The world of office real estate will be forever changed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but companies aren't quite sure yet what the new picture looks like.

That's one key takeaway from a new report on office space trends from CBRE, based on survey responses from 126 companies—half of which are on the Fortune 500—about their real estate plans. But a few things are clear early on in the pandemic, and one is that flexibility is a key component of office real estate strategies moving forward. Among the responding companies, for example, 63% said they will give employees more choice over where they work on a daily basis. Yet only a quarter said they plan to give employees the choice to work remotely on a full-time basis.

"So what that indicates to me is that companies are keeping the reins on what functions they are going to allow to be put into a full time remote bucket, because there is a certain amount of culture, there's a certain amount of productivity, innovation and also individual employee performance that needs to go into that decision that employees alone can't drive," said Julie Whelan, who leads CBRE's occupier research and who authored the study.