing rents and variable profit margins. Extended distancing kills the vast majority of physical business in a few months.

>Commercial rents have not been responding correctly to demand, even during the recent boom, leaving storefronts empty for months or years. Don't expect CRMs to suddenly become less greedy. This further exacerbates neighborhood value degradation.

>Many white collar corporations realize, eventually, that working from home is feasible for much of their workforce and even preferable in certain cases.

>All of this builds to the final point: most urbanites struggle to afford rents as is, and with few remaining incentives apart from inertia keeping them in shitty, 100 year old boxes, they migrate to small cities and towns en masse.

Dense cities with geography that doesn't allow for extensive sprawl to ease this transition like New York and San Francisco will be especially fun to watch depopulate again.