Although work is slowly making a comeback, many companies have realized the benefits of flexible working and have decided to reduce their real estate investments by investing what they have saved in bonuses and activities for employees who prefer the home office. But if smartworking depopulates the offices, ecommerce takes care of giving breath to the real estate market. Never before has the retail trade moved online, with the need for increasingly large and organized warehouses for both merchants and logistics and shipping services. An emblematic example of the change of perspective is provided by ShipBob, a global logistics platform oriented towards B2C ecommerce. The company has decided to split its Chicago headquarters offices in two, so that half can be rented, while it has doubled its warehouses starting in mid-2020: today there are 24 (including 4 outside the United States ) and expects to reach 35 by the end of the year. Vacancies in industrial real estate in the United States are hitting an all-time low, and the hunt for new building plots to build warehouses and sorting centers has begun. Rents are also on the rise: + 7% compared to a year ago, with a price that has reached its all-time high. But it is a national average: there are strategic areas, such as New Jersey and California, where rents of industrial spaces are increasing with double-digit numbers, up to 30% more, fueled by a war on the rise of companies competing for every meter. painting. In contrast to office space abounds, there are areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area where rents are drastically falling for the first time in years and free space abounds, also because the big tech companies in the area, which are starting to reimagine a future of hybrid work, they are willing to sublet their space in surplus for a figure that is less than a third of that of the market. Free offices went from 6 to 18.7%, similar to 2005 figures after the dotcom bubble burst. A similar phenomenon is also happening in New York and Chicago, albeit to a lesser extent, given that it is the tech industry that is transforming the most with remote working indefinitely. Italy is less affected by the phenomenon. , although in recent months there has been a succession of closures and shutters lowered almost everywhere, but we expect that the recovery will quickly lead to reopening and turnover for both retail stores and offices. However, there is no shortage of important investments for logistics, such as that of Poste which has just inaugurated a super-hub in Landriano, in the province of Pavia. It will be the largest in Italy for e-commerce, covering an area of 80 thousand square meters, with an investment of 60 million and will allow, at full capacity, to sort 300 thousand parcels a day thanks to 600 professionals and an automatic system for sorting capable of handling 39 thousand pieces per hour, with interconnected machines and robots that load directly onto the vehicles.