Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns?

Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by hughesjj on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:00PM (#40291409)

Citation needed on all of that. It's not just retail closing up in NYC -- the rent is ludicrous, and no one wants to start renting at a lowe rate lest their appraisal goes down and their mortgage lender/city coffers start putting the pressure on the landlord

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Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by sifttio on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:23PM (#40291664)

Corporate real estate is a different beast. Residential real estate and corporate real estate do not mirror each other in the market. One can be in high demand while the other has excess supply.

Residential landlords are also much different than dealing with corp real estate owners. The terms, length of lease, laws and many other factors are completely different.

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Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by hughesjj on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:42PM (#40291861)

I don't get how any of that is relevant when my claim is that the corporate rental rates is also too high and the financing for rentals shares the same concerns w.r.t rentable price regardless if it's residential or corporate landlords

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Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by tylerFowler on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:55PM (#40291991)

Fwiw it's almost exclusively international developers running the conversions in Kansas City. I think Greystar might be the one with the largest footprint there.

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Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by bombcar on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @05:32PM (#40291753)

Perhaps we need to encourage (via taxes?) convertible buildings that can either be corporate or residential with relative ease, similar to how in smaller towns you often have dentists and lawyers operating out of obviously converted houses.

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Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by choilive on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @06:36PM (#40292335)

This is primarily a building code issue for residential vs commercial construction.

Office generally try to maximize square footage, this tends to result in floor plans that are very awkward to adopt into residential use, primarily because the building code virtually everywhere has some sort of "natural light"/window requirement.

This means that purpose built residential high rises tend to be "skinnier" to have more windows per sq. ft of floor space. Not to mention the very expensive changes (hvac, plumbing, etc.) required to support residential use.

If the building code was changed so that the requirements for office and residential use buildings were closer then it would make future buildings more easily convertible between those use cases. It does not solve the problem of the existing buildings however..

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Re:Can turning office towers into apartments save downtowns? by Supermancho on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @06:00AM (#40296182)

Takes a few seconds. All major cities (even Fargo ND) have seen increased theft. This is unsurprising due to the economies in western countries (which is all i can speak to).

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre....

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