Pull all your own, sell office space. Profit?

Skyscrapers and large office spaces are on paper horrible investments and have an awful time filling enough vacancies to offset their upkeep. The only thing that makes them a “safe” investment is that every company uses them as a way to bank equity. If those same companies pulled the rug from under themselves they would all lose that safe equity piggy bank.

This is just the sunk cost fallacy though. You can inflate the paper value of assets by playing games like this, but the bill always comes due in the end. Yes, companies that do this can juice their books a bit in the short term, but they're harming themselves in the long term. They retain a bit higher book value for their real estate, but they make whatever goods or services they provide noncompetitive in the marketplace. They have competitors who aren't bogged down by past bad real estate decisions. Those competitors can outcompete them on price and can attract better talent. Meanwhile, they're stuck in their ways, fruitlessly trying to inflate their real estate holdings, all while their revenue is plummeting because they can't attract good people and have to charge higher for their services than their competitors.

It's just the sunk cost fallacy. You could inflate the book value of real estate by doing all sorts of foolish things. You could create a subsidiary and have that company rent out some of your floor space for absurdly high rates. But you're ultimately just robbing Peter to pay Paul. Those commercial real estate properties have already lost their value. The value was lost the minute it was proven that work from home was a superior work model.

These companies are going to go bankrupt at a mass scale when the next recession rolls around.

Fuck, these companies might actually be violating the law. Deliberately choosing unproductive business practices just to cook your real estate books is something Enron would do.

Capitalism, such efficiency!