Would you live in an apartment 15 feet wide and 50 feet deep? No. That's why most office buildings dont work
You have to redo all the mechanical, plumbing, electric, and then entirely refinish the building. Its literally cheaper to build new than deal with the nightmare that is to convert an office.
I work in CRE - every single office to multi deal i have seen the developer has war stories. And the units are 40-100% more expensive in cost than other apartments.
Office buildings are like an infectious disease. You could let them die. But if you have an urban infill city environment and more and more office properties become ghost buildings, then that disease will spread. All of the restaurants and other businesses nearby that rely on the foot traffic from office folk, they will die. You will see more riff raff. More homeless. More crime.
Many office assets need to go to 0 in asset value before the private market is willing to take the risk of those conversions.
Remember, loans are close to 10% for construction. And equity returns are higher.
Isn't this basically a railroad?
For laughs, I just measured the width of my home's hallways and rooms. I don't see why 15x50 feet apartment isn't doable especially for a bachelor/new couple starting out. Assume an apartment with a 3 foot wide, 50 foot length hallway, subtract another 2 feet width for walls/piping/whatever, and then you can hang 5 rooms that are 10x10 feet from the hallway. Enough for a living room/common area/kitchen/2 bedrooms. Might get a bit cramped but very usable.
I assume I'm missing something here since this doesn't seem to be too bad.
Yes, if that's the alternative to being enslaved for life. How can people still not understand that there is a massive part of the population who need to be able to purchase their living space to not have to rent for life or take on life-long debt that they can't afford. How can people not understand this? Yes, it's better for a young worker to be able to purchase a shit apartment that is a converted office building and start building his or her future, than pay rent for years and years and have nothing to show for it.
This is a true "let them eat cake" situation. Imagine if we didn't allow people to eat because we didn't think the food was good enough. That's what's happening with housing.
In a nice part of Boston? Under 500K? Over 1K sqft? With some nice building community amenities? Hell. Yes.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/viral-bay-area-zillow-l...
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9703586,-122.5195036,3a,75y,...
Yes. I lived in this with my SO for 9 years. And I lived with 200 other families like this on small plots of land.
Its called a "Mobile Home".
I think many owners have the mindset that if they're going to lose money either way they'll stick with the devil they know and hope for a miracle rebound. It sounds like this program is offering tax incentives to help offset those conversion costs to make it much easier for building owners to break even after a conversion.
As far as fitting in here, have you read the guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>In Comments
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
This is a combative tone and suggests they need to calm down. Moreover, they're violating the very rules that they just posted:
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
I find your tone ("they need to calm down", "take a break from social media") much more condescending and passive-aggressive. Maybe you are projecting your own feelings onto others? Therefore, maybe the advice you're giving to them is actually advice you want to give to yourself?
Note that this is merely an observation - I have no way of knowing as I don't have access to your mind, and I don't care either way, so feel free to label my comment as combative, too, if you wish.
I caught ya. Have a good day!
Please try to see communication as sharing more than a battle. It doesn't matter who's right, what matters is to share knowledge and help each other converge to something resembling the truth. Life is much more beautiful from that perspective. Have a good day, too, but sincerely, not in a snarky way.
But trying to carry on vendettas in other threads isn't healthy or productive, so I suggest you don't seek out other comments of mine to pick fights ;)
Hope you find your peace one day.
But getting upset at a previous discussion and then looking up threads of mine to pretend to scold me isn't neutral, it's unhealthy.
This will be my last reply; I'd appreciate it if you don't stalk my comments to try and carry on a grudge. If you would like to get the last word, and try to carefully craft a response to make it appear that isn't what you were doing, you are more than welcome.
Regardless, I do not speak to make anything seem to anyone or to have the last word - I speak because I want to communicate. And I'd like to communicate to you that I am most certainly not stalking you. I don't appreciate being accused of it with only evidence being the fact that we had a conversation before, but I understand paranoia and the distrust of everyone it causes in the soul, which is the reason I'm spending my time typing this out in the first place.
Again, I hope you find your peace, or ask for help from appropriate people if you can't. Nothing more than that.
https://www.apartments.com/blog/what-is-the-average-rent-in-...
around 4$ sq ft for commerical in LA
https://www.colliers.com/en/research/los-angeles/2022-q2-dow...
CRE is WAY higher in the top tier areas of SF, for the obvious reason that historically high startup capital outpaces all other residential price pressures.
This differs in other localities.
https://slate.com/business/2022/12/office-housing-conversion...