What It Takes to Convert a Multi-Million Dollar Office into Housing

Can anyone suggest any more detailed treatments? Perhaps investor material for a company seeking to do this?

In the past, I was enamored with the idea of buying a dead mall, transforming much of it into apartments, and adding some amenities in the common spaces - including a restaurant, pool etc. sort of like a Vegas hotel but in a more community oriented style.

During covid, I became somewhat wealthy due to some investments and tried to actually make the moves and discovered the hell of zoning laws, poor construction quality etc. and discovered construction workers charge 10x the price in the US as in Europe, even though they use cheaper materials (e.g. 2x2 frames with drywall instead of bricks and plywood.) Then a bubble popped and I ended up as I was before.

Cost always goes to cost:benefit. Of course for investors in LPT the only benefit here is upside value of their investment in the property.

The thing is, both "cost" and "benefit" have other dimensions. The socialised cost of emptying out the cities, the upside benefits for local small traders if people move back in, where once were office workers.

If you read stuff about small trader economic woes, and the amounts of support local authorities have to pump in to make things like "detroit" scale defaults not happen, $500 sq ft isn't such a bad price to pay. There's jobs, there's downstream supply chain profit and jobs, there's re-activation of the city.

Its also "cost" is "investment" -investment is a nice word for a city.

I have a great kids book called "unbuilding" which is about a fictional de-construction of the empire state building. If we don't re-purpose these edifices, then thats probably a future cost/risk decision.

Empty buildings are not an asset.

This sad thing about this is that there should be a subsidy to do this because if you think about the city tax that is imposed on a person that lives in the city versus a person not living in the city, it should pan out over a few years.

Where is all the building for apartments that cost less than $3500 a month in major cities in the United States?