I personally think this is the biggest reason. MY company just went “well, guess we’ll sell 2/3 of our campus and let someone else use that space, we sure don’t need it any more”… but I think a lot of businesses are stuck with their lease and struggling to make the square footage pay for itself.
I can’t look for a source right now (I’m on the clock at my WFH job) but I thought there was evidence that hedge funds and investment houses had invested in commercial real estate, like they invested in residential real estate in the 2000’s (which ultimately resulted in the “sub-prime mortgage crisis”)… and that THEY are really the ones pushing for RTO, trying to avoid another crash when their investments tank because nobody wants to own commercial real estate any more and starts looking to sell it off.
But take that with a big grain of salt, because I can’t cite a source ATM!