A lot of companies (or at least the owners of the company) do own the building they are in, through a holding company of sorts that the company then rents from.
Re:The Unaffordable Urban Paradise
by kasey_junk on Monday June 26, 2017 @12:47PM
(#14638168)
Thats clearly true of smaller companies. And there are larger companies that have significant real estate holdings as that is a major component of their business (McDonalds for instance).
But office/operations space being owned was generally viewed as inefficient for large companies that didn't have real estate ownership as a core function because its a pretty bad asset for a company both as a store of value and as an investment in innovation.
I'd love to see some statistics on that because it doesn't jive with my experience in large companies in the midwest. Ownership of land was considered a major negative when I was working in large companies but its definitely been a while and the sample size is small.