all the small companies my friends work for in my neck of the woods stopped leasing office space

Indeed, which is why this real-estate conspiracy is downright bizarre.

And even a larger company I'm familiar with has been looking very hard at lease renewals and has been walking away from a bunch of them. There's a certain lip service to the energy associated with having people back in the office but, in practice, people are being switched to fully remote if they don't come in and offices are being eliminated or swapped out for smaller spaces.