Converting CRE into residential is easiest (and probably cheapest) done by tearing the whole building down and building it from scratch. Pretty much nothing in commercial is designed to handle needs of residential and you can't just add missing pipes, shafts, stairs, isolation, etc. to an existing building.

Nah, easiest is changing the definition of "residential" from family to individual - the sector that the US lost in the 70s now known as long term hotels.

When you change this definition to

- communal kitchen

- communal bathrooms

- no window access

You solve many issues

- college costs (by bringing back dormitories instead of every college kid having an apartment)

- housing costs for early 20s that don't want to manage a whole apartment (and Uber eats 90% of meals)

- a small degree of homeless that are similar to the category above (especially the temporary homeless)

- baby boomer (now early gen x) "retirement" not quite to assisted living (yes, this group don't always need a private bathroom and kitchenette - when they have central dining halls)

Yep. Commercial -> Residential conversion is far from easy.

I'm active in a multifamily investor group and what I am hearing is that it is damn near impossible to make this work and actually cheaper to just build new multifamily vs convert.

What if you change the narrative from "single family" home (or multi-family dwellings) to "cater to couples and/or singles that can handle needed compromises"

Good luck changing building regs to suit that.

Also, it sounds like you’re proposing building adult dormitories. Is there any evidence people want that?

Private sector isn’t positioned to accomplish this. You’re correct.

the properties absolutely need to be written down to accommodate the cost of demolition. The businesses who overpaid and the banks that will repossess the buildings are obviously taking a hit and won’t fund this.

I wish this could work out as well as it seems it could, but it’s not nearly as easy or flowery as a residential developer picking up an office building. A friend of mine in the space pointed out even though these spaces have a lot of floor space, plumbing is your main issue on converting these structures into livable spaces. Most of these spaces only have 1-2 bathrooms a floor, meaning an apartment-style floor plan adjustment turns into a nightmare regarding piping.

Not going to happen in any meaningful scale. Absolutely not in Canada and perhaps on some degree in US. Media is already conditioning population about that in Canada.