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Comment by grepLeigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm in San Francisco and would love to see vacant offices converted into live/work housing.

The Clocktower lofts on Bryant & 2nd Street are a great example of live/work offices and condos for the luxury market. Let's do the mid-market next!

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> The current asking price is $2,395,000. Our experienced agents can help you determine whether that is a fair amount for the property. What's more, we'll help you strategize and submit a smart offer that will get accepted based on current market conditions.

https://www.rubyhome.com/idx/461-2nd-street-san-francisco-ca...

The monthly HOA is $941 lol

FWIW I think a monthly HOA of $941 for a condo that costs $2,395,000 is low.

I know places in Austin where (and this was years ago), HOA fees were $1100 for a condo in the $1.2 million range.

And, to be clear, I'm not saying 941 is "cheap" on an absolute basis, just that it is for a condo that is already that expensive.

I remember poking around Chicago real estate early last decade, and seeing condos for $500k with $2,000/mo HOA fees. Seems to vary wildly by area.

HOAs can go from the bare minimum "we pay someone to mow the center divider" (some will actually exist and have no fees) to the "we pay for the entire country club this house is part of, including limo service and more".

Condo HOAs usually cover the maintenance of the shared building parts (HVAC, roof, plumbing outside the units, etc). One danger sign is a condo with a HOA that is too low - it likely means maintenance is being put off or done incorrectly or you're going to get hit with a special assessment soon.

Yes, but I ended up buying a 1br in SF for a comparable price. The HOA fee was $650/mo. The building had 24/7 front desk staff, twice-monthly unit cleaning service, a small gym, a hot tub, and a full-time building engineer. All the while dealing with a lawsuit against the builder for leaks. And our reserve was quite funded. Where was the money going in Chicago?

If they were suing the builder, it was probably still a relatively new building.

Older buildings start getting hit with the "every 20/50 years" maintenance, and also get hit with lawsuits against the building/HOA itself. Those can start to add up over time.

And the size of the building can also affect it; a smaller building with the same amenities would have higher HOA fees.

I personally wouldn't touch them with a fifty state pole, but some people like it.

Probably worse maintenance issues, and no builder to fix it for them.

My first apartment in SF was a condo. The landlady offered to sell it to me, but I lost interest when I realized $1600 of the $1900 I paid in rent went to the HOA.

> $2,000/mo HOA fees

Sounds like it could have been a co-op which would include taxes in the HOA.

These cost levels are either employing a lot of service (valet, doorman, etc) or are under-accrued for the big CapEx bills they have coming due (careful!)

I cannot even think, what is worth that HOA. You could literally hire a full time person, 40hrs per week + give them a room in your house, for that.

Not sure how you figure? Minimum wage in Illinois comes to $2600/month for 40 hours/week. You're giving them a room in a place where the prevailing rent is clearly over $2000/month, which is hard to price at less than $1000/month (a "two roommates" situation)... so your proposed value package is well over twice the HOA fee.

Illinois minimum wage is 11$/hour on their website, though I have also seen 12$ listed elsewhere. https://www.illinois.gov/services/service.find-minimum-wage-...

So 11 * 40 * 52 / 12 = 1906$/month + SS.

$15.40 in Chicago, where the housing under discussion is located.

Single employee is 11$/hour in Chicago unless they are a domestic worker.

$15.40 for employers with 21 or more employees (including all domestic workers, regardless of the number employed) $14.50 for employers with 4-20 employees

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/bacp/supp_info/minimum...

But, you can subtract reasonable room and board fees, so actual cost could be lower if you had a spare room and someone was willing to take the job.

Nah, more than one person pays the HOA fee. Ten people paying put it at $20k a month. $4600 a month is not even a quarter of that.

I think we might be saying the same thing? My reading of the grandparent was that the individual responsibility for the HOA / maintenance fee was outrageous because it "literally" represented approximate CoL for a whole additional human, which just isn't accurate. But the entire point of these collective fees is to pool them and use them for amenities which are not available to individuals. Of course collecting money and spending it represents the ability to pay for labor; that's the dominant cost of most expenses! I'm not too familiar with the Chicago housing market, but in the New York market these fees go to pay full-time salaries for supers, doormen, elevator men, maintenance folk, etc., many of whom also get housing in the building at a reduced or included rate.

No, it's not. Minimum wage in Illinois is $12/hour. 12 x 40 x 4.3 = 2064.

$15.40 in Chicago, where the housing under discussion is located.

Not sure how you figure?

2k plus a room.

One would have to check that particular example, but in general, there are buildings in SF and NYC where the HOA fee covers amenities that are, frankly, hotel-like. Staffed gym with climbing wall, 24/7 valet parking, food can be sent up from the ground-floor cafe at no delivery cost, etc.

Everyone forgets about insurance, which often comprises a major portion of expenses especially as buildings gets older and the hoa management gets less eager to price shop.

If the building has shared mechanicals (hvac, etc) it could also include heating and cooling.

How is it that highrise/midrise buildings in other metro areas where suites aren't going for 3 million manage with HOA fees that are half as much?

Just because the land is more expensive doesn't mean your elevator maintenance contract should be.

I'm not sure of that for a variety of reasons. Labor is more expensive in higher cost areas. Elevators in a skyscraper are built to a much more stringent code than elevators in a three story building. Building codes in general may be higher. Quality of materials and fit and finish may be higher with higher maintenance costs. There may be more regulatory hurdles to making any new construction or renovations. HOAs may include real estate/other taxes and mortgage interest payments in some cases. Tons of little things can add up.

Another reason to avoid HOAs at all costs, over the lifetime of the property the cost is astronomical.

Unfortunately all the newer homes have HOAs in my area. I am stuck with older homes or I have to buy a lot and build to get something modern.

HOAs are also a breeding ground for petty arguments.

Absolutely. HOAs bring out the worst in people. If you're reading this and you don't own a house/condo yet, think twice before you buy into an HOA community. HOAs can quickly devolve to point where entire meetings are spent discussing whether or not someone should be allowed to put chickenwire on the bottom of their back fence (true story).

And, unlike you're principle payment (which at least is an asset), HOA payments are something you will never see any return of value on, especially since they reduce the desirability of the property in question. If you doubt this, Just ask anyone who's had an HOA, whether or not they'd rather buy a property with an HOA or one without.

At the same time, you should consider possible shenanigans that your neighbors may get up to. While there is always a lot of petty stuff going on in our HOA, I also see a lot of chatter from people on nextdoor who don't live in an HOA and their neighbors can be quite annoying. Loud roosters waking you up at 4am and the like.

Many of the "hoa-style" complaints can be dealt with by careful inspection of the local laws before buying. You can find communities that ban roosters (the one I'm in does, and charges $25 a year "hen fee" for up to three hens lol).

Living with other people is annoying, but you can work to mitigate the biggest issues, and sometimes the right answer might be a HOA. Investigate the HOA before buying and talk to your potential neighbors. Many people will gladly go out to dinner/drinks if you ask and bitch about any problems there may be.

And there will always be problems; the key is determining if they'll be annoying enough for you to bypass it.

One friend years ago pointed out that he could buy a much nicer house if he spent the HOA payment on mortgage instead; and so went that way.

not all the rules are in the HOA booklet. For example, ours doesn't say anything about banning vegetables in the front yard, not a single rule. And yet, if we even so much as grow fava beans, the HOA will say we can't do that due to the catch all rule: "No unplanned modifications". It's all up to the HOA directors mood and discretion. And while you may currently have a reasonable HOA board, that can quickly change with just one election.

Wow - "no unplanned modifications" is a really big loophole, I wonder if that refers to some "master plan" somewhere in a cupboard behind the leopard.

And yeah, the elections can change everything - and sometimes nobody cares and you can run for the HOA board and effectively take control muahahahahah.

Er, I wouldn't know anyone who would do that. Ever.

It can also be changed more permanently with changes to the covenants. Many covenants require a super majority vote of the members so even a future bad board member can be restrained to an extent.

I have a home in an area without an HOA and I have had a 100% resolution rate by just talking and explaining. Being decent and pragmatic goes a long way.

For shared building situations, like a condo in a downtown highrise, I think they're unavoidable: there's inherently shared resources that require maintenance and co-ordination, even if there's a mininum of services. Add in things like a pool, shared gym, doorman, or large recurring maintenance (roof), and you absolutely need a governing body to collect costs for that and handle the work, which is, in essence, an HOA.

You're confusing apartment living vs. living in your own private house with an H.O.A

You can't live with 200 other families in a shared building without some sort of structure. What's allowed and what isn't, Can dogs swim in the shared pool? Can you ask the doorman to go find a parking spot around the block?

The HOA in question is a shared building. Which is more like a corporation, with 20-30 employees.

> Can dogs swim in the shared pool?

That's a thing???

In my mother's apartment building there a guy who uses his kayak in the swimming pool to practice his rolls etc. You can imagine the angst when parents bring little Johnny down for his swim. Or when tenants have a rowdy party around the pool. She is grateful that COVID rules effectively shut the pool down for a couple of years. So yeah I can totally imagine someone wanting to let their dog swim in the pool

Oh god you don't even know. A pool in a shared living building/setup is a recipe for every sort of possible disaster known to man, and some known only to an advanced AI trained on horror movies.

"Another reason to avoid HOAs at all costs, over the lifetime of the property the cost is astronomical."

Hate to break it to you, but the maintenance costs for a house over the lifetime of the property are astronomical. True, if you are a do-it-yourselfer and want to do all the maintenance work yourself you can save money. But the comparable cost to pay someone for things like yard work, internal repairs and upkeep is, in my experience, much higher in a house than a condo because you don't get the benefit of scale and good, defined supplier relationships. E.g. in a condo building you're paying a landscaping company to do the yard work, but that work is split amongst 50 or whatever condo owners.

Too many people think of an HOA fee as throwing away money, but I think it's a net savings in a small and well-run HOA (and these do exist!). The money all goes to the upkeep of the building or complex with minimal overhead, so none of the fee feels wasted: it'd cost more to do it alone. A local management company charges a fee but they're local employees and it's better than trying to manage the books myself. Larger HOAs -- like where full-time maintenance staff is necessary -- can have very high fees, but, paying people fairly on an ongoing basis requires ongoing money, no matter how you slice it.

> well-run HOA (and these do exist!)

Part of the challenge is determining the quality of the HOA before buying, and that quality can change over time. And you may have minimal influence over it.

They also save a ton of time spent on sourcing maintenance, getting competitive bids, and managing the process. Not something most can appreciate until they own an older home. They also reduce the odds of one batshit crazy neighbor destroying quality of life and property values for the rest.

Typically, an HOA for a condo covers all maintenance interior and exterior, so that's not insane. And the ongoing cost for the HOA should be reflected in a lower up-front price, if buyers are correctly evaluating the total cost of ownership.

The premise for the HOA to do this is that it's better for occupants to report problems for professional remediation, rather than to DIY or neglect them until it becomes worse for someone else in the building.

I suppose it can vary but the condo HOAs I've had experience with only maintained the exterior and common areas. Anything inside the outer walls of the unit was the owner's responsibility. So leaking roof, the HOA would fix. Leaking pipe inside, or furnace or water heater problem, the owner would have to handle.

> Typically, an HOA for a condo covers all maintenance interior and exterior, so that's not insane

It depends a bit on where you live, but that's typically not true. For a condo, the owners are responsible for interior maintenance (for example, plumbing issues within the unit, as opposed to plumbing issues within the walls).

Interior as in shared spaces interior.

It's not insane?!

I just sold a house in Vancouver after living in it for over a decade. The amortized cost of maintenance was less than 100 CAD/mo; and that included new quartz counters, a new roof, new hot water tanks, a whole yard remodel, new flooring, and so on.

What the hell are they burning nearly a grand USD per month per suite on?

Shared spaces need shared employees. Employees legal to work in the U.S, at the wages which are normal in SF (you don't want to keep hiring and have people quit after 1 month because someone is paying them more)

I also find elevators to add a decent amount to the overhead

Not everyone is fit for condo living, but those who do prefer to have a building manager full time on site they can talk to. They also want amenities, a gym or even a pool (which means paying a lifeguard), a rooftop or shared working space. And trust me the condo owners aren't going to go and mop that rooftop or gym, they're going to need even more employees to do that

> And trust me the condo owners aren't going to go and mop that rooftop or gym, they're going to need even more employees to do that

This is probably the meat of the cost.

When I demo'd the floors the labour cost was my own time; rather than the market rate.

So your total investment was less than 12K and you got new counters, hot water tanks, flooring. landscaping and a roof? I'm calling BS.

A new roof is in the ballpark of $10-$20k. Decent quality flooring is $10-20 per square foot; for a 2000 square foot house, this is $20-$40k in materials alone. Quartz countertops are $100 per square foot; for a typical kitchen, this usually comes out to $10-$20k (again, not counting installation).

It was a teeny tiny house; 850sqft and two stories.

The roof only hit me back about 5k.

Flooring was only about 3k, I did cheap laminate because carpet gives me allergies and I have kids.

How large is this kitchen? I had new quartz countertops put in for $4500 a few months ago, after labor. Kitchen is decently sized too.

Yeah, even just a hot water heater and a furnace would set me back $100/mo.

People are very bad at working out total cost of ownership, but it could work if the prices were very low and much of the labor was done by the owner.

I spent roughly a tenth of that on new water heaters; two half height to fit in the crawlspace. Electric, not gas.

Is labour just that much more expensive in the USA?

Labor is about $300 per hour in Seattle area. For example few years ago window was $250 and installation $300 and less than one hour. Complete brake job, calipers, rotors and pads is $1200+tax. I bought parts for $350 and installed myself in 3 hours.

Electricians start at $100-150 an hour in San Francisco yeah

Water heaters are about $500 per, and installation would be similar - the furnace would be the majority of the expense.

I don’t have any source to quote — but I believe a driver if HOA costs is insurance premiums. Canada/Europe likely less exposed to liability law etc

Ah right, that's a major scandal here in BC that I had forgotten about. Condo fees are soaring because insurance is going through the roof for that entire class of housing.

I mean if you own a house without a HOA you pay that insurance instead…

Some properties will include electricity and/or other utilities in that fee. A condo on the beach may include property insurance, etc.

There are plenty of much smaller/cheaper condos in SF with HOAs that are $1500+. I'm still baffled what they are spending that on. Here's a $860,000 condo with a $1876 HOA.

https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/611-Washington-St-94...

From the listing:

> Fees Include: Common Area Electricity, Door Person, Insurance (Common Area), Landscaping/Gardening, Management Fee, Pools, Spa, or Tennis, Reserves, Security Service, Water

> HOA Amenities: Community Pool, Door Person, Elevator, Gym/ Exercise Facility

That stuff costs money; if you don't want it then that isn't the building for you! Having recently moved from a condo to a non-HOA house, I am realizing how much extra time it takes to maintain a house (plus all the little extra costs here and there that add up). Condo HOAs are a mandatory convenience fee, and if you are a busy person they might really be worth it.

Single-family detached house subdivisions with HOAs are a different world. Stay far far away.

It seems like in that case:

* A lot of amenities (pool and gym) are provided with the HOA.

* The reason 1200 sqf in a tall building is so cheap ($860k) is probably because the high HOA is discouraging buyers.

It includes water, what is a typical monthly water bill for SF?

Depends on amenities but it seems about market. Here's one at $2.5M with a monthly HOA of $1,068.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2111-Hyde-St-401-San-Fran...

I did say luxury - it's a historic building with many units designed by renown architects.

An HOA below $1000 for a $2MM+ place is a steal. Would take that any day of the week.

Don’t forget the 27,000 annual property tax as well.

That is extremely low. A $600k condo usually has an hoa that high.

My building on SOMA did this. The owners were smart when they built it out and the apartments work well as offices or apartments. During the pandemic they pretty much went all residential. It's so efficient and smarter from the building owner perspective, you double your potential customer base.

This is such a great example, wish I could upvote this to the top. I think most people are imagining converting high-rises like Salesforce tower.

Most commercial office space in SOMA is a converted warehouse. Live/work apartments and lofts have already been converted from the same buildings. Let's do more of these!

Full kitchen and bathroom and closets for the office suite?

Yup, exactly. It's not that weird, every office I've worked at in the last 10 years has had a full kitchen and shower, it's almost a required perk in the bay area. The only weird thing IMO is it has a washer and dryer, I've not worked in an office that has those, that's the only difference from "normal" IMO.

> every office I've worked at in the last 10 years has had a full kitchen and shower

Fantastic for bike commuting.

What do you think makes live/work housing more desirable than just live? I haven’t seen live work spaces and I’m not sure what the allure would be.

I used to be in the city, in essentially a shoe box that cost 5k a month, but with a fancy gym and common area. I moved to Marin during COVID and while I miss the food and walking distance/public transit activities I could do, I don’t think I can go back to the extremely small for the money living area. I’m hopeful a glut of new housing, hopefully spacious, will change that calculus.

Zoning is the important piece. In a live/work building, tradespeople can run appointment-based services businesses like:

Hair/nail salons, waxing and esthetician services, makeup and photo studios, etc.

Every nail salon in 10 square-block radius of me (in SF, SOMA) closed during the pandemic. SF residential rents aren't affordable for a trade/services businessperson. Tradespeople stopped commuting 2+ hours into the city when businesses fled. For a city to thrive, services/trade labor needs to live near their work.

On a personal level, I want to run a small manufacturing shop to dog-food my own product (https://printnanny.ai/ - automation for 3D printer ecommerce shops).

My options are currently:

* Move to a single-family home in surburbia, so I can work out of a garage/shed.

* Lease a business-zoned office suite in SF, commute every day.

* Live in a building zoned for business/residential, so I can legally run an office without inviting ire from an SF condo HOA.

and also,

* leave the Bay Area and go somewhere with higher quality of life and lower real estate prices (read: basically anywhere that isn't Tokyo or NYC), go for residential housing + commercial property

unless you have some reason to pick SF?

I like it here! I might even love living here - at least enough to want to dig in and tackle tractable problems, like converting commercial real estate to housing supply.

This sort of setup would cross my mind while in college. The allure is that it would be similar to college - young people enthusiastic for learning but having fun too, no commuting, etc. As I got older it seems more like a nightmare since I hate my job and require more space/independence for my lifestyle/hobbies/family.

It's all about what those hobbies lifestyle is.

My wife and I made the opposite move. We had a house, a life, in the suburbs for more than a decade and now happily live in a 1 bedroom loft in SOMA. I would say that for our life, we live in a smaller (it's still pretty big, and not actually that expensive) in the city exactly because of the lifestyle/hobbies/family life we enjoy as a result. It's like the city is your living room.

True about the hobby types. I still think it generally applies for the live-work setup though. Mostly because it seems most people don't like their jobs and want a disconnect between their spaces. Also because of professional appearances etc influencing your off-hours activities if your coworkers are watching.

Even though work and housing aren't in the same buildings, military housing can provide a good lens into this.

> military housing can provide a good lens into this.

IMO, that's not really fair - at least for barracks. And I don't really think that "married" house style housing really applies since it's a suburb that just happens to be inside the base.

1. You don't own your barracks room. You generally don't have any ability to change furniture, appliances, paint, etc.

2. Barracks typically offer little privacy - there are periodic inspections, limits on guests, etc.

3. Military culture is a bit weird - there is often a very strong drinking culture, etc. It's not clear to me that the same social forces exist for a civilian live-work building.

4. The barracks are sometimes raided for off-hours extra duty. This downside doesn't really exist in the same way for civilians.

> The barracks are sometimes raided for off-hours extra duty. This downside doesn't really exist in the same way for civilians.

Yet. "Ron, according to the security system there was movement inside of your company dorm room last night at 8PM when we emailed you. Since you were just at home anyway why did you decide to not be a team player?"

Yeah, I'm not talking about barracks, but more like the family apartments or houses. The main issue I see crossing over in either civilian or military life with this setup is that everyone in that "suburb" works for the same employer. There can certainly be issues where personal problems become career problems and vice-versa. At least military housing is segregated by grade, but the civilian side could have you living right next to your boss. Too bad if they don't like something you do.

"The barracks are sometimes raided for off-hours extra duty."

Unless you work in IT and are on-call or the on-call doesn't answer (not fully the same, but still...).

Yeah, in either case healthy boundaries are important.

Not all office space is amenable to residential conversion, since the floor area to exterior wall ratio is often much too high for an apartment building (windowless offices are fine, windowless living rooms, not so much).

An office/apartment hybrid might work. I could imagine dividing the building, with offices in the inner core and apartments surrounding the core. The core and surrounding apartments would be totally separated, with separate lobbies and elevators. Although the offices would be totally windowless hellscapes, at least the apartments would have lots of light.

"(windowless offices are fine, windowless living rooms, not so much)"...*not for the homeless.

> windowless offices are fine

I think that's a bold statement already

Clocktower lofts are also very unlike currently vacant offices. Old industrial buildings had large open spaces that turned out to be easy to reconfigure. Most empty buildings now are more like 100 Van Ness which stayed empty for many years until its value dropped to a fraction of what it had been. And that conversion was still expensive enough to be risky and force offerings to the high end to make the math work out. This is going to be a rough ride.

One can only dream, but mid-market price expectations cannot be met. Just read in the article the price for the space, it is huge.

But those aren't the choices. The choices are A - get a commercial tenant that pays the high price you mention, if there aren't any tenants your choices are B - leave it vacant C - rent it out to a lower paying customer (residental).

Between B and C C is the clear winner.

Not necessarily. B wins if you depend on the value of the property for some reason or another. Commercial properties are valued based on the net present value of the rents you can get. If you pretend that you can get a higher rate than the market will bear, you can keep the valuation of your building up during a downturn. If you accept the lower-paying tenant, you lower the perceived valuation of the building. This only matters if you have a commercial mortgage... which is every building these days.

This is utterly stupid, but it is driving rental vacancies in NYC.

I totally agree its dumb, like a lot of the water rights laws that actually require wasting of water.

I would say then the solution is to reform those laws, while we're at it we should reform the property tax laws in California.

Option C involves a large investment to convert the property into one that legally allows for residential usage and that people, with money to pay rent, would want to live in. It also blocks option A, without spending all the money to undo things, if the economic situation changes or there's a bailout. So not a clear winner versus simply waiting.

My point is that many buildings, like the one I live in now, do not need changes. They intelligently designed and built it from the beginning to serve both uses well. I'm pointing out that this is a smart approach. If a building needs a ton of renovations to make it meet code for residential occupancy than its not a good building to consider for this. I would say this is a corner case, ignore those. Just convert the 25% easiest buildings that need minimal if any changes.

That'd be true, if commercial property owners still had to pay their mortgages.

Commercial property owners are seeking forbearance agreements with their lenders. Forbearance is like hitting the "pause" button on a lending agreement, with the hope that market conditions bounce back and the original loan terms can continue.

What that means in practice is that a massive amount of real estate will rot, unused, in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Seeking does not mean "will get." Banks lose money from forbearance agreements - especially when there is a reasonable out like converting to residential.

I've never understood why there isn't a D - lower prices until you get a commercial tenant who's willing to take you up at your asking price. As others have mentioned, converting from commercial to residential isn't cheap. Why do commercial prices stay sky high with a high vacancy rate?

The property owner almost certainly has debt that needs to be refinanced every few years. Willingness of a lender to finance is based on projected rental income. If the asking rents are high, the projected income is high. This apparently works for a while even if the property is not actually leased. It would seem to me that at some point the lenders would start saying "yeah the projected income looks great but we notice that the building has actually been vacant for two years..." but I don't operate in this world so it's something of a mystery to me.

However if the building value has dropped, the lender's collateral value has dropped and probably below their owed balance. No one wants to 'realize' the new lower value, including the lender, so they tend to extend the loan and hope for the best.

Because they can enter forbearance and just wait

It's not a clear winner. "Pray and delay" is a common strategy for commercial properties, because commercial mortgages allow you to defer payments.

You can't just rent out an office as an apartment. There are large costs associated with retrofitting the office space to be up to code for a residential unit. These retrofits would also likely lower the properties value as an office space. So C is not an obvious win in all cases - otherwise all landlords would be doing it.

Yes you can, if it was designed as such from the beginning. I literally live in one now. They go back and forth between residential and office occupancy with each lease, with no changes to the building or spaces themselves. It just has to be done right. My apartment is exactly identical to how it was when the previous tenant used it as an office.

So you do not have a kitchen and a bathroom with shower or the office used to have lots of kitchens and showers everywhere? It is not clear.

It's a large 2 story loft space. It has a full kitchen (as most offices do too these days), and 2 full bathrooms. There is a loft bedroom and small closed off office space that are both conference rooms when it's in office mode.

Really, how different are offices from apartments? You have space, kitchen, bathrooms, etc.

The only thing that is weird is most offices don't have a washer and dryer, other than that if I walked in this space and it was decorated as an office I wouldn't think twice, same in apartment mode.

Does it scale down? I can see two floors of an office building making a (very expensive) apartment but what about a cheap 1 bedroom? In "office mode", the office unit would be < 50% office, with most of the floor plan as bathrooms, laundry, and kitchen.

Not really.

I would argue that I live in a cheap 1 bedroom, it exactly this that you describe.

The bathrooms are a wash, both commercial and residential spaces require them. If anything the bathrooms in this arrangement are a bit smaller than traditional commercial bathrooms.

Same with the kitchen, commercial spaces have them, every place I've worked for the last 15 years has had one. So that's a wash. Also, our kitchen isn't huge, it's of similar size to those kitchens.

That leaves the laundry. For us it's a stacked unit in a small closet in the bathroom. They could easily be removed and then the closet could be used for bathroom cleaning supplies and no-one would ever suspect it wasn't just an office.

So the real comparison is: Residential: 1500 Sq ft loft, small glass office and loft bedroom, 2 full baths Commercial: 1500 Sq ft office, 1 large loft conference room, 1 small glass conference room/office, open Floorplan for 10-15 desks, 2 bathrooms with shower, full kitchen Both have door service, package receiving and security services provided on site, parking space

I'm sure there are buildings which are built to both codes. In the general case, there is significant costs in time and money to convert an office to a legal apartment unit.

Welcome to the fantastic world of zoning.

The answer is no. Why? because the city collects more taxes from commercial zoned stuff.

Your city needs homes for people who work at McDonald's. Not more luxury apartments.

Build luxury apartments, people with luxury money will move there rather than buying and converting the McDonald workers' homes.

That's not how it works though. It just lowers the price for luxury apartments.

It is literally how it works. There's plenty of evidence showing so.

The cool thing about luxury apartments is that it means rich people will stop displacing poor people in the not-luxury apartments.

False. The city has too many McDonald's quality apartments at luxury prices. More supply solves this.

i was actually wondering about this. doesn't section 8 housing vouchers take care of this?

it also seems like it could lead to increased rents, if you have the government guarantee rent will be paid, you can raise it by a lot and not worry about people not paying, or even not being able to afford it.

> i was actually wondering about this. doesn't section 8 housing vouchers take care of this?

not at all.

None of this office space is suitable for habitation.

"convert" it to be habitable is the key message here.

Is far more difficult than scratch building.

The housing opportunity in SF is in all the vacant and underutilized space in the Sunset. Downtown offices do not have the egress, plumbing, ventilation, electricity, or telecomm capacity to be economically converted to dwellings in anything other than a makeshift, emergency fashion.

There's plenty of warehouse office space in SOMA that could meet residential coding requirements. I think most people in this thread are imagining converting high-rise open plans, like Salesforce tower - but most offices in SOMA are actually in warehouse space that's easier to convert. That's why I linked an example of live/work lofts.

Which isn't to say we shouldn't utilize outer Sunset space too! There's already great public transport to the SOMA area though.

It's a shame to let commercial real estate rot in forbearance, when it's surrounded by the infrastructure needed for excellent city living.

Why not both? Let the market figure it out, just make the zoning permissive enough to allow the opportunity.

Absolutely. Low-income housing is the perfect use for all this extra office space. San Francisco has a problem where the low-income people who work to serve high-income people can't afford to live in the city that they work in.

Converting office space into affordable housing is a win for everyone, except the landlords, but I won't shed a tear for them ;-)

We've tried to convert offices to homes in the UK, and there's something particularly dystopian about the result. I think they have to make strange trade-offs to make the space useful, and its ends up being not very nice. I'm sure it's better than being on the street, but it isn't nice.

NYC has build a lot of dedicated public housing and even then dystopian is probably a good summary of the result.

I grew up in the Sedgwick projects in the Bronx, and my grandma still lives there. She's been in the same rent-controlled apartment for 40+ years, which was affordable to her as a small business owner (hair/beauty salon).

She's now living independently at age 86, thanks to a social security check and a community where she's everyone's abuela. Rent-controlled housing made it easier to divorce her abusive husband and start a business back in the 60s.

How is that dystopian?

> How is that dystopian?

The practicalities of the original design and trying to adapt it means these conversions often have limited natural light, limited fresh air, are made from hard, unbreathable, manufactured materials, are very 'liminal', have bad acoustics. Have you read the theory of 'sick buildings'? Homes made from office space seem to end up very 'sick', with an impact on people's mental and physical health, and increasing isolation.

That's how it's dystopian.

not the person you are responding to, but I think they meant dystopian as in the "vibe" of the place. For example, many housing projects in France (where I live), tend to be basically large concrete rectangles, with very little green space. When compared to posher neighborhoods, with lots of trees everywhere, this can seem a little claustrophobic/totalitarian/dystopian. It feels like a less "human friendly" environment than you stereotypical suburb with front lawns.

I see where that's coming from, but to offer an alternate perspective the suburbs seemed "dystopian" to me at first - we moved upstate for middle/high school. The same 6-8 Stepford model homes on every street, strip malls filled with the same 10 stores (Walgreens/CVS, Costco/Walmart, etc), people dressed VERY similarly, and nobody walked anywhere. The teens in my suburban high school seemed way less happy and did more/harder drugs compared to the Bronx.

I'm not saying the projects were lovely. The elevators smelled like piss. But public housing - even ugly public housing - was a huge part in enabling two generations of single moms (my mom + grandma) to raise their families, start businesses, and thrive.

Quite a few have been done badly (cheaply) so there's issues with insulation, damp, etc. And like you said, they don't often look nice.

You can't just convert office space into residential space. Completely different building codes. Just the retrofit for the plumbing makes it untenable.

I know this will get downvoted but, I say Throw the building codes out the window. Housing people is more important than regulations.

If it made a difference to your ability to get shelter, which would you rather choose: have shelter or live in a illegal tent under a bridge resting assured with the knowledge that there's a big book of rules in place.

The problem is not all codes are meaningless regulation, and some of the important ones are indeed expensive (and vice versa). If you yolo it, you get cases like the Grenfell tower fire, and a lot of people literally die.

This is how you get housing tenements, and SF has a history of over-paying for impermanent housing solutions (like tents in a parking lot, or cots in a navigation center).

Not all buildings in SF are high-rise open-plans. If you're imagining converting Salesforce tower, I see how that would seem impractical.

Most commercial office space in SOMA (old warehouse buildings) can be converted into live/work lofts.

Building codes were written in blood (and for much of the plumbing code, human feces and black mold).

anyone up for a rewrite in Rust? :D

If you're talking low-income housing, it could be closer to a dormitory setup. Common bathrooms and kitchens, etc. This used to be common in low-income urban rental property, and still is in some parts of the world.

Building Codes are words on paper. They can be changed more easily than physical buildings.

Think of most offices. Central elevator shafts and stairs and bathrooms. A massive floorplan with all the windows on the edges. How do you convert to residential? Have 5 feet by 500 feet units so everyone has light and a connection to plumbing by the elevator shaft? Residential buildings have a lot more access to natural light throughout the structure and they are plumbed entirely differently. Hvac and wiring too.

This doesn't describe a lot of office space in San Francisco, especially SOMA. There are a couple of high-rise open plans (like SF Tower), but many offices in SOMA are converted warehouses.

Check out 510 Townsend, one of the properties mentioned in the OP. What do you think about converting buildings like 510 Townsend into live/work lofts?

>How do you convert to residential? Have 5 feet by 500 feet units so everyone has light and a connection to plumbing by the elevator shaft?

A dorm (ie. shared bathrooms/kitchen) wouldn't have this issue.

The problem with shared bathrooms & kitchens is that no single person is responsible for cleaning them and as a result they end up being messes. It can work (in theory), but in practice it ends up getting ruined by lazy jerks.

Yeah I remember the dorm bathrooms on a sunday, full of puke from saturday before the cleaning staff showed up on monday morning.

Dorm buildings are still thinner and have more access to natural light. No matter what you get these awkward units and dystopian unlit spaces internally. In places like nyc with huge, city block width apartments, there are actually internal voids that let in natural light deeper into the structure.

Ambiguous blanket statement that flies in the face of ingenuity. Change the byzantine codes.

Google "Chesterton's Fence".

Theoretically, the wages should come up to make it possible to live there, assuming the service providers are actually having trouble hiring.

It seems to me there might be some disconnect in demand and supply of various labor types (not many unskilled jobs compared to the number of unskilled workers, vs not many software devs but lots of openings). It seems these forces drag the bottom down while pushing the top higher.

Edit: why disagree?

> Theoretically, the wages should come up to make it possible to live there, assuming the service providers are actually having trouble hiring.

Why, theoretically, would wages rise enough to make it possible for any worker to live in the city? I think the situation where workers with the worst alternatives and weakest negotiating position are stuck commuting into SF from outside is unfortunate but theoretically entirely understandable; SF wages aren't forced to rise to support someone living here, but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting.

"but only to be high enough relative to wages elsewhere to compensate for the cost of commuting."

True, but then the implied issues with not living in the city you work in become moot if truly compensating for the commute and cost of living outside the city.

I think maybe you mean something by "truly compensating" which isn't actually being achieved. But the lesser compensation we are achieving is still sufficient to impact people's behavior.

Suppose you're able to get two part time jobs with relatively little predictability in your shift schedule. Both are minimum wage, but one is in SF where the minimum is $17/hr and another is in Concord at $14/hr (the state minimum for a company with <25 employees). Say you live in Antioch, and can get to the Concord job in around 35 minutes for $4 with BART, and get to the SF job with more than 1h and $7.30 on BART (one way). So for every shift in SF you pick up, you get a $3 premium per hour relative to the Concord job, but for the first 2 hours that just goes to cover your extra BART fare, _and_ you lose an extra hour in transit. In dollars you still come out ahead on an 8 hour shift in SF relative to in Concord, but I think it would be unreasonable to say that "the implied issues ... become moot".

I say theoretically, because in a theoretical world the market would be efficient and the employee would be analyzing the income and costs. Your examples are using locale in a HCOL state. Now image if the workers there actually did analysis on moving to lower cost states.

Yes, the moot part is based on them being truly compensatedfor the extra commute, in which case it would be moot. It's much more interesting to me to look at the income inequality and market side than the "solution" of creating subsidized housing. I'd rather go after the true root problem than cover up one symptom and allowa the problem to persist.

You're looking at it as it exists today. I'm saying theoretically this other stuff should work (but may not in practice).

I think this line of thinking is just sloppy. "Theoretically" the efficient market only gets to pareto optimality, i.e. we can't make the commuting low-wager worker's situation better without someone else being at least slightly worse off, but there's no lower bound on how bad things can be for that low-wage worker. Nothing assures us that we converge to a state where at the low end "the wages should come up to make it possible to live [in SF]" or anywhere particularly close.

I find your thinking sloppy. There, was that helpful?

"better without someone else being at least slightly worse off"

Exactly. The point (if you go back through my comments) is that there seems to be a demand and supply imbalance based on the skill/type of labor. We should be looking at ways to slow higher end wage growth and promote it in the lower end. One way to do this could be around education. Essentially, increase the number of developers on the market while decreasing the number of people who are only qualified for the lower wage work. We've kind of seen this with the pandemic shrinking the labor force and driving those lower end wages higher.

Who do you expect will pay for the conversions if not landlords?

Obviously government subsidy..

Subsidies.... to the landlords who own the buildings? Or are you saying this will be owned and operated by the government?

Meaning taxes

Or, good old QE.

Who wants to live in a city if you can work from home? If you are poor and need housing subsidies and there are no jobs for you, there is no reason to live in the city to begin with. People go live where the jobs are. Without "white collar" jobs producing demand for services, there is much less demand for "blue collar" jobs.

If it's just cooping people up, there are cheaper ways to house people than maintaining expensive buildings that need financing and upkeep.

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