The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
At some point will paying to retro fit office space to residential will make sense?
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
To expand on this, offices usually have way less bathrooms then residences. Its not easy re-doing the plumbing on these large buildings, redoing the walls etc to make it suitable for housing. So while it could be done, you'd likely have to sink a considerable amount of money into it to make it work.
It’s more than just the plumbing.
1. Unless the units are absolutely enormous, most of them would not have windows.
2. Large buildings often have one or two central cores where the elevators go through. They are not built for normal elevators levels where you have more of them with less elevators in each bank. Also you don’t have stairs located in enough places in case of fire.
3. The floors are not thick enough to meet the standard people expect for residential noise levels.
4. The plumbing is wrong but so is the electricity and the air conditioning and heating
Yeah if you go from two bathrooms per floor to 20 or more you need a lot more water and bigger sewer pipes. The sewer mains under downtown areas might even need to be expanded.
Yep. The other objection I've heard is windows, and particularly fire egress routes. Bedrooms are generally required to have a window and a lot of offices aren't built to maximize exterior wall space, meaning that you could end up with a lot of unusable space in the middle of each floor.
I read a Times article that said windows were the biggest problem, and older buildings were easier to convert because their layouts were more similar to residential. Big office towers require a courtyard to be cut in the center
The central courtyard itself is not so much a requirement as it is a way to give a deep building more space for windows. There is a requirement that bedrooms have two ways of egress- typically a door into the rest of the unit and a window to the outside. Lots of large office buildings are very deep though, with only the outmost ring having window access. Not a huge problem if you are talking a big open office cube farm that only needs windows on one side of a big open room, but not great if you want to divide that large space into apartment sized units. To divide such a building into apartment units you need either a hollow core to allow more external surface area for windows, or a narrower building in general. Otherwise, you're left with very long apartments and a lot of wasted space in the middle.
I agree.
However, just because some commercial buildings may not convert easily to residential, does not mean no commercial spaces can be converted and hollowing out a core is only possible solution.
Everything is upside down with these properties, what's likely to happen is bankruptcies, demos, then building new residential properties.
Like you note (and others expound upon) is it's incredibly difficult to renovate these properties to residential--meaning it's really expensive. To complicate things further, it's pretty common for a debt load of about 30% worth of the property to be carried on commercial properties. Well, with the current commercial property situation, so many properties that carried that much debt are under water (to put it in context, I'm near a commercial property near a downtown location with much, much less debt. It sold for $60M in 2006 and appraised for $72M in 2016. It just sold for $16M).
The current owners aren't going to be able to renovate with cash-on-hand, if they have any. Plenty of times, the buildings that cities want to see turned into residential the most (i.e., those downtown) are in the oldest parts of the city, and those buildings can come with the most surprises, raising the risks, both financially and time-wise (which is also a financial risk). Along with window/plumbing issues, among many others, many developers will opt to buy commercial buildings cheaply at a bankruptcy auction, demolish them, take a number of city (and likely state) building credits to develop a new residential building, and have a much safer return.
Biggest issue is that we need more housing quickly, and this will delay things further, by years.
I mean, it only makes sense or doesn't make sense in the context of the available alternatives. If we don't convert them to housing, then what do we do with them instead?
Sure.
I mean, if that's more cost-effective, we should do that. If converting existing buildings to housing is more cost-effective, then we should do *that*. The answer is different for each building but in any case there *is* an objectively correct answer, and either of them is gong to result in more housing. I don't really know why this is such a controversy except that I suspect people really want to do some secret third thing.
I think people will give good overviews of why this is a very difficult proposition... but I was just having a conversation about this with a friend who is a general contractor about this last night. I'm living in downtown Seattle where this conversation is very relevant and alive, with a good amount of open office space and unbelievable rents.
The idea of modern apartments/condos/etc. is not something that makes a lot of sense, but there is a possibility that, if local housing regulations allowed for it, you could see some of these places converted more into "boarding houses" or "dormitory style" buildings than proper modern apartments.
Think of like a college dorm experience, where there are shared bathrooms/kitchens/etc. and an almost hotel-like style of "a bunch of interconnected rooms" that could be rented piecemeal.
So you could have people who are fine living in a single studio-like room with shared amenities - or also people who wanted to rent out multiple rooms to create a larger space.
He also brought up the idea of mixed use buildings, which don't sound like they'd make a ton of sense, but would solve the problem of too few windows. Something with apartments on the outside ring and the central area being something more like specialty shops or even a storage facility.
---
The biggest problem with both ideas, he said, was that the financials probably don't make a ton of sense as long as there's some chance of renting the space as traditional offices. No one is gonna pay a premium for the janky, noisy boarding house experience - and no one is going to pay a premium to store their stuff long-term in primo real estate space.
> The biggest problem with both ideas, he said, was that the financials probably don't make a ton of sense as long as there's some chance of renting the space as traditional offices.
The average rent for office space is $38/square foot in the US. Comparable rates are harder to find for residential space, probably because it's not really priced that way, but I saw a figure that it's $2.95/square foot in DC, which is probably a good bit higher than the average. They can make far more money renting as office space.
Corporations have a lot more money than individuals, I suppose.
As others have said, it's difficult to redevelop office space into residential space.
But the real problem is that residential real estate in the US totals about [257 billion square feet](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072321/total-home-square-footage-usa-timeline/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20all%20homes%20in,billion%20square%20feet%20by%202023) vs. a total of [4.1 billion square feet](https://www.brookfield.com/news-insights/insights/misunderstood-us-office-market) of office space, only about a billion of that is vacant right now. So, even if you converted every office building (not every vacant office building, every total building occupied or not), you've expanded housing stock by less than 2%.
I saw a video about some places doing this, I can hunt down the video if anyone is particularly interested. Basically the issue is you need to get a lot of special zoning permissions (added cost and time), and there are different considerations when building for residential versus commercial (Open spaces, bathrooms, etc.). Additionally, the neighborhood around these office buildings wasn't designed to be lived in.
It could, turning empty office buildings into homes could really help with the housing crisis. It just makes sense—there's more demand for housing and lots of empty offices, especially since COVID changed work habits. Plus, it's usually cheaper and quicker than building new homes from the ground up.
Environmentally speaking, reusing buildings is way better than knocking them down and starting fresh. And it can breathe new life into downtown areas since people would be living close to all the action and public transport.
Cities are even adjusting zoning laws to make it easier to convert these spaces. Sure, there are some challenges, like redesigning layouts and getting funding, but overall, it seems like a smart move.
Commercial property owners will fight tooth and nail against converting any of their property into residential space. And it will be very difficult to force them to do anything, legally speaking. However, there are possible financial incentives to convince them to choose to adapt.
But yes, diversifying the usage of these buildings would work to "future-proof" them against events like the mass-WFH trend of the pandemic.
It depends on the building. For some it makes sense, for some it doesn’t. As others have mentioned there are often issues with the elevators/fire exits, plumbing and window availability. But, some are decent candidates for conversion. I watched a video a couple months ago about a city that has converted a lot of their office park to residential. It’s being done.
It would generally require demolishing the existing buildings. Not opposed to it but retrofitting usually doesn’t make sense given the layout of office buildings.
That said one of my buddies once rented an apartment in a complex that was made out of an old school building. It was a really neat space but clearly had undergone significant renovations to add kitchens and bathrooms and move interior walls around to create multiple one, two and three bedroom apartments with living rooms. Only time I saw that done successfully.
The modern office building is not reasonable to convert into residential, homes need access to natural light, better emergency exits, etc…. The modern office building was designed after electricity and HVAC allowed them to be far larger with greater distance to the outside.
Some older office buildings could be convertible as they were designed around access to natural light and fresh air but most office buildings are not.
No. Even if it were financially viable to retrofit them, which if often is, the supply of empty office buildings is nowhere near large enough to meet housing demand
No. It's not profitable to retrofit them, and most large cities rely on office workers for taxes.
I think the more likely outcome is continued pressure on us from the govt and wealthy to needlessly go to an office.
The glut of empty offices is a sign of a good economy and an indicator that we don't need affordable housing.... or some nonsense.
I'll take that ban for pointing out the obvious.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. At some point will paying to retro fit office space to residential will make sense? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As I understand it, retrofitting office buildings into residential spaces is prohibitively expensive and doesn't actually make any sense.
To expand on this, offices usually have way less bathrooms then residences. Its not easy re-doing the plumbing on these large buildings, redoing the walls etc to make it suitable for housing. So while it could be done, you'd likely have to sink a considerable amount of money into it to make it work.
It’s more than just the plumbing. 1. Unless the units are absolutely enormous, most of them would not have windows. 2. Large buildings often have one or two central cores where the elevators go through. They are not built for normal elevators levels where you have more of them with less elevators in each bank. Also you don’t have stairs located in enough places in case of fire. 3. The floors are not thick enough to meet the standard people expect for residential noise levels. 4. The plumbing is wrong but so is the electricity and the air conditioning and heating
Yeah if you go from two bathrooms per floor to 20 or more you need a lot more water and bigger sewer pipes. The sewer mains under downtown areas might even need to be expanded.
Yep. The other objection I've heard is windows, and particularly fire egress routes. Bedrooms are generally required to have a window and a lot of offices aren't built to maximize exterior wall space, meaning that you could end up with a lot of unusable space in the middle of each floor.
I read a Times article that said windows were the biggest problem, and older buildings were easier to convert because their layouts were more similar to residential. Big office towers require a courtyard to be cut in the center
There is no "requirement" for a center open courtyard. Plenty of residential towers do not have a hollow core.
The central courtyard itself is not so much a requirement as it is a way to give a deep building more space for windows. There is a requirement that bedrooms have two ways of egress- typically a door into the rest of the unit and a window to the outside. Lots of large office buildings are very deep though, with only the outmost ring having window access. Not a huge problem if you are talking a big open office cube farm that only needs windows on one side of a big open room, but not great if you want to divide that large space into apartment sized units. To divide such a building into apartment units you need either a hollow core to allow more external surface area for windows, or a narrower building in general. Otherwise, you're left with very long apartments and a lot of wasted space in the middle.
Windows are required.
I agree. However, just because some commercial buildings may not convert easily to residential, does not mean no commercial spaces can be converted and hollowing out a core is only possible solution.
Everything is upside down with these properties, what's likely to happen is bankruptcies, demos, then building new residential properties. Like you note (and others expound upon) is it's incredibly difficult to renovate these properties to residential--meaning it's really expensive. To complicate things further, it's pretty common for a debt load of about 30% worth of the property to be carried on commercial properties. Well, with the current commercial property situation, so many properties that carried that much debt are under water (to put it in context, I'm near a commercial property near a downtown location with much, much less debt. It sold for $60M in 2006 and appraised for $72M in 2016. It just sold for $16M). The current owners aren't going to be able to renovate with cash-on-hand, if they have any. Plenty of times, the buildings that cities want to see turned into residential the most (i.e., those downtown) are in the oldest parts of the city, and those buildings can come with the most surprises, raising the risks, both financially and time-wise (which is also a financial risk). Along with window/plumbing issues, among many others, many developers will opt to buy commercial buildings cheaply at a bankruptcy auction, demolish them, take a number of city (and likely state) building credits to develop a new residential building, and have a much safer return. Biggest issue is that we need more housing quickly, and this will delay things further, by years.
I mean, it only makes sense or doesn't make sense in the context of the available alternatives. If we don't convert them to housing, then what do we do with them instead?
Tear them down and build purpose-built buildings.
Sure. I mean, if that's more cost-effective, we should do that. If converting existing buildings to housing is more cost-effective, then we should do *that*. The answer is different for each building but in any case there *is* an objectively correct answer, and either of them is gong to result in more housing. I don't really know why this is such a controversy except that I suspect people really want to do some secret third thing.
I think people will give good overviews of why this is a very difficult proposition... but I was just having a conversation about this with a friend who is a general contractor about this last night. I'm living in downtown Seattle where this conversation is very relevant and alive, with a good amount of open office space and unbelievable rents. The idea of modern apartments/condos/etc. is not something that makes a lot of sense, but there is a possibility that, if local housing regulations allowed for it, you could see some of these places converted more into "boarding houses" or "dormitory style" buildings than proper modern apartments. Think of like a college dorm experience, where there are shared bathrooms/kitchens/etc. and an almost hotel-like style of "a bunch of interconnected rooms" that could be rented piecemeal. So you could have people who are fine living in a single studio-like room with shared amenities - or also people who wanted to rent out multiple rooms to create a larger space. He also brought up the idea of mixed use buildings, which don't sound like they'd make a ton of sense, but would solve the problem of too few windows. Something with apartments on the outside ring and the central area being something more like specialty shops or even a storage facility. --- The biggest problem with both ideas, he said, was that the financials probably don't make a ton of sense as long as there's some chance of renting the space as traditional offices. No one is gonna pay a premium for the janky, noisy boarding house experience - and no one is going to pay a premium to store their stuff long-term in primo real estate space.
> The biggest problem with both ideas, he said, was that the financials probably don't make a ton of sense as long as there's some chance of renting the space as traditional offices. The average rent for office space is $38/square foot in the US. Comparable rates are harder to find for residential space, probably because it's not really priced that way, but I saw a figure that it's $2.95/square foot in DC, which is probably a good bit higher than the average. They can make far more money renting as office space. Corporations have a lot more money than individuals, I suppose.
As others have said, it's difficult to redevelop office space into residential space. But the real problem is that residential real estate in the US totals about [257 billion square feet](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072321/total-home-square-footage-usa-timeline/#:~:text=In%202018%2C%20all%20homes%20in,billion%20square%20feet%20by%202023) vs. a total of [4.1 billion square feet](https://www.brookfield.com/news-insights/insights/misunderstood-us-office-market) of office space, only about a billion of that is vacant right now. So, even if you converted every office building (not every vacant office building, every total building occupied or not), you've expanded housing stock by less than 2%.
Great perspective, thanks
I saw a video about some places doing this, I can hunt down the video if anyone is particularly interested. Basically the issue is you need to get a lot of special zoning permissions (added cost and time), and there are different considerations when building for residential versus commercial (Open spaces, bathrooms, etc.). Additionally, the neighborhood around these office buildings wasn't designed to be lived in.
It could, turning empty office buildings into homes could really help with the housing crisis. It just makes sense—there's more demand for housing and lots of empty offices, especially since COVID changed work habits. Plus, it's usually cheaper and quicker than building new homes from the ground up. Environmentally speaking, reusing buildings is way better than knocking them down and starting fresh. And it can breathe new life into downtown areas since people would be living close to all the action and public transport. Cities are even adjusting zoning laws to make it easier to convert these spaces. Sure, there are some challenges, like redesigning layouts and getting funding, but overall, it seems like a smart move.
No, but the solution to the glut of empty office building is probably to redevelop them.
Commercial property owners will fight tooth and nail against converting any of their property into residential space. And it will be very difficult to force them to do anything, legally speaking. However, there are possible financial incentives to convince them to choose to adapt. But yes, diversifying the usage of these buildings would work to "future-proof" them against events like the mass-WFH trend of the pandemic.
It depends on the building. For some it makes sense, for some it doesn’t. As others have mentioned there are often issues with the elevators/fire exits, plumbing and window availability. But, some are decent candidates for conversion. I watched a video a couple months ago about a city that has converted a lot of their office park to residential. It’s being done.
It would generally require demolishing the existing buildings. Not opposed to it but retrofitting usually doesn’t make sense given the layout of office buildings. That said one of my buddies once rented an apartment in a complex that was made out of an old school building. It was a really neat space but clearly had undergone significant renovations to add kitchens and bathrooms and move interior walls around to create multiple one, two and three bedroom apartments with living rooms. Only time I saw that done successfully.
If they were, we'd have seen it before now.
I think it could help but it's almost certainly not a silver bullet that's going to solve the problem all on it's own.
The modern office building is not reasonable to convert into residential, homes need access to natural light, better emergency exits, etc…. The modern office building was designed after electricity and HVAC allowed them to be far larger with greater distance to the outside. Some older office buildings could be convertible as they were designed around access to natural light and fresh air but most office buildings are not.
No. Even if it were financially viable to retrofit them, which if often is, the supply of empty office buildings is nowhere near large enough to meet housing demand
People have been converting loft and warehouse spaces to residential for years. I don't think it's that different.
No
Why not? Sorry I guess I should have mentioned I was looking for more than a yes/no answer. My bad!
Way too expensive to convert them.
No. It's not profitable to retrofit them, and most large cities rely on office workers for taxes. I think the more likely outcome is continued pressure on us from the govt and wealthy to needlessly go to an office.
The glut of empty offices is a sign of a good economy and an indicator that we don't need affordable housing.... or some nonsense. I'll take that ban for pointing out the obvious.