General-Purpose Deep Research Plan Template With Worked Example

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Executive Summary

Because no specific topic was provided, this report assumes a plausible example topic: the impact of remote work on urban commercial real estate in the United States, 2018–2025. That assumption is explicit and can be swapped for another topic without changing the overall research structure. The recommended approach is a mixed-methods design: combine official labor and commuting data, commercial real estate market data, and recent academic literature with targeted expert interviews and metro-level comparative analysis.

This example is analytically strong because the underlying phenomenon is both measurable and consequential. Remote work remains materially above pre-pandemic levels. WFH Research’s U.S. Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes, now distributed through FRED, shows a persistent post-2020 elevation in work-from-home patterns; its June 2026 summary describes the pandemic-era shift as equivalent to “almost 40 years” of pre-pandemic growth, and for June 2025–May 2026 reports 12% fully remote, 26% hybrid, and 62% fully on-site among full-time wage and salary employees. The same source shows remote work is especially prevalent in finance, information, and professional/business services—exactly the sectors that matter most for downtown office demand.

On the real-estate side, the literature and market reporting point in the same direction: office demand did not merely suffer a cyclical dip; it experienced a structural break. An NBER paper by Gupta, Mittal, and Van Nieuwerburgh documents large changes in lease revenues, occupancy, renewal rates, lease durations, and rents after the pandemic shock, and estimates a 45% decline in New York City office values in 2020 with a 39% longer-run decline. Reuters, summarizing Green Street analysis, reported that U.S. office net absorption had fallen by 130 million square feet since 2020 and that recovery to pre-pandemic occupancy levels could take more than five years even under optimistic assumptions.

For commissioning purposes, a standard, decision-ready study would typically take 10–12 weeks and cost roughly $75,000–$150,000, depending on how many metros are included and whether licensed commercial datasets are purchased. A leaner desk-based version can be completed in 6–8 weeks, while a more ambitious comparative study with licensed data and interviews across multiple metros can extend to 12–16 weeks. The highest-value outputs are a decision memo, a metro-comparison dataset, a slide deck, and a short technical appendix documenting methods, assumptions, and source limitations. These budget and timing figures are planning estimates, not market quotes.

Assumptions And Research Plan Template

Assumptions

The report makes five explicit assumptions.

Concise Research Plan Template

A high-quality template should be decision-led rather than topic-led: start from the question that must be answered, then back into evidence and methods. In the worked example below, that means distinguishing among downtown versus suburban exposure, Class A versus older office stock, and labor-market effects versus fiscal effects, because the literature suggests the impact of remote work is uneven rather than uniform.

Worked Example

Topic Assumption

For the worked example, this report assumes the study topic is:

Impact of remote work on urban commercial real estate in the United States, 2018–2025.

Research Questions

The example should be built around a small number of testable questions.

These questions are justified by the current evidence base. WFH Research shows persistence rather than full reversion, while the NBER office-real-estate paper and Green Street commentary both indicate long-lasting reductions in office demand rather than a short-lived disruption.

Prioritized Sources

The source stack should be tiered rather than flat.

This source ordering reflects both rigor and practical usefulness. Official and research datasets are essential for the “what,” while interviews and market commentary explain the “why.” That distinction matters because recent evidence already suggests that office stress is concentrated in certain metros and certain building types, not simply in “office” as a single national category.

Data Collection And Analysis Design

A practical design for this topic is shown below.

Recommended analysis methods:

This design is well aligned with the available evidence. The WFH Research series are monthly and broad enough for time-series analysis, while recent research shows that sector mix matters to WFH prevalence. The June 2026 SWAA summary specifically identifies finance, information, and professional/business services as the most work-from-home-intensive sectors.

Expected Deliverables

Illustrative Timeline

The following timeline assumes a 12-week standard engagement beginning on 2026-07-06.

gantt
    title Illustrative Research Timeline
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat  %b %d

    section Framing
    Kickoff and decision framing        :a1, 2026-07-06, 7d
    Scope, hypotheses, source register :a2, after a1, 7d

    section Collection
    Gather official and research data  :b1, after a2, 14d
    Gather CRE market data             :b2, after a2, 14d
    Stakeholder interview fieldwork    :b3, after a2, 21d

    section Analysis
    Clean and harmonize data           :c1, after b1, 10d
    Quantitative analysis              :c2, after c1, 14d
    Qualitative synthesis              :c3, after b3, 10d

    section Outputs
    Draft memo and slides              :d1, after c2, 10d
    Review and revision                :d2, after d1, 7d
    Final delivery                     :d3, after d2, 3d

Estimated Budget Ranges

The budget moves most with two variables: licensed commercial data and qualitative fieldwork depth. If the client already has access to CBRE, JLL, CoStar, Moody’s, Green Street, or internal leasing data, the project can be materially cheaper.

Source Pack

The list below favors primary or near-primary sources and recent material. URLs are shown because they were explicitly requested.

If this example were converted into a live commissioned study, I would add formal government pages for the American Community Survey and BLS/CPS telework-related releases, plus one or two licensed CRE datasets, before final fieldwork begins.

Visuals

Stakeholder And Data-Flow View

flowchart LR
    Employers[Employers] -->|work policies| Workers[Workers]
    Workers -->|WFH frequency, preferences| SWAA[WFH Research / SWAA]
    SWAA --> FRED[FRED time series]
    Workers -->|commuting behavior| ACS[ACS and commuting data]
    Employers -->|space demand| CRE[CRE market reports]
    CRE --> Owners[Landlords and investors]
    Owners --> Cities[Cities and tax base]
    Transit[Transit agencies] --> Cities
    ACS --> Cities
    CRE --> Cities
    Interviews[Stakeholder interviews] --> Synthesis[Research synthesis]
    FRED --> Synthesis
    ACS --> Synthesis
    CRE --> Synthesis
    Cities --> Synthesis

The key analytical point is that remote work affects office markets both directly through space demand and indirectly through commuting, downtown spending, and municipal revenues. The NBER paper explicitly links office-value changes to broader public-finance and financial-stability consequences, while metro reporting shows that commute patterns and transit use can shift meaningfully as work patterns stabilize.

Hypothetical Key-Finding Chart

The chart below is illustrative rather than empirical. It shows the kind of relationship a completed study might find if the literature-aligned pattern holds: remote work stabilizes above 2019 levels, broad CBD office demand remains depressed, and prime assets recover more than commodity stock. This interpretation is consistent with SWAA persistence evidence, the NBER valuation results, and market reporting on uneven recovery.

xychart-beta
    title "Illustrative metro findings indexed to 2018"
    x-axis [2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025]
    y-axis "Index 2018 = 100" 40 --> 160
    line "Remote-work prevalence" [100, 102, 150, 146, 142, 140, 138, 137]
    line "Broad CBD office demand" [100, 100, 78, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77]
    line "Prime-office resilience" [100, 101, 92, 90, 91, 93, 95, 97]

Next Steps For Commissioning

A practical commissioning sequence is short.

For this example topic, the most sensible commissioning brief would ask for three things: which metros are structurally impaired, which are selectively resilient, and what indicators should be monitored quarterly going forward. That framing fits the evidence now available: remote work has stabilized above pre-pandemic levels, office-market pain is uneven, and sector mix strongly shapes metro exposure.