5 ms·

I'm curious to see what will happen with the bagholders of office real estate. Will they try to reinvent themselves as mixed use residential/commercial? Or is

by ammut 4y ago

I'm curious to see what will happen with the bagholders of office real estate. Will they try to reinvent themselves as mixed use residential/commercial? Or is it possible we will see a wave of defaults as vacancy rates continue to climb?

nebula8804 4y ago
Do we know how much of commercial real estate is owned by foreign entities? ie. Chinese elites laundering money out of China into the West? I wonder if they have any protections to save their investments or is their money made from value generated in China just literally disappearing?
khuey 4y ago
Office to residential conversions are pretty tough. I don't think we'll see a ton of them.
- hedora 4y ago
  I don't think there is a fundamental reason for that. Office buildings are designed to be reconfigured. I guess you'd need to rip out + replace the plumbing + HVAC (or only put in a few ultra-luxury units per floor).
  - idontpost 4y ago
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Office buildings tend to have all their plumbing centrally located. Converting to residential means spreading it all around. It's not like just moving partitions around.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      Sprinkler systems tend to be evenly distributed around floors so the conduits etc. to run additional piping are already in place. Not every building has such systems but most constructed after 1980 do.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The sewer pipes and vents have to be run everywhere, and they have specific requirements. Sewer pipes, for example, half to have a slope. The vent pipes have to go up. There may be floor loading problems. There's going to need to be a lot more electrical wiring. It's not impossible, it's just expensive.
briffle 4y ago
I've noticed how many fluff-filled articles I see lately about 'needing to get back to the office' in many publications that seem to have a large number of advertisers selling office space. I don't have any numbers, but it seems pretty crazy how many of these have been popping up in different 'business journal' types of sites.
- idontpost 4y ago
  It's not crazy at all. Our entire society is built around exploitatively extracting maximum value from each other and that often requires creative marketing to invent want where none existed before.
spamizbad 4y ago
There's going to be a massive PR campaign to get employees back into the office. Story after story about how going back to the office increased productivity etc etc. They're going to give businesses the hard sell to lease office space again and get their employees back into the office. Not everyone will go along with this, but if they could get 80% of the people back it'll probably be enough to prevent commercial real estate from collapsing.

by ammut 4y ago

nebula8804 4y ago

Do we know how much of commercial real estate is owned by foreign entities? ie. Chinese elites laundering money out of China into the West? I wonder if they have any protections to save their investments or is their money made from value generated in China just literally disappearing?

khuey 4y ago

Office to residential conversions are pretty tough. I don't think we'll see a ton of them.

hedora 4y ago
I don't think there is a fundamental reason for that. Office buildings are designed to be reconfigured. I guess you'd need to rip out + replace the plumbing + HVAC (or only put in a few ultra-luxury units per floor).
- idontpost 4y ago
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Office buildings tend to have all their plumbing centrally located. Converting to residential means spreading it all around. It's not like just moving partitions around.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Sprinkler systems tend to be evenly distributed around floors so the conduits etc. to run additional piping are already in place. Not every building has such systems but most constructed after 1980 do.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The sewer pipes and vents have to be run everywhere, and they have specific requirements. Sewer pipes, for example, half to have a slope. The vent pipes have to go up. There may be floor loading problems. There's going to need to be a lot more electrical wiring. It's not impossible, it's just expensive.

briffle 4y ago

I've noticed how many fluff-filled articles I see lately about 'needing to get back to the office' in many publications that seem to have a large number of advertisers selling office space. I don't have any numbers, but it seems pretty crazy how many of these have been popping up in different 'business journal' types of sites.

idontpost 4y ago
It's not crazy at all. Our entire society is built around exploitatively extracting maximum value from each other and that often requires creative marketing to invent want where none existed before.

spamizbad 4y ago

There's going to be a massive PR campaign to get employees back into the office. Story after story about how going back to the office increased productivity etc etc. They're going to give businesses the hard sell to lease office space again and get their employees back into the office. Not everyone will go along with this, but if they could get 80% of the people back it'll probably be enough to prevent commercial real estate from collapsing.