I keep hearing that empty office buildings are an economic time bomb. I keep hearing that housing inventory is low which is why house prices are high. Why can’t we convert offices to homes?
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It’s not impossible to do this in the long run, but it will be expensive.
Office buildings are not up to modern habitation codes. Aside from the obvious stuff (putting up interior walls, installing appliances, etc.) there are some things baked into the building that will be hard to change. Plumbing is typically much more centralized in office buildings than it would need to be for homes, which will each need at a minimum water access in the kitchen and bathroom. Office buildings also have much more interior space that barely get natural light and would get none once those interior walls are put up. This is why apartment buildings tend to either be narrower or have bends/cutouts.
Then there are the economic considerations. Highrise buildings are expensive and inefficient. They only exist in downtown areas because companies value having a central location *a lot* and they were willing to pay for it. Do apartment seekers value those downtown locations just as much? Maybe, but people who could pay for that space aren’t exactly the ones being crunched by the housing shortage.
So for the real estate companies that own these under-used downtown office buildings, it becomes a dilemma with no good options. Sit vacant hoping that work-from-home is just a fad, or undertake expensive and time-consuming renovations to convert to residential and probably end up collecting lower rents. Right now the pressure is low enough that these owners are preferring to wait and hope.
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