Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty ImagesIn parts of the country where land is relatively cheap, it's far less expensive to build housing from scratch than to convert old offices. And some cities don't mind having empty offices.
"You combine this market reality with the large amount of underutilized land where it is cheaper to build a new four- to five-story apartment complex than convert an existing office building to housing," he said. That was a 1970s-era concrete-laden monstrosity adjacent to City Hall that was once the offices of the California State Automobile Association. Today, a 600-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in the shiny glass buildingA view of City Hall from one of the open units at the 100 Van Ness apartment building on March 19, 2021 in San Francisco.
Gensler, the architectural firm, recently concluded after a study of building stock in Calgary, Alberta, that"the worse the office building, the better candidate it is for conversion to residential," particularlyis at a stunning 32 percent. Typically, that means that older and often more run-down buildings are ripe for conversion.
"We do a lot of multifamily high-rise projects, and probably 90 or 95 percent of them are new construction," he said, saying that is where the money is."They tend to be urban. They tend to be aimed at the more luxurious end of the market. So they tend to be new construction ground up rather than adaptive reuse projects."
Maybe because the people who own the real estate don't want to make it Housing. Do you know the seer amount of zoning requirements, regulations, and permits one needs to pay government for this? Oh wait... Ignorance is bliss.
This statement is so RETARDED… offices were never designed to be houses. And this is from the way electrical grid to walls were design. Also, those buildings are either owned by companies or by owners who would prefer to rent them as offices… so please stop 😂😂😂😂😂