True our company has already told various landlords we are not renewing 4 floors up for renewal this year and likely few more floors around Australia as they come up for renewal next year but we are not retrenching anyone. Our new normal is moving toward WFH permenently.
Depending on local zoning laws this may work in some jurisdictions. Building code requirements may also be problematic: plumbing, drainage, HVAC, fire safety. I guess it could work in Singapore, where land is at a premium and the market for urban residential real estate is buoyant. I'd be tempted to investigate converting some of these former office spaces into second-tier server spaces if they are in central locations with good network connectivity - 'warm' backup sites, secondary higher-latency offsite data storage and the like. Surely there must be businesses that will not store their sensitive data on Cloud services in someone else's hardware.
Practically the whole Singapore is urban but there is a small office cbd. The authorities had been trying to move companies out of the office district and converting offices to hotels or condos for the last 20 years or so. Since no one likes to live in an office only district, regardless of security, because the whole place shuts down at night with little shops and recreation, the conversion is a long process. A lot of DCs are converted from industrial buildings, haven't heard of conversion from offices but I guess it's possible with some retrofitting.
I've dumped most of my retail and hotel reits, trimed a little energy that looks expensive. Don't feel good about the variant and lockdowns. Maybe selling more energy depending on how things go.