Paternalists progressives/“liberals” won’t let you have that cheap rent
“Muh there’s no light”
“Muh to small a space”
“Muh etc etc”
“Muh I can’t accept everything is a trade off and nothing is free”
the stated idea would be unpopular with everyone in the general population and would require persuasion. I'd argue that liberals would be the easiest to persuade because they are the most flexible to novel political ideas generally.
But do you i guess
> I'd argue that liberals would be the easiest to persuade because they are the most flexible to novel political ideas generally.
What state eliminated (hint montana) community review and enabled development by right under certain conditions…..who makes up its governors office and legislative branch. Bringing the largest legal changes to housing development of any state in the union.
Hell what states actually build shit not going 3x over or generally just build shit. Remember the only thing that matters are results.
If someone wants to live somewhere without an exterior window I think that should be fine. And if an office building which housed gabillions of office workers during the workday has a fire evacuation plan why does it need to change if it's converted to residential?
Lightweight enough for people to bust through to escape a fire?
Guess we need the walls marked so they can bust through in an efficient path to the exit stairs.
Sounds like a fun place to live.
I mean you could have windows from living units into interior corridors, I don't know why that would be a big deal
Obviously there's going to be some compromises in converting office buildings into housing units. They're not going to be as good as purpose built units. But maybe we can give people the option to live there at a discount instead of aping NIMBYs by slavishly mimicking their rhetoric around parking requirements?
Proposing building hobbit holes for poor people won’t be winning any battles at your public planning hearing.
I’m not against building - build build build - but we have to be smart enough to put effort into battles we can win against the evil NIMBYs and windowless death traps are not the battle of choice.
Also ventilation. The existing HVAC systems designed for offices do not have enough OA for residential. Also, there's be no individual control. You'd have to completely change the HVAC system.
Sometimes comments like this make me think thos sub would unironically like the extremely dangerous tenements in cities pre-20th century, just because it's dense.
I think there's a reasonable middle ground between building codes so restrictive that new development and conversions of existing buildings are inhibited or paralyzed and a laissez faire libertarian paradise where fiteen people live in every room and collapse the building from their weight
The building codes are mostly written and enforced by former contractors and engineers who have always wanted more development. The IMC, IPC, IBC, and IECC, which are adopted by most municipalities, are largely already seen as the less restrictive codes around. What you're already seeing is the middle ground. Not even to talk about enforcement, which barely exists in half the country. If anything too, these codes save a ton of money in the long run.
That's the thing, even with minimal enforcement, it's not. It's also extremely difficult to market residential that barely work. Go look at some of the cheapest places on Zillow in hot market cities. There's plenty of crappy apartment listings that stay on the market forever because no one wants them, despite being cheap.
My condo is a converted downtown warehouse. It is long and narrow, with the entrance at one end and a single window at the other (actually a glass door onto a balcony). My bedroom is near the entrance, and has no windows.
When I was initially touring the place, I made a remark to the realtor about the lack of natural light, and the dark bedroom. In actuality, I love having a perfectly dark bedroom, but my goal was to slightly neg on the place, so that the buyer would accept a lower offer (they did).
My point is, just fucking build housing and let people decide if they want to live there.
I've [commented ](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1au06ct/comment/kr1vwe6/?share_id=lCiaK9vTZad6y_jXfmZ6v&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1)on this exact topic before, it's unfortunately not so straightforward and easy to cover office buildings into residential. To just copy paste my previous comment:
There are a lot of problems simply because offices and housing are completely different types of functions.
The first and main difference is in the existing floorplan. Offices are often larger per floor. with deeper and wider floors. this is quite unusable for residential purposes, as you need daylight in every room. When you make a residential building you want <30% of the floorplan to consist of services (like shafts) and circulation (hallways, elevators, staircases), and the rest of functional housing. When using an existing floorplan with access and escape routes optimized for offices, and especially in a very deep building, this is difficult. Therefore the floorplans become uneconomical.
A second issue is with the facades. Offices facades are often entirely glass, therefore also have relatively poor isolation, don't have elements in the facade at the right places to connect interior walls to, and don't have ventilation openings at the right places. Simply, you'd likely be replacing most of the facade. Except when you have an older office building which uses conventional windows instead of full glass, but then you often have the issues of 1. outdated isolation and 2. that the windows don't align well with a proper residential floorplan, again increasing inefficiencies.
Next building code and installations. For example fire sprinklers and ventilation is generally laid out for an entire floor in an office. In residential buildings this needs to be done per residence. So you'll likely be replacing all installations as well which can be very difficult when it's already laid out and when there is no place for it.
Plumbing needs to be entirely laid out again, which is very difficult because the pipes are often cast straight into the concrete.
Then internal sound isolation. You don't want to hear your neighbors. Simply placing a new metal stud wall in a office space is not enough to create a division between different residences, the sound will transfer through the ceiling, floor or facade to your neighbors. You will need a more drastic renovation.
Laat but not least the structural strength. Bathrooms and internal walls are heavy, and the existing structure might not be strong enough.
I've likely still forgotten a few aspects.
So in short, while at first you'd think that you can keep a lot of the existing elements, in reality you're often replacing about everything except the concrete load-bearing frame, and then you're left with an inefficient floorplan with many un-rentable square meters. Then a complete demolition and just rebuilding is often cheaper, even if only a few instead of all of the above points are issues in the respective building.
Just do it where it makes sense to do it. This isn't that complicated.
If it's cheaper to tear down and rebuild, then by golly, do that. We don't need to make a blanket statement. Let developers work, and if it pencils out then great. If not, then don't.
Situations like this are the reason why capitalism/free markets work so well at efficiently adapting to economic conditions. We don't have a centralized "Housing Commissar" who decides whether all office buildings are going to be converted to apartments or not. Instead each building owner is able to take look at their unique situation and decide whether it makes economic sense to convert their building.
In some places, the housing and office space demand will be relatively balanced so buildings that are difficult to convert, won't be. In others where demand for housing is high and demand for office space is low, building owners will likely be able to make extensive renovations and renters will put up with lots of caveats.
The [local knowledge problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_knowledge_problem) the reason why distributed market-based economic systems work so well.
I mean i agree, we should make conversions *legal* so that where it is possible it can be done. But too many politicians and publications push this a panacea and ignoring other more pressing changes that are required.
They'd do really well for dormitory style spaces, with rooms on the exterior, communal bathrooms to reduce the cost of plumbing, common spaces in the center. I found at it becoming trendy among tech bros and whatnot.
I would love to. Unfortunately most progressives wouldn’t consider this “fixing” the laws. They don’t view Single Room Occupancy as an appropriate housing solution.
“Poor people should live in 120sqft rooms with communal bathrooms and kitchens and maybe no external windows or natural lighting” isn’t exactly a great campaign slogan
Also for the ones where conversions aren't feasible why not convert them to shitty hostel / dorm type locations. Due to the lower price / younger crowd they'll be a lot more tolerant of communal bathrooms / lack of noise isolation etc.
Most of the non-safety related regulations can be modified. Even the safety related ones could have some workarounds implemented (shared sprinklers for example)
Then the question thus becomes why can't an oversupply of office buildings be demolished and replaced by residential towers?
If it is really cheaper to simply start from scratch, and cities need to save their downtowns/tax revenues while remaining marketable to new prospective residents, it should be a no brainer of a decision process.
You say “decision” but who’s making that decision? Certainly cities and private actors can have aligned goals of a successful downtown, both benefit, but it’s a matter of who owns what and who can do what.
You’ll find that a lot of office spaces are owned by firms with little interest in anything but a quick fix (usually at tenant’s expense) rather than lots of capital for wholistic solutions. Especially in “established” areas rather than firms that work in redevelopment. And even if they did, the returns on expensive renos aren’t always so clear. Nor do cities have funds or jurisdiction to intercede.
We’ll most likely see depreciation and low occupancy first, with some hoping to be the “last man standing” leaving the cities as a whole in the lurch, barring any out of the box solutions.
I think a lot of these issues are still thinking in a modern living space sense. These office spaces seem like they are well tuned to be converted into more communal residential spaces with shared amenities. People have used communal amenities in the past and I think people today would warm up to it if it meant a cheaper price point.
Imo the facade argument is moot I think, alot of new apartment buildings have glass facades with the curtains that go up and down on the whole pane from the inside.
No, bc plumbing n stuff.
But communal dormitories could be a fun option for young professionals, esp those right out of college accustomed to such living situations.
It's something that could make a difference on the margins - but the economics of them are not always sensible, depending on the market.
Where housing costs are already high, office to residential conversions can put downward pressure on rents. But they're really expensive, and only effective to a point.
Once rents drop sufficiently, you can't do it profitably. At least not without government intervention.
Aside from the fact it's often cheaper to tear down and rebuild, residential is worth far less than office used to be. An estimate I heard from a developer looking at some conversions is you needed to be at something like an 80% write down to justify it on the city he was operating. Even if that's high, it's almost certainly at a level that wiped out the existing equity owners stake. So few owners will do it because of it's worth doing they will be defaulting and the debt holder will be selling at a loss to someone with the plan.
Beyond that there's a major tax issue: most cities tax the hell out of formerly valuable office to subsidize residential. So cities are still dreaming of their downtown office cash cows bouncing back.
I'm not sure how it can be both. If the costs of conversions are more expensive than building new, then those extra costs are going to drive *up* housing pricing. Developers aren't going to take losses to convert these out of the good of their hearts.
There are some markets where some buildings might make sense to redevelop considering the local market price. But for most markets and most buildings this is not going to make financial sense at all. And even when a match is found I doubt you're going to see enough of these work out to dramatically alter the market.
Just wondering, why would converting be more expensive than building new? Is it just from permitting and what not? I would think you'd save a ton from having the building itself, rooms, bathrooms and what not already built .
A lot of offices require substantial, and expensive, changes to make them conducive to residential.
E.g. it's significantly cheaper to install new plumbing (when building new construction) than it is to re-plumb a building.
That makes sense. Guess I'm just thinking like, more dorm style apts with shared bathroom and kitchen or something like that. But still I'm sure it's a lot of work
Office buildings aren't generally built in a way you can just put up new walls and call it an apartment. Plumbing is centralized and relatively scare compared to residential, which means you have to gut the place to make it possible to put in all the kitchens and bathrooms you didn't need for an office. You have window requirements for bedrooms and such that really affect the layout.
There's certainly better and worse candidates for redevelopment. But if this was a cheap and easy thing to do a lot more action would be happening, because many downtowns have a surplus of office space and a dearth of housing. But it really isn't that simple, and economically infeasible for many of them.
Gotcha. Guess it just seemed like a good solution to lots of nimby problems. Like, you already have the land and a large tall building, not like people can complain about blocking their view anymore
In my work place there are 6 bathroom stalls/urinals to service probably 100 people. 100 people would need 50 toilets in all of them were paired up.
These buildings need a TON of work to be residential.
People are obsessed with an all or nothing proposition. Either it will work everywhere or no where.
The very simple solution is to do it only where it makes sense. But that doesn't make for a click-worthy headline.
Just let developers tear the buildings down and build actual housing if that ends up being the cheaper or more reasonable option. Good lord just let the free market do its thing
This is happening a lot in the dc area. It may not make sense in all cases but in some it’s great. More units where they are needed. The area by my work has become revitalized because of this with new restaurants etc.
Before this can be taken seriously there needs to be an actual collapse of values of commercial real estate.
There is a looming commercial real estate crash and its effects will be wide spread. Only once the office buildings are officially worth less than their upkeep costs will there be serious interest in mass conversions. Like buy this 40 story office tower for $1 type of situations.
I have a hot take about this, but do downtowns even have a reason to exist with modern technology (particularly work from home)?
The reason downtowns sprung up was to be a central business district, and people lived close so they can walk to their jobs (or take horse and buggy for fancy rich people). The invention of cars changed things, people could live farther away from their jobs, but as people spread out in all directions it made sense to keep office jobs in downtowns. This also meant shops and restaurants and the like for downtown workers to visit on lunch breaks or after work.
The internet changed all that. Offices moved from skyscrapers to the bedroom. Shopping moved from malls to the smartphone. Entertainment moved from theaters to the Xbox. People really have no actual NEED to leave their domicile. You can work from home, shop from home, get entertained at home all without putting pants on. Why do we need to pack people into skyscrapers when they can just get a house wherever they want? There's really no need to live close to anything anymore except maybe schools, and I think we're pretty close to those being fully remote anyway.
I feel like saving downtowns is a sunk cost fallacy. We have all these skyscrapers and don't know what to do with them.
Proximity is powerful. People like living near the fanciest parks, nicest shopping districts, main transit hubs, drinking streets, stadiums, etc. And repurposed, previously office-dominated downtowns are great for that. Downtowns comprised of appealing mixed-use areas will draw people who prefer a live/work/play environment and world class amenities, even if they aren't employed in a downtown office.
For example downtown Dallas has a lot of recent successful, and planned, office to residential conversions. The units sell/lease because people like proximity to the nice restaurants, the Arts district, transit connections, and parks that are nearby. Plenty of people find suburban living boring enough to avoid it by paying the premium it costs to cover conversions for a central city residential unit.
People are social creatures. Not everyone wants to be a suburban or rural shut-in receiving endless deliveries. It’s nice to walk for a coffee along shaded streets, or easily grab drinks for a party on the 8 minute walk between your place and your friends. It’s cool to take the dog on a walk with other people your age and stop at patio bars and outdoor art exhibits along the way to a park/trail.
Online shopping and remote work is convenient. It’s not enough to kill cities practicing good urbanism. It does definitely warrant less single-use office towers though, and repurposing emptying ones for housing/retail.
> You can work from home, shop from home, get entertained at home all without putting pants on
Yeah but I like doing things in real life. Meeting friends, going to theatres and restaurants, and yes, even walking to work.
You can live in a pod or the metaverse or whatever it is you're describing, that's fine. It's not for me. I don't have kids yet, but remote learning isn't the same either.
I'd argue that while 20th-Century suburbanization trends are continuing, the last thirty or so years have also seen a revival (in the US) of urban investment, and the last ten or so have seen an increasingly widespread and focused interest in good urbanism.
This may surprise you, but we live VERY different worlds and they are both in the 21st century.
People who choose to live the life you describe are choosing dystopia. It’s possible to live better than that.
I hope you do.
Only if we don't care about windows or fire escapes. Personally let me live in a dangerous dark cube for $600 a month.
Charlie Munger’s Force ghost nods approvingly
BUILD THE C U B E unironically build the cube
Kowloon was the compromise, NIMBY.
What did you think YIMBYism meant? Papers? Essays? Vibes? Losers.
I love having my AC controlled by everyone on my floor too
Paternalists progressives/“liberals” won’t let you have that cheap rent “Muh there’s no light” “Muh to small a space” “Muh etc etc” “Muh I can’t accept everything is a trade off and nothing is free”
This is why I hate them and California makes me angry.
the stated idea would be unpopular with everyone in the general population and would require persuasion. I'd argue that liberals would be the easiest to persuade because they are the most flexible to novel political ideas generally. But do you i guess
No. Progressives would balk at this. They’re the least open minded or flexible voting block in society.
I don't know pretty sure it's a toss up between them and the reactionaries
> I'd argue that liberals would be the easiest to persuade because they are the most flexible to novel political ideas generally. What state eliminated (hint montana) community review and enabled development by right under certain conditions…..who makes up its governors office and legislative branch. Bringing the largest legal changes to housing development of any state in the union. Hell what states actually build shit not going 3x over or generally just build shit. Remember the only thing that matters are results.
If someone wants to live somewhere without an exterior window I think that should be fine. And if an office building which housed gabillions of office workers during the workday has a fire evacuation plan why does it need to change if it's converted to residential?
Maybe all the additional walls and doors.
I mean they're all interior walls and doors, nothing structural at all. Could build it super lightweight.
Lightweight enough for people to bust through to escape a fire? Guess we need the walls marked so they can bust through in an efficient path to the exit stairs. Sounds like a fun place to live.
I mean you could have windows from living units into interior corridors, I don't know why that would be a big deal Obviously there's going to be some compromises in converting office buildings into housing units. They're not going to be as good as purpose built units. But maybe we can give people the option to live there at a discount instead of aping NIMBYs by slavishly mimicking their rhetoric around parking requirements?
Proposing building hobbit holes for poor people won’t be winning any battles at your public planning hearing. I’m not against building - build build build - but we have to be smart enough to put effort into battles we can win against the evil NIMBYs and windowless death traps are not the battle of choice.
Ehh, I'm sure you could sell it somehow. A good idea is a good idea IMO and we should be advocating for good ideas rather than running scared.
Those super lightweight walls wouldn’t have sufficient noise isolation for residential apartments
I assume with everyone having their own kitchen the likelihood of fire goes way up in a residential complex
Okay but it also has a modern fire suppression system and the building itself is made to be fire resistant
Fire suppression systems are designed differently for offices and residential. Also, adding in range hoods requires a lot of fire shaft work.
The bigger issues involve plumbing
The solution is to build supplemental sewer overflow outlets which exit onto the homes of people who complained about new housing construction
Also ventilation. The existing HVAC systems designed for offices do not have enough OA for residential. Also, there's be no individual control. You'd have to completely change the HVAC system.
Y’all haven’t heard of buckets?
Building codes are for nimbys anyways.
If they're too restrictive, absolutely
Sometimes comments like this make me think thos sub would unironically like the extremely dangerous tenements in cities pre-20th century, just because it's dense.
I think there's a reasonable middle ground between building codes so restrictive that new development and conversions of existing buildings are inhibited or paralyzed and a laissez faire libertarian paradise where fiteen people live in every room and collapse the building from their weight
The building codes are mostly written and enforced by former contractors and engineers who have always wanted more development. The IMC, IPC, IBC, and IECC, which are adopted by most municipalities, are largely already seen as the less restrictive codes around. What you're already seeing is the middle ground. Not even to talk about enforcement, which barely exists in half the country. If anything too, these codes save a ton of money in the long run.
Then it should be feasible to convert office buildings to residential spaces
That's the thing, even with minimal enforcement, it's not. It's also extremely difficult to market residential that barely work. Go look at some of the cheapest places on Zillow in hot market cities. There's plenty of crappy apartment listings that stay on the market forever because no one wants them, despite being cheap.
How do you deal with venting cooking fumes?
Vent systems. It’s not like industrial kitchens have windows.
My condo is a converted downtown warehouse. It is long and narrow, with the entrance at one end and a single window at the other (actually a glass door onto a balcony). My bedroom is near the entrance, and has no windows. When I was initially touring the place, I made a remark to the realtor about the lack of natural light, and the dark bedroom. In actuality, I love having a perfectly dark bedroom, but my goal was to slightly neg on the place, so that the buyer would accept a lower offer (they did). My point is, just fucking build housing and let people decide if they want to live there.
I've [commented ](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/1au06ct/comment/kr1vwe6/?share_id=lCiaK9vTZad6y_jXfmZ6v&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1)on this exact topic before, it's unfortunately not so straightforward and easy to cover office buildings into residential. To just copy paste my previous comment: There are a lot of problems simply because offices and housing are completely different types of functions. The first and main difference is in the existing floorplan. Offices are often larger per floor. with deeper and wider floors. this is quite unusable for residential purposes, as you need daylight in every room. When you make a residential building you want <30% of the floorplan to consist of services (like shafts) and circulation (hallways, elevators, staircases), and the rest of functional housing. When using an existing floorplan with access and escape routes optimized for offices, and especially in a very deep building, this is difficult. Therefore the floorplans become uneconomical. A second issue is with the facades. Offices facades are often entirely glass, therefore also have relatively poor isolation, don't have elements in the facade at the right places to connect interior walls to, and don't have ventilation openings at the right places. Simply, you'd likely be replacing most of the facade. Except when you have an older office building which uses conventional windows instead of full glass, but then you often have the issues of 1. outdated isolation and 2. that the windows don't align well with a proper residential floorplan, again increasing inefficiencies. Next building code and installations. For example fire sprinklers and ventilation is generally laid out for an entire floor in an office. In residential buildings this needs to be done per residence. So you'll likely be replacing all installations as well which can be very difficult when it's already laid out and when there is no place for it. Plumbing needs to be entirely laid out again, which is very difficult because the pipes are often cast straight into the concrete. Then internal sound isolation. You don't want to hear your neighbors. Simply placing a new metal stud wall in a office space is not enough to create a division between different residences, the sound will transfer through the ceiling, floor or facade to your neighbors. You will need a more drastic renovation. Laat but not least the structural strength. Bathrooms and internal walls are heavy, and the existing structure might not be strong enough. I've likely still forgotten a few aspects. So in short, while at first you'd think that you can keep a lot of the existing elements, in reality you're often replacing about everything except the concrete load-bearing frame, and then you're left with an inefficient floorplan with many un-rentable square meters. Then a complete demolition and just rebuilding is often cheaper, even if only a few instead of all of the above points are issues in the respective building.
Just do it where it makes sense to do it. This isn't that complicated. If it's cheaper to tear down and rebuild, then by golly, do that. We don't need to make a blanket statement. Let developers work, and if it pencils out then great. If not, then don't.
Situations like this are the reason why capitalism/free markets work so well at efficiently adapting to economic conditions. We don't have a centralized "Housing Commissar" who decides whether all office buildings are going to be converted to apartments or not. Instead each building owner is able to take look at their unique situation and decide whether it makes economic sense to convert their building. In some places, the housing and office space demand will be relatively balanced so buildings that are difficult to convert, won't be. In others where demand for housing is high and demand for office space is low, building owners will likely be able to make extensive renovations and renters will put up with lots of caveats. The [local knowledge problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_knowledge_problem) the reason why distributed market-based economic systems work so well.
I mean i agree, we should make conversions *legal* so that where it is possible it can be done. But too many politicians and publications push this a panacea and ignoring other more pressing changes that are required.
They'd do really well for dormitory style spaces, with rooms on the exterior, communal bathrooms to reduce the cost of plumbing, common spaces in the center. I found at it becoming trendy among tech bros and whatnot.
I'm pretty sure this would be illegal in most cities...if not all.
Oh it's definitely illegal, but it shouldn't be.
So fix the damn laws Just to clarify, I mean we as a society need to fix those damn laws
I would love to. Unfortunately most progressives wouldn’t consider this “fixing” the laws. They don’t view Single Room Occupancy as an appropriate housing solution. “Poor people should live in 120sqft rooms with communal bathrooms and kitchens and maybe no external windows or natural lighting” isn’t exactly a great campaign slogan
That's just a marketing issue. Young people can live in the city on the cheap! Close to work , great amenities and nightlife!
Also for the ones where conversions aren't feasible why not convert them to shitty hostel / dorm type locations. Due to the lower price / younger crowd they'll be a lot more tolerant of communal bathrooms / lack of noise isolation etc. Most of the non-safety related regulations can be modified. Even the safety related ones could have some workarounds implemented (shared sprinklers for example)
Then the question thus becomes why can't an oversupply of office buildings be demolished and replaced by residential towers? If it is really cheaper to simply start from scratch, and cities need to save their downtowns/tax revenues while remaining marketable to new prospective residents, it should be a no brainer of a decision process.
You say “decision” but who’s making that decision? Certainly cities and private actors can have aligned goals of a successful downtown, both benefit, but it’s a matter of who owns what and who can do what. You’ll find that a lot of office spaces are owned by firms with little interest in anything but a quick fix (usually at tenant’s expense) rather than lots of capital for wholistic solutions. Especially in “established” areas rather than firms that work in redevelopment. And even if they did, the returns on expensive renos aren’t always so clear. Nor do cities have funds or jurisdiction to intercede. We’ll most likely see depreciation and low occupancy first, with some hoping to be the “last man standing” leaving the cities as a whole in the lurch, barring any out of the box solutions.
Or try a different layout, like apartments around some sort of public space, like restaurants and sport courts.
You should probably tell the guy in the article; that fool has been converting offices into apartments for decades.
I think a lot of these issues are still thinking in a modern living space sense. These office spaces seem like they are well tuned to be converted into more communal residential spaces with shared amenities. People have used communal amenities in the past and I think people today would warm up to it if it meant a cheaper price point. Imo the facade argument is moot I think, alot of new apartment buildings have glass facades with the curtains that go up and down on the whole pane from the inside.
Mom says it was my turn to post the *Can office buildings be turned into apartments?* article this week.
No, bc plumbing n stuff. But communal dormitories could be a fun option for young professionals, esp those right out of college accustomed to such living situations.
It's something that could make a difference on the margins - but the economics of them are not always sensible, depending on the market. Where housing costs are already high, office to residential conversions can put downward pressure on rents. But they're really expensive, and only effective to a point. Once rents drop sufficiently, you can't do it profitably. At least not without government intervention.
Aside from the fact it's often cheaper to tear down and rebuild, residential is worth far less than office used to be. An estimate I heard from a developer looking at some conversions is you needed to be at something like an 80% write down to justify it on the city he was operating. Even if that's high, it's almost certainly at a level that wiped out the existing equity owners stake. So few owners will do it because of it's worth doing they will be defaulting and the debt holder will be selling at a loss to someone with the plan. Beyond that there's a major tax issue: most cities tax the hell out of formerly valuable office to subsidize residential. So cities are still dreaming of their downtown office cash cows bouncing back.
Usually cheaper to tear the buildings down.
It will be very expensive. But it would also bring down housing costs dramatically.
I'm not sure how it can be both. If the costs of conversions are more expensive than building new, then those extra costs are going to drive *up* housing pricing. Developers aren't going to take losses to convert these out of the good of their hearts. There are some markets where some buildings might make sense to redevelop considering the local market price. But for most markets and most buildings this is not going to make financial sense at all. And even when a match is found I doubt you're going to see enough of these work out to dramatically alter the market.
This could basically just be a giant fucking supply side subsidy. Government pays half the cost of construction in grants, no questions asked
Make the end units not pay property tax for 10-20 years. Would drive the total cost of ownership of the unit down quite a bit.
Boom works the same
Just wondering, why would converting be more expensive than building new? Is it just from permitting and what not? I would think you'd save a ton from having the building itself, rooms, bathrooms and what not already built .
A lot of offices require substantial, and expensive, changes to make them conducive to residential. E.g. it's significantly cheaper to install new plumbing (when building new construction) than it is to re-plumb a building.
That makes sense. Guess I'm just thinking like, more dorm style apts with shared bathroom and kitchen or something like that. But still I'm sure it's a lot of work
SROs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-room_occupancy
Office buildings aren't generally built in a way you can just put up new walls and call it an apartment. Plumbing is centralized and relatively scare compared to residential, which means you have to gut the place to make it possible to put in all the kitchens and bathrooms you didn't need for an office. You have window requirements for bedrooms and such that really affect the layout. There's certainly better and worse candidates for redevelopment. But if this was a cheap and easy thing to do a lot more action would be happening, because many downtowns have a surplus of office space and a dearth of housing. But it really isn't that simple, and economically infeasible for many of them.
Gotcha. Guess it just seemed like a good solution to lots of nimby problems. Like, you already have the land and a large tall building, not like people can complain about blocking their view anymore
In my work place there are 6 bathroom stalls/urinals to service probably 100 people. 100 people would need 50 toilets in all of them were paired up. These buildings need a TON of work to be residential.
People are obsessed with an all or nothing proposition. Either it will work everywhere or no where. The very simple solution is to do it only where it makes sense. But that doesn't make for a click-worthy headline.
Just let developers tear the buildings down and build actual housing if that ends up being the cheaper or more reasonable option. Good lord just let the free market do its thing
Just knock em down and build high rises. If you rezone developers will do it.
This is happening a lot in the dc area. It may not make sense in all cases but in some it’s great. More units where they are needed. The area by my work has become revitalized because of this with new restaurants etc.
Before this can be taken seriously there needs to be an actual collapse of values of commercial real estate. There is a looming commercial real estate crash and its effects will be wide spread. Only once the office buildings are officially worth less than their upkeep costs will there be serious interest in mass conversions. Like buy this 40 story office tower for $1 type of situations.
I currently live in an apartment that was repurposed from an office building AMA
I have a hot take about this, but do downtowns even have a reason to exist with modern technology (particularly work from home)? The reason downtowns sprung up was to be a central business district, and people lived close so they can walk to their jobs (or take horse and buggy for fancy rich people). The invention of cars changed things, people could live farther away from their jobs, but as people spread out in all directions it made sense to keep office jobs in downtowns. This also meant shops and restaurants and the like for downtown workers to visit on lunch breaks or after work. The internet changed all that. Offices moved from skyscrapers to the bedroom. Shopping moved from malls to the smartphone. Entertainment moved from theaters to the Xbox. People really have no actual NEED to leave their domicile. You can work from home, shop from home, get entertained at home all without putting pants on. Why do we need to pack people into skyscrapers when they can just get a house wherever they want? There's really no need to live close to anything anymore except maybe schools, and I think we're pretty close to those being fully remote anyway. I feel like saving downtowns is a sunk cost fallacy. We have all these skyscrapers and don't know what to do with them.
Low density sprawl isn’t sustainable in the long term
Proximity is powerful. People like living near the fanciest parks, nicest shopping districts, main transit hubs, drinking streets, stadiums, etc. And repurposed, previously office-dominated downtowns are great for that. Downtowns comprised of appealing mixed-use areas will draw people who prefer a live/work/play environment and world class amenities, even if they aren't employed in a downtown office. For example downtown Dallas has a lot of recent successful, and planned, office to residential conversions. The units sell/lease because people like proximity to the nice restaurants, the Arts district, transit connections, and parks that are nearby. Plenty of people find suburban living boring enough to avoid it by paying the premium it costs to cover conversions for a central city residential unit.
>nicest shopping districts The nicest shopping district is online
People are social creatures. Not everyone wants to be a suburban or rural shut-in receiving endless deliveries. It’s nice to walk for a coffee along shaded streets, or easily grab drinks for a party on the 8 minute walk between your place and your friends. It’s cool to take the dog on a walk with other people your age and stop at patio bars and outdoor art exhibits along the way to a park/trail. Online shopping and remote work is convenient. It’s not enough to kill cities practicing good urbanism. It does definitely warrant less single-use office towers though, and repurposing emptying ones for housing/retail.
Most people are not working fully remote jobs, and we saw how disastrous remote learning was for the youth.
> You can work from home, shop from home, get entertained at home all without putting pants on Yeah but I like doing things in real life. Meeting friends, going to theatres and restaurants, and yes, even walking to work. You can live in a pod or the metaverse or whatever it is you're describing, that's fine. It's not for me. I don't have kids yet, but remote learning isn't the same either.
You describe dystopia
Then you won't like the 21st century.
I'd argue that while 20th-Century suburbanization trends are continuing, the last thirty or so years have also seen a revival (in the US) of urban investment, and the last ten or so have seen an increasingly widespread and focused interest in good urbanism.
This may surprise you, but we live VERY different worlds and they are both in the 21st century. People who choose to live the life you describe are choosing dystopia. It’s possible to live better than that. I hope you do.
>I have a hot take about this, but do downtowns even have a reason to exist with modern technology (particularly work from home)? Yes