>[T]he same individuals who are able to make leasing decisions for office space are co-invested in commercial real estate

But those individuals are much bigger shareholders in the company they work for. Downsizing the office footprint of a single company has a tiny marginal effect on the overall real estate market, but can incur enormous savings for the company, and enormous personal rewards to the people making the decision to downsize and save money.

Individuals are notoriously bad at considering collective externalities. If a CFO realizes that they could save tens of millions of dollars per year on real estate by switching to remote-only, they’re not going to then think “but if everyone did this, it would hurt the commercial real estate holdings I have in my portfolio.” No, the CFO is thinking “announcing that we’re saving 8 figures per annum on real estate is going to pop the share price of my company (and thus my equity holdings), and likely net me a really fat cash bonus.” By similar logic, CTOs, who likely have considerable technology investments, would want to needlessly maximize tech spend. Instead, they get lauded for cutting IT costs.