Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

Let's do some math.

The building has 27,651 Sq meters. It would cost (with discount) $60m and it would cost (for commercial renovation, according to the article) $50 if we assume the conversion to residential is going to be the same.

An average 2 Bedroom is 150 Sq meters. If we assume an 80% usage capacity (some space has to go for the gym, I guess), then we get 147 apartments. Or $750K per apartment. Obviously, there will be other costs (taxes, finder fees, city, whatever) so let's say $850K per apartment to be safe.

This is an insane price for an apartment; however, this is a competitive price for SF. The people who did a 80% discount on this, seems to have reasonable math pricing in that most of the "value" of the building was derived from the scarcity of commercial building and demand. The new "value" might have been priced based on the residential market.

The bigger problem is likely water - both use and removal.

Most offices will have a couple bathrooms per floor and a kitchen. Those are used frequently 9-5 but rarely on nights and weekends and there's no heavy usage like showers or clothes washing.

If you build 100+ apartments, you need to either build 100+ bathrooms and kitchens (expensive!) or do it dorm style with common spaces plus private bedrooms. That brings it down to a smaller number but still probably 5:1 for 20+. That's just on the consumption side.

And the entire infrastructure - both inflows and outflows - are probably not sized to handle that change in usage.

It's definitely not impossible but the conversion costs are massive.

Not just water, also concerns over things like power and fire; anywhere people sleep has extra rules.

Weight requirements also become non-trivial; offices are often comparatively sparse -- cube, monitors, chair -- compared to homes, which have way more stuff. A kitchen in every apartment, oven, fridge, bed, dressers, tv, couches, etc.

Electrical demand may or may not be higher, too.

Conversion to residential is probably quite a bit more. The cost of the modern office building conversion described in the New York Times article mentioned on this thread wasn't given, but the resulting condos were selling for $3-$4 million.

Office buildings are often tricky to turn into apartments. Too much interior space, not enough windows. But I agree someone should look into it!

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