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Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

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Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#21

crazy idea: us govt scoops up all the office real estate at the crash and converts to low income housing for free. Solve two crisis at once, the obviously coming real estate crisis and the homeless crisis. All for the cost of a handful of F35s If only politicians had an iota of strategy.

The problem is that many offices - especially open plan offices - are difficult to convert to living spaces. Few people would want to live in a windowless apartment.

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#22
post #10

crazy idea: us govt scoops up all the office real estate at the crash and converts to low income housing for free. Solve two crisis at once, the obviously coming real estate crisis and the homeless crisis. All for the cost of a handful of F35s If only politicians had an iota of strategy.

It’s not so easy to convert offices to living areas, although I think it’s been done in a few places

Only in buildings which could reasonably be converted to have windows for each room without wasting office space square footage.

So, slimmer buildings basically.

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zero sympathy. For Wall Street & the billionaires? Reasonable. But the crash will cause vastly more suffering for normal people than for the 0.1%.

I don't think most people fully grasp what is likely coming down the pike. Normalcy bias is a helluva drug.

meh, we have much more stable financial institutions in 2023 than 2008.

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#24

crazy idea: us govt scoops up all the office real estate at the crash and converts to low income housing for free. Solve two crisis at once, the obviously coming real estate crisis and the homeless crisis. All for the cost of a handful of F35s If only politicians had an iota of strategy.

[flagged]

OC says "for less than 2 F-35s" - small budget cut to convert buildings into massive amounts of housing, seems reasonable at first glance

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#25

This is why changing zoning laws is so important. These buildings and their underlying values can be saved by 'going condo' or conversion to smaller unit spaces for the purpose of housing so many who are struggling with massive increases to rent. Most rent does not increase because of increased asset expenses, it increases because of increased owner expenses and that quickly becomes a slippery slope in the face of ad…

> the government holds hundreds of millions of acres of land in trust and it needs to be relinquished How would relinquishing that help, is access to land a real issue? You can probably already buy a lot for cheap right now, but it will be far from urban centers and won't be habitable without a ton of investment. Would have zero effect on housing.

You mean like 15 minute cities? We don't need classical infrastructure as we once did when considering the reduction in the costs of solar, wind, and in many places accessible geothermal energy, plus septic tanks, water table access, and satellite based internet, we no longer require massive right of way projects to build these places.

Initial investment in locality based infrastructure creates the market; expansion through time with connected systems, if so desired, would then be an increased capital cost over time, not an upfront requirement. We can generate competition in building whole new cities, like corporations are attempting to do today, which can help stabilize and reduce the growing costs of rent and housing in major metropolitan areas. It absolutely would have an impact - just not when you construct a fallacious form for it to exist in as a failure by design; which is most of commercial and residential real estate given zoning requirements and the massive middle-man industry surrounding it.

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#26
post #5

Current market prices for a lot of commercial real estate seems to be a ponzi scheme especially in the US. It is not in the interest of any of the players to decrease prices only the renters. Local government need higher prices as without the high property prices their property tax receipt will tank making them unable to meet their budgets. Banks need higher prices as they are highly leveraged and will be on the hook…

Ponzi scheme? Yes. Lots of major players who really don't want the Ponzi pyramid to collapse? Yes. But, long-term, no Ponzi pyramid can avoid collapse. Black money is not infinite, and can get skittish when the music starts fading. A central bank printing money can prop the pyramid up...for a while. But that only makes the collapse bigger, and takes more of the central bank's economy down with it when it finally does…

>But, long-term, no Ponzi pyramid can avoid collapse.

Both politicians and industry leaders know it will inevitably pop at some point, but since they have short terms while they're in charge and won't be accountable for long term consequences of their actions, they just want to make sure it doesn't collapse while they're in power, so they keep kicking the can down the road as long as their short tenure last, then it becomes the next guy's problem, rinse and repeat. They're hopeful they can make the problem big enough that the government will have to bail them out when it crashes.

It's a result of chasing maximized short term returns at the expense of long term consequences in a zero accountability system. Basically, it's what our system rewards.

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#27
post #15

crazy idea: us govt scoops up all the office real estate at the crash and converts to low income housing for free. Solve two crisis at once, the obviously coming real estate crisis and the homeless crisis. All for the cost of a handful of F35s If only politicians had an iota of strategy.

Code requirements for housing are far more strict. One of the reasons you don't regularly see office building conversions is because homes require things like windows for each bedroom or at least one bathroom per home. While the bathrooms can be fixed with effort, windows mean a lot of office spaces would have empty cores as only the square footage near the outer edge of the building would be used. (This isn't my are…

Those empty cores could be repurposed as storage areas though. Those don't require windows.

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#28

crazy idea: us govt scoops up all the office real estate at the crash and converts to low income housing for free. Solve two crisis at once, the obviously coming real estate crisis and the homeless crisis. All for the cost of a handful of F35s If only politicians had an iota of strategy.

it is really easy to make boatloads of money as a government if you get off your ass and actually play the game. Step 1 -aquire land and property Step 2 - Build mass transit / metro and invest in the area, proterty price goes up 3x Step 3 - Rent out, or sell If some one refuses to sell land ar step 1, buld transit where you actually do buy land

this reads like a strategy guide for a city sim lol

Re: Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government holds hundreds of millions of acres of land in trust and it needs to be relinquished How would relinquishing that help, is access to land a real issue? You can probably already buy a lot for cheap right now, but it will be far from urban centers and won't be habitable without a ton of investment. Would have zero effect on housing.

Conversion of office property to residential also requires a lot of capital which seems forgotten by a lot of the folks championing this kind of conversion. It's not as simple as building some interior walls and calling it a day

It is not more costly than having Hoovervilles and desperate people living hand to mouth in a world of rapidly advancing technology which was the promise of this whole societal endeavor to begin with. The governments of this world already subsidize the production costs of corporations to the tune of billions of dollars a year so they can continue to "make profit" from their productive efforts they would otherwise be failing at in spectacular fashion.

- Autos - Airlines - Banks - Farming

They all require massive injections of liquidity for the purpose of subsidizing poor stewardship. "Costs" is not a feasible excuse for continued economic oppression.

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