The office sector has apparently become an official horror show to the degree that plenty of people have written it off as irredeemable. A Bloomberg MLIV Pulse survey saw two-thirds of 919 respondents saying the U.S. office market "will only rebound after a severe collapse." A larger percentage said that U.S. commercial real estate prices wouldn't seen bottom until the second of half of 2024 at the soonest.

There is nothing new that office on the surface faces significant challenges that GlobeSt.com has repeatedly reported for a year or more. CRE data firms have run analyses on a regular basis, looking at outstanding CMBS loan values, estimates of general property valuation reductions, tallies of delinquencies, and so forth.

But something that became clear since last fall when GlobeSt.com asked CRE experts what 2023 would be like, and a current round of research into expectations of the market, uncertainty truly rules the industry. No one expected a bank crash, ongoing interest rate increases, extended hybrid work, and so much more.