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Looks like there is an opportunity to convert a lot of that into residential space.

by rbanffy 10mo ago

shagie 10mo ago
Not necessarily. Things like "where do pipes run" so can get tricky along with code requirements for access. There's a NYT article on the challenges about this from a few years ago: So You Want to Turn an Office Building Into a Home? -- Here’s How to Solve a 25-Story Rubik’s Cube https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.fhAA.rn4RQmfFrLUg&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  While converting it is not economical, class c office space (which is least desirable) demand is probably gone in this market due to lackluster demand for office space; the value of the building will get zeroed out by the market, at which point it can trade hands, be demo'd, and new residential can go up in its place. You can think of class c office space, broadly speaking, as oil wells that have very little life left, and get bought up by folks who intend to extract the cashflow until they dump the externality on the public government and taxpayers (like abandoned shopping malls). A recent example in St Louis is the AT&T office tower [1] [2]. [1] One of St. Louis’ tallest office towers, empty for years, sells for less than 2% of its peak price - https://www.costar.com/article/642008108/one-of-st-louis-tallest-office-towers-empty-for-years-sells-for-less-than-2-of-its-peak-price https://www.costar.com/article/642008108/one-of-st-louis-tal... - April 10th, 2024 ("Goldman Group buys 44-story former AT&T office tower for $3.6 Million") [2] St. Louis office vacancy hits all-time high [21.2%] as major companies downsize their footprints - https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2026/01/15/office-vacancy-rate-record-high-downsizing-company.html https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2026/01/15/office-v... - January 16th, 2026 (conversions when the economics pencil out, haircuts for investors when they don't and more investment is needed to wholesale replace a structure) US office vacancy rates chart supposedly pulled from Moody's: https://old.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1p8mhmq/us_office_vacancy_rates_20192025/ https://old.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1p8mhmq/us_office_v...
- dnemmers 10mo ago
  Great article with diagrams and overlays. Good share.
- xnx 10mo ago
  Article from 1 month ago on how conversions have become much more feasible with some clever hacks: https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/nyc-office-residential-conversions-housing-4723b702 https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/nyc-office-reside...
- palmotea 10mo ago
  IIRC, that article mentioned older buildings tend to be more convertible to residential, because of their layouts, and modern office buildings (with giant open floor spaces for seas of cubicles) are almost impossible to convert. There should probably building code changes to ban the latter type of office building, and keep the space more flexible and convertible to residential. A big plus is the resulting office space would probably be nicer to workers.
someuser54541 10mo ago
I read something at some point that it's more expensive to convert these into residential buildings than it is to literally demolish and rebuild. I'm not entirely sure how that math works out, or why, because one would think it couldn't be that complicated. Maybe someone here knows more about this.
- paularmstrong 10mo ago
  I assume it's because they would need to re-wire electrical and retrofit plumbing on a massive scale to accommodate kitchens and bathrooms for separate units. They end up needing to gut the entire building and cut through floors and ceilings without damaging any structural and load-bearing parts. It doesn't sound easy nor cheap.
- mullen 10mo ago
  The plumbing systems in commercial buildings are not big enough to handle residents usage. Residents use more water and the outbound sewage systems need to be larger.
  - mothballed 10mo ago
    There's already enough plumbing in there for a whole office to shit when they get to the office. History favors the bold, and code inspectors blabbering about "written in blood" don't see all the homeless people they kill via reduced access to housing. I've seen plenty of artist collectives that manage it; on paper they are office/industrial but actually everyone lives there. Every once in awhile one burns down but the mortality rate isn't as high as living on the streets which is ultimately what happens to those on the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid when the ones higher up push the ones under them down a rung to snag housing.
    - vel0city 10mo ago
      For a lot of the office buildings I've been in, there aren't that many toilets per floor. Its also different when you've got some toilets that are often unused compared to people running laundry, cooking, bathing, etc. Very different demands on the plumbing system. You also then had everything pretty much isolated to two rooms for an entire floor meanwhile now every unit is going to have a separate kitchen, a bathroom (or two, or three), a laundry room, etc. And you're going to need a good bit of engineering studies done before you start cutting that many holes in the floor.
justinhj 10mo ago
Historically we did this with suddenly unused industrial buildings in cities. Liverpool and London's Dockland warehouses, New Yorks lofts in lower Manhattan. When it is suggested today modern planners and developers say it can't be done. What changed?
- nickdothutton 10mo ago
  Regulations. I have some small experience with this, although I'm not a professional developer. The regulations for residential properties, whether built for purpose or converted, make this very difficult (and therefore costly) in the UK and I presume other countries.
- zdragnar 10mo ago
  Industrial buildings tend to be much easier to renovate, because they're filled with big open spaces. Commercial office buildings are optimized for seating space, so you get a lot more interior walls already built and often shorter ceilings then industrial spaces. That's a lot more renovation to add in all the necessary plumbing for showers and toilets and often laundry in every unit. New building codes mean that everything has to be done right to today's standards, not yesteryear's, so it becomes cheaper to demolish and rebuild than retrofit, especially if the building has a lot of interior space that doesn't have access to exterior walls for mandated windows.
- pseudalopex 10mo ago
  What modern planners and developers say is converting modern office buildings isn't cost effective often. Warehouses cost less to convert than high rise buildings. Most old buildings do not have large areas without natural light or ventilation.
mooreds 10mo ago
This podcast is about the NYC market, but a good deep dive into why this is not a simple proposition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNkLcD3PKyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNkLcD3PKyk
- 46493168 10mo ago
  And yet Boston is doing it. https://www.boston.gov/news/officials-celebrate-first-100-units-converted-offices-now-under-construction-boston https://www.boston.gov/news/officials-celebrate-first-100-un...
  - pseudalopex 10mo ago
    rbanffy said a lot of vacant offices could be converted. Boston's mayor said 780 units were planned.

Looks like there is an opportunity to convert a lot of that into residential space.

by rbanffy 10mo ago

Looks like there is an opportunity to convert a lot of that into residential space.

shagie 10mo ago

Not necessarily. Things like "where do pipes run" so can get tricky along with code requirements for access. There's a NYT article on the challenges about this from a few years ago: So You Want to Turn an Office Building Into a Home? -- Here’s How to Solve a 25-Story Rubik’s Cube https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GVA.fhAA.rn4RQmfFrLUg&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 10mo ago
While converting it is not economical, class c office space (which is least desirable) demand is probably gone in this market due to lackluster demand for office space; the value of the building will get zeroed out by the market, at which point it can trade hands, be demo'd, and new residential can go up in its place. You can think of class c office space, broadly speaking, as oil wells that have very little life left, and get bought up by folks who intend to extract the cashflow until they dump the externality on the public government and taxpayers (like abandoned shopping malls). A recent example in St Louis is the AT&T office tower [1] [2]. [1] One of St. Louis’ tallest office towers, empty for years, sells for less than 2% of its peak price - https://www.costar.com/article/642008108/one-of-st-louis-tallest-office-towers-empty-for-years-sells-for-less-than-2-of-its-peak-price https://www.costar.com/article/642008108/one-of-st-louis-tal... - April 10th, 2024 ("Goldman Group buys 44-story former AT&T office tower for $3.6 Million") [2] St. Louis office vacancy hits all-time high [21.2%] as major companies downsize their footprints - https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2026/01/15/office-vacancy-rate-record-high-downsizing-company.html https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2026/01/15/office-v... - January 16th, 2026 (conversions when the economics pencil out, haircuts for investors when they don't and more investment is needed to wholesale replace a structure) US office vacancy rates chart supposedly pulled from Moody's: https://old.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1p8mhmq/us_office_vacancy_rates_20192025/ https://old.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1p8mhmq/us_office_v...
dnemmers 10mo ago
Great article with diagrams and overlays. Good share.
xnx 10mo ago
Article from 1 month ago on how conversions have become much more feasible with some clever hacks: https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/nyc-office-residential-conversions-housing-4723b702 https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/nyc-office-reside...
palmotea 10mo ago
IIRC, that article mentioned older buildings tend to be more convertible to residential, because of their layouts, and modern office buildings (with giant open floor spaces for seas of cubicles) are almost impossible to convert. There should probably building code changes to ban the latter type of office building, and keep the space more flexible and convertible to residential. A big plus is the resulting office space would probably be nicer to workers.

someuser54541 10mo ago

I read something at some point that it's more expensive to convert these into residential buildings than it is to literally demolish and rebuild. I'm not entirely sure how that math works out, or why, because one would think it couldn't be that complicated. Maybe someone here knows more about this.

paularmstrong 10mo ago
I assume it's because they would need to re-wire electrical and retrofit plumbing on a massive scale to accommodate kitchens and bathrooms for separate units. They end up needing to gut the entire building and cut through floors and ceilings without damaging any structural and load-bearing parts. It doesn't sound easy nor cheap.
mullen 10mo ago
The plumbing systems in commercial buildings are not big enough to handle residents usage. Residents use more water and the outbound sewage systems need to be larger.
- mothballed 10mo ago
  There's already enough plumbing in there for a whole office to shit when they get to the office. History favors the bold, and code inspectors blabbering about "written in blood" don't see all the homeless people they kill via reduced access to housing. I've seen plenty of artist collectives that manage it; on paper they are office/industrial but actually everyone lives there. Every once in awhile one burns down but the mortality rate isn't as high as living on the streets which is ultimately what happens to those on the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid when the ones higher up push the ones under them down a rung to snag housing.
  - vel0city 10mo ago
    For a lot of the office buildings I've been in, there aren't that many toilets per floor. Its also different when you've got some toilets that are often unused compared to people running laundry, cooking, bathing, etc. Very different demands on the plumbing system. You also then had everything pretty much isolated to two rooms for an entire floor meanwhile now every unit is going to have a separate kitchen, a bathroom (or two, or three), a laundry room, etc. And you're going to need a good bit of engineering studies done before you start cutting that many holes in the floor.

justinhj 10mo ago

Historically we did this with suddenly unused industrial buildings in cities. Liverpool and London's Dockland warehouses, New Yorks lofts in lower Manhattan. When it is suggested today modern planners and developers say it can't be done. What changed?

nickdothutton 10mo ago
Regulations. I have some small experience with this, although I'm not a professional developer. The regulations for residential properties, whether built for purpose or converted, make this very difficult (and therefore costly) in the UK and I presume other countries.
zdragnar 10mo ago
Industrial buildings tend to be much easier to renovate, because they're filled with big open spaces. Commercial office buildings are optimized for seating space, so you get a lot more interior walls already built and often shorter ceilings then industrial spaces. That's a lot more renovation to add in all the necessary plumbing for showers and toilets and often laundry in every unit. New building codes mean that everything has to be done right to today's standards, not yesteryear's, so it becomes cheaper to demolish and rebuild than retrofit, especially if the building has a lot of interior space that doesn't have access to exterior walls for mandated windows.
pseudalopex 10mo ago
What modern planners and developers say is converting modern office buildings isn't cost effective often. Warehouses cost less to convert than high rise buildings. Most old buildings do not have large areas without natural light or ventilation.

mooreds 10mo ago

This podcast is about the NYC market, but a good deep dive into why this is not a simple proposition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNkLcD3PKyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNkLcD3PKyk

46493168 10mo ago
And yet Boston is doing it. https://www.boston.gov/news/officials-celebrate-first-100-units-converted-offices-now-under-construction-boston https://www.boston.gov/news/officials-celebrate-first-100-un...
- pseudalopex 10mo ago
  rbanffy said a lot of vacant offices could be converted. Boston's mayor said 780 units were planned.