I'm genuinely surprised that your typical exec isn't looking at things like this thinking: "We're spending this much a month on office space for our 500 staff at this location. Let's knock that down to 100 and push everyone to work from home". Give ourselves a big pat on the back and a nice bonus for saving a few million a year.
If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space.
In the UK government orgs sold off their office space and turned to renting. Now the people renting the office space are annoyed that the demand is dropping. Poor them.
Startups DEFINITELY have been looking at it this way for the last decade, to the point where I only know of a few startups that still have physical offices out of the hundreds I interact with in various capacities.
Give it a few more years and FANG / fortune 500 will follow suit, likely crashing the CRE industry which would actually serve a number of societal goods...
In some cases, some companies rent an office for 2-3+ years. So let's say, they renewed from 2020-2023.
They were "forced" at first (to do WFH) and money got literally "burned", because the offices were empty, but insurances and all that had to be paid.
Now they had a chance at using more alternative approaches (rent spaces, or smaller offices), yet they want many to come back. There was almost never a saving, because contracts were still running (for many companies, I believe).
The typical exec's tenure is shorter than the six year office leases so they'd never see any praise or bonus for making that change. As far as they're concerned, the option doesn't exist.
If after a few years, it doesn't work, you go back to the market for more office space.
In the UK government orgs sold off their office space and turned to renting. Now the people renting the office space are annoyed that the demand is dropping. Poor them.