Rich Gottlieb has been with Keystone, a Philadelphia-based commercial real estate firm, for more than 18 years, and now he’s the company’s president and chief operating officer after a stint as senior vice president. Like countless others, he attributes the distress within the office sector to the widespread shift toward remote work, which has significantly impacted demand. Additionally, the era of inexpensive financing has come to an end, marked by the transition to an economic environment characterized by higher interest rates and stricter credit conditions.
"For an office building, you can’t get a loan today…there’s no liquidity in the marketplace,” Gottlieb told Fortune. And with interest rates being higher, it’s eating away at a lot of the cash flow, Gottlieb said, calling it a “very trying time.”
