Green Street has encapsulated two major trends driving the office sector right now to provide a tangible (and grim) number for office demand post-COVID: -15%.

COVID-19 has wrought a slew of changes to the sector, with social distancing stabilizing densification, or less square feet per worker, a trend that's dominated office for the last decade. This development—taken together with a continued increase in work-from-home policies among companies— suggests that aggregate office demand will take a 15% hit in the future, according to Green Street's analysis. 

Citing surveys that show employee preference to spend at least one day a week from home, Green Street states that a "decent amount" of employees—or 10%—will likely continue to work from home on a more permanent basis. This is a threefold increase over pre-pandemic levels. Post-pandemic, Green Street predicts workers will spend around 20% less time in the office than they did pre-COVID, and that means companies will need less space.