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Comment by brookst | Hacker News Reader

Super interested in your industry!

What makes conversion of office towers to housing not viable? It's easy for me to imagine a lot of objections to converting one building, but hard to imagine insurmountable difficulties in converting 1000, where you can amortize R&D and specialized equipment across a huge number of properties.

So, if you don't mind humoring me, can you sketch the worst / most expensive / most technically difficult requirements for converting an office tower to apartments? I suspect you're probably right, given you've got domain knowledge and I don't, it just feels like one of those problems that becomes more tractable at scale.

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Think of the layout of a modern office tower. Nearly open floor plans, one or two multi-user bathrooms per floor, one or two kitchenettes per floor. Designs optimized for ingress and egress via a single path. Sound abatement is minimal. Support columns are in the open.

So at minimum, you would need to plumb and power each "apartment" which would require essentially a complete replacement of the plumbing in place, as well as the electricity. And since the units are distinct, you would need to meter and isolate each unit. You would need to ensure that each "apartment" had a reasonable exit for fire safety reasons. You are restricted by architectural/engineering decisions that were based on an open layout (aforementioned supports).

Think of it this way, have you ever seen the progress as a tower is built? Isn't it remarkable how the "shell" or exterior seems to get finished in a blink, but the rest of the "innards" take 4 or 5 times as long to finish? In this case, most of the "innards" would need to be re-worked. Huge capital investment with unclear returns (nobody wants to live among the blight that a lot of west coast city centers are seeing).

All good points, but given the prospect of getting a building essentially for free (minus tax/maintenance) and having substantial one-time costs... that sounds like a pretty good deal.

Many office towers have much higher ceilings than typical apartment buildings. Pretty sure a 12" subfloor would solve many of the issues you raise. And many office towers are designed to support multiple tenants per floor.

I'm not dismissing the difficulty, just saying that the scale economics seem very attractive for a high fixed cost, low variable cost, long term annuity investment. I'm either wrong or ahead of my time, but it's not like I've got the funding to put money where my mouth is.

> the blight that a lot of west coast city centers are seeing

I don't see how that's relevant. The shift to WFH is global; these problems/opportunities are just as real in London or Sydney or Shanghai.

I was being purposeful not to extrapolate out to cities/cultures I do not personally know or have experienced. I can speak only for the Western USA, which is why I tried to limit that comment to that region. I am sure other locales have other unique circumstances.

If you search for it you will find a fairly recent episode of KQED "forum" that discussed this topic for a full hour.

Thank you! FYI it’s from October 6th.

Thank you! Will find and listen.

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