After a one-year break, the international real estate industry met in Munich - for the Expo Real trade fair, which, albeit at a reduced rate, was able to take place in presence again.
At the fair we met Sonja Wärntges, the chairwoman of the board of the real estate developer DIC Asset AG, which owns the Commerzbank tower in Frankfurt and the O2 tower in Munich.
What is it like to be back at a live trade fair after the Corona break?
That’s a good feeling.
Although there are far fewer stands at the fair in order to maintain the spacing and the hygiene concept.
So it's a whole new trade fair experience anyway.
In any case, you can feel a kind of optimism.
Your company DIC Asset AG builds, buys and sells, manages and operates commercial real estate. What do you have in Munich that you know as a normal citizen?
First of all, you might have to say that we are the largest commercial real estate investor in Germany.
What you probably know in Munich is the Uptown Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Bavaria, which we, like Campus C, acquired this summer.
Otherwise we are currently reorganizing our Munich branch.
At the end of last year we took over a local logistics specialist called RLI Investors, whom we are moving together with our branch.
Both will then move into Campus C. We want to design it in such a way that it can serve as a model for office space of the future for potential tenants.
What does the office of the future look like?
First of all, all the warnings that predicted the end of the offices in the corona pandemic have not come true.
Rather, we see that people want to go back to the offices, and the bosses want their employees to come back to the offices.
That is why there will continue to be offices.
But they will be designed differently, and much more flexible.
What does flexible mean in concrete terms?
There are two trends: One is aimed at agile working.
This means that people no longer work in fixed teams and at the same workplace every day.
It is much more the case that they meet in the office with the colleagues with whom they deal on a project basis.
For this you need appropriate rooms of different sizes and equipment, especially technical equipment.
The team meetings have a completely different value than the daily get-togethers at the workplace as a routine that used to be common.
The rooms must also correspond to this.
A second trend is towards larger units, the small telephone booth offices have had their day.
The employees no longer want that.
So it's moving on to open-plan offices?
Yes.
Only I wouldn't call it that.
In fact, however, larger areas are in demand.
There must also be space for employees to meet, for example a café bar.
In any case, we have not received a request since Corona that tenants wanted to downsize, on the contrary, most of them want more space, including the public facilities that are tenants with us.
The office has to appeal to employees more than it used to.
Exactly.
Many employers wonder what they need to offer their employees to make them enjoy coming to the office.
In many professional fields it is no longer easy to get good staff.
There may be industries in which work can also be done from home over the long term.
But anything that has to do with creativity works better when you can communicate with one another personally.
Another argument in favor of the office is: Anyone who is only in the home office loses contact with the company, including emotional contact.
You are doing work for an increasingly anonymous client to whom you have no special relationship.
Many employees also see this as a problem.
Many people also want to keep their work and private life separate, in my experience that is especially true of women.
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Sonja Wärntges, chairwoman of the board of real estate developer DIC Asset AG
© DIC
Then you are not surprised by the result of a survey by the Federal Employment Agency, according to which three quarters of all companies want to return to the pre-corona mode when it comes to home office?
No, that really doesn't surprise me. There is a similar study by the TU Darmstadt. An interesting aspect was that people who live outside the city in a beautiful house with a beautiful garden and are in good contact with their neighbors there preferred the home office. They are networked with their environment and have their relationships there. However, this is a problem for young people who do not have all of this yet. These are completed by working from home with contacts who actually want and need them. They cannot be integrated into a company, do not see how to work together and how to deal with one another. There is a lot of things they don't learn, and that is something that should be seriously considered. After all, these are the people who will be the managers in companies in the future.In addition, there is a special form of social contact in Germany: the workplace is still the largest marriage market. In this respect, too, it would probably have an impact if people hardly ever met in the office.
So if the office in the city lives on, as you predict, will the possibly pleasant side effects not occur, for example, that in cities like Munich, for example, rents for residential property will eventually fall, for example?
No, unfortunately, I don't see that either.
A corona effect that has occurred in many inner cities is vacancy in shops.
This is mainly due to the growing importance of online trading, and Corona actually only acted as a kind of accelerator.
How did you behave as a landlord? Rent deferred?
Yes, we have made agreements with all of our tenants who wanted this.
In the case of shops in particular, we wanted the tenant to have a chance to stay.
It used to be the tenants who tried to conclude long-term rental contracts, preferably 15 years, so that their investments in the shops were worthwhile.
Today most people ask for very short deadlines, preferably three or five years.
Only that is hardly worth it for the landlord.
How are things going with the inner cities?
City centers and retailers need to develop concepts.
It's about people having a good reason to come to town.
It has to be as diverse as possible.
So: not just shops, but also restaurants, playgrounds, fitness studios, culture - and not to forget e-charging stations.
And like all of that in one property.
I call this mixed use, i.e. a building in which there is a shop and maybe a take-away restaurant downstairs, maybe a warehouse for parcel delivery services on the first floor, a doctor's practice above and a few apartments upstairs.
Incidentally, this also has many advantages in terms of supply and disposal logistics.
Driving into the city center with one's own car is viewed increasingly critically in many places, including Munich, for example. How do you see it
Whenever someone drives to an electronics store in the city, they must be able to bring their new television home.
So he needs a parking space.
Arrival and departure must be guaranteed for such shops, because nobody takes a TV set home on a bicycle.
The retailers have no control over that.
No, if the city centers are to remain attractive, you have to get everyone on board.
Representatives of the city as well as representatives of trade, culture, gastronomy and real estate developers.
In such a circle you have to think about what a city might look like in ten years.
It is clear that you have to give people experiences in the city, staying in the city center has to offer added value: Be it to go out to eat, go to the cinema, do sports, meet friends.
You have to enjoy coming to the city, everything has to be close together and easily accessible, more detailed than today, but also more flexible.
Otherwise, people prefer to click their way through the Internet while shopping online.
So a mixed bag.
Yes.
One has to ask, what does a city need to be alive?
Incidentally, I think that this also includes people living in the city center and not just shops there.
I also think that it is not possible that the expensive areas only have second homes that the owners only visit a few times a year.
In Munich that is of course a question of price.
Yes, but if I want to keep a city center alive, I have to make it possible for people to live there.
Then I just have to encourage it.
This also applies to the dealer structure.
In a vibrant inner city, it must be possible for not only the large, but also the small retailers to get inner city space.
You have to have both, only then is the mix right.
Interview: Corinna Maier
