Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
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Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#2I think this policy is incomplete without ensuring there is enough competition to ensure that rents stay relatively affordable.
Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#3I think this policy is incomplete without ensuring there is enough competition to ensure that rents stay relatively affordable.
more supply = more competition, no?
Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#4> a rate reduction by up to 75% of the standard tax rate for residential for up to 29 years could provide a strong incentive to encourage conversion. This would be implemented through a public-private partnership that will enable the BPDA, the City, and the proponent to enter into a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreement
This is actually a pretty nice rebate (similar to the one Ed Lee and Willie Brown proposed for Mid-Market redevelopment and Mission Bay's development respectively). I'd love for SF to use similar terms, but I doubt it's politically feasible anymore.
Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#5I think this is fantastic. Boston desperately needs more housing. Let's get some increased funding for the T as well while we are at it.
Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#6Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#7There was a cool OddLots episode recently where they talked to a guy who does Office to Residential work and some of the complexity.
One thing he talked about, which I didn't know anyone did, was to actually cut through the ceiling/floorplate of buildings to basically "donut" them.
This is necessary because many office floorplans are huge with modern HVAC and when converted into residential you end up with either undesirable or illegal apartments due to lack of windows/egress/etc.
Apparently they've done it a few times. Of course only some buildings can support this, given the layout of the supports, mechanicals, etc.
Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#8Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
more supply = more competition, no?
It depends. If everything is owned by the same management or equity firm, then no.
Sure less owners is bad for competition, but more supply itself creates competition in a sense.
Let's say theres 100 apartments in the entire town, and they are all owned by the same company. Next let's say they build 50 more apartments and theres now 1000 apartments still all owned by the same company. Given the number of apartments has increased, renters now have more power to negotiate as the owners have more units they need to fill.
This is why Tesla for example is dropping prices as they produce more cars and they have inventory vs when they had 6-12 month backlog & scalpers were flipping used vehicles for more than new in 2021-2022.
When supply is severely constrained, you end up with bidding wars for the finite goods.
Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings
#10We need more creative thinking like this, not just in Boston, but in any city where there's a glut of office space. (In North America, that includes NYC, San Francisco, Toronto, Winnipeg ...)
The devil, of course, will be in the details. But incentives like this can really help get things moving in the right direction.