The reason for high cost of living in cities was that’s where the offices were…
Now we don’t need offices. So convert them to apartments to lower housing costs in the short term, and telework means people won’t move to cities as much in the long term.
This is actually a good idea…
But the White House initiative will make more than $35 billion available from existing federal programs in the form of grants and low-interest loans to encourage developers to convert offices into residential.
Developers will do this anyway if the offices are empty, why not use that money for a government program to guarantee down payments of first time home buyers?
The developers are doing fine, it’s the average American that’s struggling, stop funneling money to the people who already have a shit ton of it, trickle down doesn’t fucking work
Agreed. This is a good idea overall, but the implementation smells like a bailout of commercial real estate developers to me.
Ding dong ding!
But also to a point, it will take a significant amount of work to convert office space to residential. Just utilities alone will be an adventure, and you’d better hope the building was set up with decent truck lines down the core of the structure to begin with. It’s not like “hey let’s throw up some walls, boom, apartments.” You need adequate power distribution, and water/sewer connections to each apartment to fulfill each unit having it’s own kitchen and bathroom. Commercial spaces are generally build to accommodate different usage.
if the offices are empty, why not use that money for a government program to guarantee down payments of first time home buyers?
The Biden administration is doing that also, it just doesn’t make as good a headline.
There’s nothing wrong with favoring the people with the least generational wealth first and foremost
Refitting office space to make it liveable is actually super expensive. Commercial spaces don’t have the electric, plumbing, or insulation typically required or expected by residents. It can be cheaper to gut or even tear down the building in order to add the necessary MEP and framing, which is why you see developers are still building new rather than converting old commercial spaces. The money will encourage redevelopment which is far less wasteful and combats sprawl.
That said, I agree with you that you could make the money available to buyers instead of developers, but developers are the ones paying the bribesdonating to campaigns.
Then those millionaire (from the examples in the link, billionaire) developers can let their building sit empty…
This is America, where a single cancer diagnosis can bankrupt a family for generations. If we were a civilized country, sure, bail everyone out.
But I don’t have sympathy for them when normal people are in such a tight spot.
Like if you’re a cardiologist and you’re helping someone you saw sprain their ankle, you’d be an idiot to keep helping them when there’s five people having heart attacks in the same room.
The problem is that they are happy to let the building sit empty most of the time
The value of the land and building continue to go up as an investment, even if they aren’t earning money today on the space .
So they don’t actually give a fuck if it sits empty, but society does 
I’m with you, but you’re kidding yourself if you think the billionaire is going to suffer. They have leveraged the value with banks, and would skip on down the road with their fortunes while the banks that make mortgage loans have to shore up their books at the expense of common folks. Homebuyers, small businesses, and taxapyers will be expected to cover the losses.
$35B sounds more like it’s intended to find a way to make these conversions possible and create a “blueprint” to be used elsewhere.
These conversions are already possible. It’s a big financial decision because you basically have to gut it, but it’s not hard work. (No you don’t have to demolish the whole building like the other guy says). Each building will be different so you can’t make a generic blueprint.
There are people developing solutions to this one of which is essentially building panels that house all the equipment and hookups and installing them at location. This is the mobile home industry trying to adapt.
SIP panels aren’t going to increase the main stack capacity. Commercial buildings just don’t have the capacity for all of the sinks and toilets being used at once. It’s a neat idea, and a low voltage lighting system could save a ton of energy, but you still need to gut the building and add critical MEP infrastructure.
99 percent invisible did an episode on it recently.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/office-space/transcript
Developers won’t do it though. Otherwise, we’d already have this happening. What they do now is call it a loss and get a break on their taxes.
Developers will do this anyway if the offices are empty, why not use that money for a government program to guarantee down payments of first time home buyers?
Because that doesn’t do anything but provide guaranteed cash to existing property owners at the expense of people trying to stop renting. Until the supply side issue is addressed, homeownership will continue to be out of reach for most. The best case here would be to convert these buildings into condos or whatever the local word for apartments you own instead of rent is, but just rentals us a good second choice.
The point of a down payment is if you default (don’t pay) your mortgage immediately, the bank keeps it, like they keep everything you pay before you default.
So if the government guarantees it, that means instead of putting (easy numbers) 10k down on a 100k house and having a mortgage for 90k, the government “co signs” and if you default in the first X years, they have to pay the 10k. But since you didn’t pay the 10k, your mortgage is still for 100k
When rent is more than a mortgage payment, this allows people to buy a house without spending years saving up a down payment
Developers don’t want to touch this. The amount of work it would take to turn an office building into an apartment building is more than you likely realise. Building code for the two are very different so fully gutting the building is first on the list. The amount of plumbing that would have to be added and so on. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. I think it’s a great idea, but to get it done you have to make it profitable or the government will have to step up and hire engineers and contractors and operate the building after, which is of course comunism, and so will never happen. Full aside from the political issues, it just makes more sense to knock down the office building and build a whole new one that is actually designed for residential use. Too little too late no matter what happens with the office buildings. It should never have been allowed, from the start, for corporate entities to buy up housing at all. Not apartment buildings, not single family homes. That has to be fixed first.
The Mortgage Insurance Premium (FHA) and Annual Guarantee Fee (USDA) make either costly in the long run. You get to skip the down payment, but the added cost of mortgage insurance (irrespective of how it’s labeled) hurts lower income borrowers. Both are costly, and neither are necessary. The property is the collateral. The lender loses future revenue and is inconvenienced if the borrower defaults, but they obviously do well enough overall to shoulder that burden.
mixed offices and apartments in the same building sounds good… would cut the commute
I lived in a building thay was mixed residential/office space in Buenos Aires. It was really good, during the week you saw movement in and out so it felt alive, ar night and weekends was pretty empty and calm, and you could throw parties without bothering the neighbors.
Just live at work! I can see the LateStageCapitalism posts writing themselves
in the same building as a floor used for an office wouldn’t be living at work
I see no way this could go horribly wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
Mixed use buildings for actually quite common in much of the world and can work quite well. See what you do though is you put them on the market for anybody to rent, and not force people to live in your company housing.
If you go into any major city you’re going to run into mixed use buildings.
Yes please. Let’s give corporations a reason to convert their office buildings into apartments so we can all go back to WFH. Plus, the more housing we have in the city the cheaper it gets.
I’m hopeful that a lot of these will turn into condos so people can get into ownership instead of renting.
I think that at least one should be saved for just paintball.
One floor should be reserved for running around barefoot on broken glass while bad guys chase after you to keep you from interfering with their elaborate heist.
All high rise office buildings should be incentivized to have residential space. Let’s try and fix the housing issues and reduce cars/traffic at the same time.
