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Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
- TimTheTinker 3y agoIMO, they should consider banning cars in downtown areas (and adding large parking garages just outside them) while they're at it.
- alfalfasprout 3y ago[flagged]
- Arrath 3y agoNothing says that banning general commuter cars also means banning handicapable public transit, cabs, or specialty medical transport though.
- menus 3y agoThe original comment did not specify that. It may be obvious to you or me but not to most people. Advocates for improved cities need to understand that are less likely to receive pushback if they are clear and concise from the get go.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoThe original comment was a single sentence, not a thorough advocate proposal.
- TimTheTinker 3y agoI didn't imply (or did I?) that those would be the only options left. There are several large cities that have already successfully banned cars in city centers, and I doubt they're accused of being ableist. Ghent, Belgium would be a great model to follow.
- skwirl 3y agoThey will have to fix Boston’s horribly broken subway system first.
- HWR_14 3y agoEasier to do if you stop having to maintain tons of roadway and can move that money into mass transit.
- caditinpiscinam 3y agoWhen I lived in Boston I used the subway a lot and though it was ok. What makes you say it's broken? Has it gotten worse recently?
- spacephysics 3y agoRed line and blue line don’t connect. You need to take a bus to “connect” them
- smolder 3y agoOr the green line, or the orange line...
- whymauri 3y agoSince Fall of 2022, there's been a negative spiral within the MBTA. Primarily due to poor maintenance leading to: service cuts, full shutdown of certain lines, and the highest percentage of slow zones in recent history. Here's a graph of slow zones: https://old.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/11qtx82/red_line_slow_zones_since_october_9th_2020_rough/ https://old.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/11qtx82/red_line_sl... They are returning a good chunk of the system back to regular service this Summer, though. Edit: the slow zones might not be clear on that graph, but at one point the Red Line end-to-end was around 1-1.5 hours slower. Especially bad for commuters.
- natdempk 3y agoTransitMatters has a nice graph of the problem: https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/slowzones?startDate=2022-08-01 https://dashboard.transitmatters.org/slowzones?startDate=202...
- IX-103 3y agoThey've banned new parking places in Cambridge. They're not fixing the red line or adding parking outside of the city. They're just not allowing more parking inside. So I have the option of paying $700 a month to park in town or take a bus that only comes by once every hour and then get jammed on a subway car that might even make it to it's destination.
- lusus_naturae 3y agoI think this policy is incomplete without ensuring there is enough competition to ensure that rents stay relatively affordable.
- steveBK123 3y agomore supply = more competition, no?
- lusus_naturae 3y agoIt depends. If everything is owned by the same management or equity firm, then no.
- ch4s3 3y agoThe idea that a single firm or even a stable cartel could effectively control prices in a market as large as Boston is just naive.
- PartiallyTyped 3y agoThey can just run a cartel [1]. I don’t understand why anyone thinks things like housing can have any competition when housing is not a commodity but a necessity and the margins are rather thin with little to no space for efficiency and innovation, and private equity can just buy apartments and houses. > In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...
- steveBK123 3y agoProperty managers <> owners. RE investment is very hands on, and people hiring property managers to deal with it on their behalf. The idea that the top 10 own 70% of the market is not a shock. You could probably do this "top 10 own 70% of __ market" for literally anything.
- MildRant 3y agoI think this is fantastic. Boston desperately needs more housing. Let's get some increased funding for the T as well while we are at it.
- crmd 3y agoProperty tax represents 72% of Boston's municipal revenue[0], and this initiative provides a property tax reduction of up to 75% for up to 29 years, so unfortunately this initiative will not help with T funding. [0]https://data.boston.gov/dataset/revenue-budget https://data.boston.gov/dataset/revenue-budget
- gbear605 3y agoIf it allows more people to move into the city and start working, that’s more income taxes that can go towards funding the T. Much of the T’s is at the state level anyway.
- ghaff 3y agoAlthough a lot of the the people who come into the city occasionally to work have no interest in actually living in the city.
- mkoubaa 3y agoI like to think that in a representative democracy, money finds its way to projects that the public find important
- cowsandmilk 3y agoSince the MBTA is a state agency primarily funded by sales tax, Boston’s budget is highly irrelevant to its funding. https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2023-06/FY24%20Itemized%20Budget.pdf https://cdn.mbta.com/sites/default/files/2023-06/FY24%20Item...
- natdempk 3y agoI will probably get sniped by someone who actually knows what they're talking about (please correct me if I'm wrong :D), but my impression of the T issues is less a funding issue, and more a competency/corruption issue. We're building above-ground rail at underground rail prices for one example problem.
- alephnerd 3y ago> a rate reduction by up to 75% of the standard tax rate for residential for up to 29 years could provide a strong incentive to encourage conversion. This would be implemented through a public-private partnership that will enable the BPDA, the City, and the proponent to enter into a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement This is actually a pretty nice rebate (similar to the one Ed Lee and Willie Brown proposed for Mid-Market redevelopment and Mission Bay's development respectively). I'd love for SF to use similar terms, but I doubt it's politically feasible anymore.
- mholm 3y agoIs this as good as I'm imagining? Almost feels like any office developer would be looking at their offices and thinking about it, even if they're currently rented.
- mlyle 3y agoProperty taxes are a big expense, but not as big as the debt on the construction costs. And you end up with massive additional construction costs for fewer square feet to lease. So you only can do this if your bank decides to agree to take a haircut... which only happens if the bank is convinced you have no other options. Reducing the property tax provides a sweetener that you and the bank can share to make it slightly more palatable.
- fasthands9 3y agoI could imagine edge scenarios (not sure how common) where office buildings that happen to have residential friendly layouts do this first. Perhaps if that happened it would both raise demand for non-residential space (more people living nearby) and lower supply of commercial prop avail.
- mlyle 3y ago> Perhaps if that happened it would both raise demand for non-residential space (more people living nearby) and lower supply of commercial prop avail. Yup, that's what economics does: the firms with the lowest cost to converting, do so. And it's a nice follow-on effect that more residential hopefully increases commercial demand. This is mostly a factor where you have a big inventory of older commercial buildings. Advances in HVAC (and before that, lighting) have let you build bigger floors that are less desirable for residential use.
- steveBK123 3y agoThere was a cool OddLots episode recently where they talked to a guy who does Office to Residential work and some of the complexity. One thing he talked about, which I didn't know anyone did, was to actually cut through the ceiling/floorplate of buildings to basically "donut" them. This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc. Apparently they've done it a few times. Of course only some buildings can support this, given the layout of the supports, mechanicals, etc.
- aperson_hello 3y agoUndesirable apartments sound like code for low income/affordable housing to me... Add a few light pipes out to the outside walls and you can even get a bit of outside light inside!
- steveBK123 3y agoYes my point is that cutting the donut hole in is necessary to make them legal & desirable.
- aperson_hello 3y agoAnd my point is that desirable doesn't matter much if the goal is to get people housed. Yeah, you'll get less rent for the inner apartments, but that's how you make affordable housing - you make things cheaply and make sacrifices along the way to do so. Unless you don't want to live with the "poors"... Legality is also highly related to "keeping them separated"
- bobthepanda 3y agoThe problem is that the rest of the conversion, namely bathrooms and kitchens per unit and the required pipes, are also not cheap, to the point where if you wanted to rent out a lot of cheap units it would be easier to knock the building down and start anew.
- ilamont 3y agoWe need more creative thinking like this, not just in Boston, but in any city where there's a glut of office space. (In North America, that includes NYC, San Francisco, Toronto, Winnipeg ...) The devil, of course, will be in the details. But incentives like this can really help get things moving in the right direction.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoSpeaking of "incentives" I wonder how much of this is city gov - via the mayor saying: Those of you who can and aren't making your residential stock available...well, we're going to leap frog you. Certainly, if there are entities that are going to win from this, there are entities that are going to lose if they don't act.
- ramesh31 3y agoThis could actually work in a city like Boston (almost uniquely in the US). Most of those low/midrise older buildings downtown were likely residential to begin with.
- kibwen 3y ago> almost uniquely in the US Any east coast city should have an easier time of it, because the main determining factor for retrofitting office buildings into residential is the distance between the center of the building and the exterior, in order to make sure there's enough windows in each unit. Any office building built before the advent of the electric light should be just fine, so there's plenty of opportunity in places like Philadelphia.
- glowingly 3y agoI do not know if Boston is unique in this regard, but there was a lot of company housing in the region. Where I worked in Longwood (Boston), the offices surrounding me were massive, historic buildings with plaques commemorating their origin. They were originally built for housing nurses and doctors who worked in the area's hospitals (there is a concentration of hospitals in Longwood). So in this case, these were built and used as housing before a later conversion to office space. These are currently utilized hospital buildings. IMO, they are unlikely to be converted back to residential at this time.
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoIt's a fine idea if good candidates for conversion can be found, but shouldn't they fix up their dilapidated public transit system before inviting more density into their urban core? Just today, one of their rail cars caught fire at an elevated station, and their broken fire suppression system did nothing but flood the ground floor when the firefighters tried to use it. Wu's push for more housing density along the city's functioning arteries feels more realistic. Maybe they're realizing that plan could also suck a lot of property taxes out of the urban center.
- beastman82 3y agoThese are not mutually exclusive
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vkou 3y agoIf you're going to hold solving the housing crisis hostage to having proper public transit infrastructure, we're never going to solve the housing crisis.
- fasthands9 3y agoYeah. I realize there are tax breaks in her bill but in theory getting more people living in these dense areas will raise ridership on the subway a lot and raise taxes as a whole - which would pay for things like repairs which the OP complains about.
- stathibus 3y agoNo amount of ridership or city tax revenue would make the MBTA solvent. It's a sinking ship that is beyond rescue without massive federal intervention. Nobody in MA wants to say that though, because it's an admission of failure.
- kibwen 3y agoThere's a very good NYT article with great visualizations on the process of and obstacles to converting office buildings to residential: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...
- samstave 3y ago[flagged]
- marcosfelt 3y agoThanks for sharing this!
- pcurve 3y agoWSJ recently had a good video on challenge of converting office building into condo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTKjwWlhcLM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTKjwWlhcLM
- chewmieser 3y agoThanks, this was interesting! If anyone is blocked by the paywall use this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html?unlocked_article_code=OoA1Oa8PJtorjKBHk4iAj72ucmj6E50VqF5YIUENVvjaHRpMcYUZE0t_RR6NauPKtoAg4EhzVziksgmnEmxQE3PMy76Th6ZeO4slvDZ5i1FEltmJtpk9MycHVsegLhwUA_qfjav5TKsqXVNZ2ombkxg3nk4v-BfVav31YBhKg0ZIl9tOgGFPAgN03yUZ66uoyy1_zlW4iebiSZQ-qDEzBP0sOkNkzYOLCPH5w8-91YxSdFdNyU2Qky-s1uqAi3dI9kmFNtaLLFrM6slKBbDpGlzIoTx1wssslhrSlJhw_iNbtdqqEkZ2dSa33KlmnbbZQe7nRa_ikicrkVgvQHEsyujRu8CnmutjIFLR&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...
- balloonthief 3y agoThese projects are so interesting from an architectural/engineering standpoint, but then they hit you with the "rethink the rules that say how much green space an apartment needs or where its windows must be." I highly doubt the best long-term policy for a city's residents involves even less greenspace and natural light.
- bee_rider 3y agoHow is Boston doing nowadays, overall? As an Masshole, but not a city one, I’ve always kinda admired the job they do in Boston. At least, you don’t get the big dramatic narratives about it crumbling, like California cities, and NYC seems to be a bit boom-bust. Boston seems to always be doing fine. The Big Dig was a ripoff but that was ages ago, and the T smells like piss but that’s par for the course, right?
- ollien 3y agoIt's fine. The T is as bad as ever, shutting off sections for weeks on end for repairs. Rents are through the roof. But things aren't all bad, it's still a fun city.
- whymauri 3y agoMy favorite thing about the MBTA is it's one of the least piss-smelling subway system in the U.S. I wish it moved like the MTA, though lol. I might be willing to make that tradeoff... maybe.
- doctoboggan 3y agoI lived in Cambridge/Somerville from 2013 - 2019 and always had the feeling that downtown was only for office workers during business hours. There never seemed to be anything to do after hours as all the workers left downtown at 5pm. If this proposal takes off it would be really nice to see a lively downtown on the evenings and weekends.
- pivo 3y agoI live downtown (Leather District) and work downtown (Post Office Sq.) I think there's really quite a bit of stuff to do. Not NYC stuff to do level, sure, but definitely not a wasteland after dark either. I do agree, there are some beautiful old office buildings around here that would probably make great residential buildings. That would be even better for the area.
- ghaff 3y agoPersonally I'd live in Cambridge over Boston but, outside of the Financial District (which is pretty dead at night like it is in many cities), there's plenty of activity in the evenings. As another commenter said, it's not Manhattan but I worked downtown for about a year and lots to do.
- kgc 3y agoMaybe just make the middle a datacenter that uses that modern HVAC. Datacenter doesn't need windows.
- cs702 3y agoGreat news -- especially for the investors who own all those office buildings, and the banks that lent money to them. Their government in Boston has just announced it's about to save them from otherwise certain financial distress. The polite term they're using to describe such generous government help is "public-private partnership."
- kbos87 3y agoIt’s far and away in the best interests of the people who live in these cities for these spaces to be repurposed. Wouldn’t want to cut off our nose to spite our face.
- jimt1234 3y agoI'm confused. Why is this program necessary? If building owners are sitting on vacant space because the demand for office space has dropped, while the demand for housing continues to rise, aren't they already incentivized to convert to residential space just based on the market conditions? Not sure why the city has to subsidize the property owners.
- thinkcontext 3y agoOffice space rents for more per SQ ft than residential, so landlords have incentive to keep it vacant in the hopes that markets come back.
- eagleinparadise 3y agoI work in CRE - anyone reading this completely disregard this silly comment. it is laughably stupid
- zarathustreal 3y agoIn other news: internet rando calls other internet rando an idiot! Fails to recognize irony! More at 11pm.
- loco5niner 3y agonot exactly a thoughtful and interesting commentary, regardless of correctness.
- SantalBlush 3y agoI'll take correctness over thoughtful or interesting. Maybe I don't fit in here.
- zarathustreal 3y agoUnfortunate but true. This is just another echo chamber
- temp-boston 3y agoWhen I read this my immediate reaction is this is part of Boston's effort to blunt the impact of the potential incoming commercial real estate crash, which could damage many Boston business as well as Boston's commercial tax base. I was surprised not to see that mentioned at all in the announcement. Is it unrelated? Is the announcement political spin to encourage those who might otherwise be against bailing out commercial real estate property owners to support it? Am I just wrong and this has nothing to do with the CRE crisis?
- ghc 3y agoI don't think it's related to any crisis in CRE. Rather it's related to an ongoing crisis in housing. Boston is short 30 thousand housing units. Yes CRE vacancy is high in Boston, but it's still far from being a CRE crisis. The share of biotech and healthcare space is so high within Boston CRE that vacancy rate aren't nearly as bad as in other cities. And lab conversions are increasingly commonplace, so it's not like a residential conversion program was necessary to save CRE.
- twelvechairs 3y agoIts a delicate balance with these things. Residential brings life to the monotonous business areas and helps to improve housing supply (often not by an awful lot) but on the other hand, once you lose office sites they are generally gone forever (because of multiple ownership you can almost never convert from residential back to office) and even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / remote, the broader trend of the past 100 years is more and more jobs being concentrated into fewer and fewer office district that have to be larger and larger in critical mass. Sydney, Australia is a good example. They introduced residential floorspace bonuses 10-20 years ago which have changed the city for the better. Pre-covid they wanted to shut this lever off as it almost flipped the other way where they were running out of land for offices to keep up with demand. Now its a bit of a lull on how to respond to the new environment though.
- kbenson 3y ago> even though the office market is taking a big hit from working from home / remote, the broader trend of the past 100 years is more and more jobs being concentrated into fewer and fewer office district that have to be larger and larger in critical mass. Well, the question is whether we hit an inflection point which changed the future drastically and invalidated data based on prior trends or not. So, does remote work just alleviate how quickly office space needs were growing (and if so is it to the point that new office space could be built), or does it actually reverse the trend to a degree?
- hattmall 3y agoIt's not strictly work from home. Lots of business located near each other in city centers for business purposes that are being replaced by digital services. Video conferencing and other collaborative tools have decreased the need for many business to be in close physical proximity to each other.
- ktosobcy 3y agoI never understood the need to concentrate all the offices in the single focal point of the city. And currently with WFH it seems to make even more sense to distribute office spaces in local "co-working" spaces and in the end mix residential with work making it intertwined (zoning in the USA, from what I understand, is weird as hack…)
- fundad 3y agoHousing should not be privatized
- xrd 3y agoMayor Wu seems like the best mayor in the US. I saw her take a selfie with Bad Bunny backstage at his concert. She's obviously got her pulse on young blood over old blood. I need to learn more about how she thinks. Anyone have a link?
- spywaregorilla 3y agoOur new office building in boston (Winthrop Center) is doing something I thought was interesting. It's got residences on the upper floors above the office spaces. I hadn't seen that before. They're grossly luxurious mind you, but it was still interesting.
- binarymax 3y agoMy first job out of university, was a dotcom company called ZEFER. They had an amazing 2 floors of loft building in the old Boston leather working district on Beach St. I hadn’t been back to Boston in years until this past October, and stayed in a hotel near by. One evening I walked past the office, which are now high end condos. I’m sure they were crazy expensive. I loved that part of town, and walking around I saw lots of empty commercial space available. How wonderful it will be to have it teeming with life. That part of the city is glorious, and I’m sure many people will enjoy living there, hopefully at reasonable prices.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago- I wonder how much of this is legit[1]? - How much of it is the mayor playing politician? - And how much of it is the mayor trying to inspire others to stop sitting on their residential or potential residential stock? [1] Other comments are covering the finer - and more difficult - points of converting office building to residential.
- fswd 3y agoIronically, now you can work from home at your old work office. They wanted us back in the office, they got it.
- HermanMartinus 3y agoFunny story. I recently stayed in an AirBnb that was literally my old office but turned into micro-apartments. Woke up sweating that I'd be late for standup.
- costanzaDynasty 3y agoGreat idea, as a sign of leadership and truly believing in change I hope the Mayor fast tracks the programs scope beyond downtown and into Roslindale.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoIt's hilarious seeing the grand lapses in efficiency and problems that last decades in the United States. I know for a fact that if there was a persistent vacancy of buildings in China, they would have razed a city and built a new one overnight. America feels slow, tired, and pointlessly ineffective at any problem larger than building a new app for content, and even at that China is doing better now.
- 01100011 3y agoI hope we don't just settle for substandard housing cobbled together from ADUs and converted office buildings... I would like to see governments stepping up to raise the funds to buy out neighborhoods at a fair price and converting them into efficient, humane urban areas. You take what you can get, but in my area it seems most new housing is either smashed up against a freeway or a mish-mash of car-dependent ADUs. Future generations deserve better.
- mkoubaa 3y agoconverting office buildings do not preclude designing humane urban areas
- 01100011 3y agoDid you interpret my comment as suggesting that it does?
- cowsandmilk 3y agoWell, converted office buildings was in the same clause as substandard housing…
- mkoubaa 3y agoI did. Was that a misunderstanding on my part ?
- 01100011 3y agoI'm trying to say that I hope we do not stop putting significant effort towards housing once we have fulfilled whatever quota we're trying to achieve. If we add units with converted office buildings, ADUs and other quick fixes, we may lose the drive to create dense, humane, pleasurable environments which we will need to coax folks back to efficient living in the urban areas(which must happen absent a serious commitment to carbon-neutral energy).
- mcmoor 3y ago
- Eumenes 3y agoIs anything lamer than vacant office buildings?
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoDowntown LA had a bunch of (textile?) factories and warehouses back in the day that got repurposed as residential lofts. They're quirky and somewhat charming big buildings to live in, but you can tell they weren't really meant for humans to live in to begin with. I'm thinking of all of the SB lofts. For example if you're on the first few floors and you don't have an outside-facing window, your only source of light might be a 20 story light well. At best it always looks like dusk in your apartment, but most often it's pitch black without having your lights always on. Some of those repurposed building are quite livable, others not as much.
- suzzer99 3y agoThere's also no green space nearby and skid row is only a few blocks away.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoYou get used to the constant background sketchiness of it after enough time, but the lack of an easily accessible green space is a bummer. There's Elysian, but it's a decent walk.
- steve76 3y ago[dead]
- BenFranklin100 3y agoThis is a poor use of time and resources. A much better - and likely cheaper solution in the long run - is to relax Boston’s onerous zoning laws that forbid the construction of most new apartments. The construction of plentiful new apartments near and in the urban core has the added benefit of increasing demand for existing urban office space. It also increases the city tax base and the subsequent short work commutes is good for the environment and quality of life.
- temporalparts 3y agoNimby's have an easier time fighting new construction than conversions. I don't see this as a poor use of time if it can introduce hundreds of unit to a scarce and expensive market. Also, the last sentence of the article: > The Mayor also committed to update Boston’s zoning code to create thousands of additional housing units in Boston’s squares and corridors and reform the Article 80 process to increase speed and predictability for development.
- phendrenad2 3y agoI wonder if in the future people will start designing office buildings with this possibility in mind. "With just a few alterations, this could be condos!"
- LatteLazy 3y agoIf we can replace significant amount of urban office space with residents, we can increase city densities a lot, moving people from less to more densely populated places. This is really really important as population density is basically the driver for all progress. Getting people into cities makes them healthier, happier, richer, less polluting, and longer living. This could be the next big driver of progress for western civilisation...
- rr808 3y agoWhy would you want to live downtown though? Previously downtown living was attractive because of the short walk to the office. If you're WFH you might as well live somewhere nice.
- fader 3y agoI don't understand the extremely vocal hate for cities that comes up constantly on HN. I love living in the city. I can walk to two different movie theaters, two grocery stores, a huge number of restaurants and stores, and a number of my friends' houses within 15 minutes. I can hop on a bus or the subway and expand that even more. I don't have to waste half a day every weekend mowing a pointless lawn or trimming tree branches, but I have parks, rivers, ponds, etc. easily accessible any time I want to enjoy them. I grew up in a place where you had to drive 30+ minutes to go anywhere. It was incredibly isolating and I'd never want to go back to that. It's fine for people to want to live like that, but it's obvious that for many (if not most) people, cities are somewhere nice to live.
- stewartmcgown 3y agoAbsolutely. I live in Glasgow and it is a perfect environment for walkability, culture, music and great food. Wouldn't live somewhere rural/suburban if you paid me
- rr808 3y agoI love living in the city too, but I work in the office 5 days a week. If I didn't have an office I would be in a smaller city in a nicer part of the world.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xyzelement 3y agoI don't totally understand what drives people to project demand for urban residential when urban office is in decline and is being removed. Historically people moved to the cities because that's where the work was. What will drive people to cities when that's no longer true? Granted some people really enjoy "density" but I suspect most people prefer more space / a yard / etc if the lack of commute enables then to spread out.
- spaced-out 3y agoPeople aren't "projecting" demand, the demand is being driven by the market. Downtown apartments (in good condition) are expensive because they are in high demand while office space is getting harder and harder to fill. If you own a bunch of downtown commercial real estate, you don't need to be a business guru to see that you could be making a lot more money if you could rent that space out as apartments.
- xyzelement 3y ago// Downtown apartments (in good condition) are expensive because they are in high demand Yup, my question is - do we expect this to hold when downtown is no longer the place to be for work.
- lovich 3y agoIt’s the place where shit is though, even beyond work. My wife and I moved out of Boston due to the pricing, but if we could afford it while maintaining our current savings rate we’d move back in a heartbeat even though we both have remote jobs. The density allows for so many choices in food and entertainment that you can’t get in the suburbs or countryside. And that’s without even accounting for the lack of needing a car which is a constant headache in terms of maintenance and logistics that I wish I could just be rid of
- xyzelement 3y agoSure, but it doesn't sound like you have kids (yet) based on how you are describing it. Sorry if that's a wrong assumption. I totally get how at the period of life before you have kids, the city has advantages but once you have kids that formula flips quite a bit (eg: you care about access to Thai food less, while the backyard starts to matter a lot.) To put it in the terms of my up-thread post - that still sounds like a relatively smaller total demand vs before (eg, before COVID I suggested buying a larger place so we could have kids in NYC and I would have an easy commute - now I couldn't care less about being there vs my nice burb)
- gumballindie 3y agoCity management done right. Archaic methods of working that required people on site for jobs where it wasn't necessary are out the door. Would be great if uk’s London took the same path. Life there is atrocious, crime levels, pollution and prices are through the roof. Not to mention overcrowding and dirty public transport. Adjusting for more remote work would be game changing as people could live in the suburbs.
- pitt1980 3y agofwiw, there's a building my sister lived in in Pittsburgh, the Penn Garrison, it's downtown, not totally sure what the history behind its development is, or what the window related zoning issues are in Pittsburgh, but it has one-bedroom apartments where the bedroom doesn't have any windows. If you're interested in what it looks like, at least the promotional version of it, https://www.pmcpropertygroup.com/properties/penn-garrison-lofts https://www.pmcpropertygroup.com/properties/penn-garrison-lo... If you put enough soft lighting up, it was perfectly fine