These factors are still relevant, but they are no longer enough. Today, for companies in technology, financial services, artificial intelligence, fintech, cybersecurity, or international service centres, the decisive question has become another: where is the talent?

This change is profoundly transforming the office market. Colliers’ recent study of global financial services centres shows that companies no longer choose cities solely by financial tradition or occupancy cost. The availability of qualified professionals, the capacity for innovation, universities, the technological ecosystem and quality of life have become determining factors.

It is in this context that Lisbon appears for the first time among the main European operational centres for financial services. Not because it has become a new London, Frankfurt or Paris, but because the very concept of a financial centre has changed. Banking, insurance and financial services are increasingly technology companies, dependent on software engineers, data specialists, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

This is where real estate should pay attention. For too long, offices have been analysed almost exclusively as physical assets: location, building quality, rent, size and profitability. But the value of an office depends more and more on what exists outside its walls: housing, public transport, universities, digital connectivity, energy, services, culture and, above all, on the possibility of a professional imagining a life in that city.

The firm is therefore no longer the starting point of the decision. It became the consequence of an ecosystem capable of attracting people. This transformation creates a great opportunity for Portugal, but it also exposes weaknesses: will we have enough housing for the professionals we want to attract? Efficient mobility? Energy and digital infrastructure to match? Will we be able to retain the young people we train?

These are also real estate questions. A building can have the best environmental certification, the most sophisticated architecture, and the most advanced technology. But if you're in a city where people can't find a home, waste hours in traffic, or see talent disappear, your value will inevitably be affected. The opposite is also true: cities with good ecosystems of talent, knowledge, mobility and quality of life become more attractive to companies and investors.

Perhaps, therefore, it is time to stop discussing the office market only in available square meters, prime rents or occupancy rates. These indicators remain important, but they only tell part of the story. The real competition between cities will increasingly be for the ability to attract and retain qualified people. Companies will follow these people. Then will come the offices.

The future of offices is no longer decided in offices. It is decided in the universities where we train talent, in the houses where that talent can live, in the transport it uses, in the quality of cities and in the ability to build environments where companies and people want to stay. Before we can build buildings for businesses, we will have to build cities where the people those businesses are looking for actually want to live.