Office landlords, hit hard by the work-from-home revolution, are resorting to a desperate measure in the real estate world: "handing back the keys." When this happens, the landlord stops paying the mortgage on the office building or declines to refinance it. And companies realized they could save a lot of money by renting less office space, making many office towers unprofitable for their owners and turning many business districts into ghost towns. Take a property company that bought an office tower for $100 million just before the pandemic, investing $25 million of its own money and borrowing $75 million. But homeowners who stopped paying mortgages suffered a huge hit to their credit ratings and had to live elsewhere.\

Source: Economic Times December 03, 2023 13:44 UTC