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Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

bostonplans.org

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Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#351

Post by steveBK123 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #349
lovich wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the Boston market this will still help everyone. My household is making north of 300k and was still having trouble bidding on home where there were dead cockroaches visible during the showing. It feels wrong to build luxury housing when regular folk are suffering but if you build luxury housing to the point that the rich stop bidding on regular housing, or even better there’s so much luxury housing that everyon…

>My household is making north of 300k and was still having trouble bidding on home where there were dead cockroaches visible during the showing. What size of place are you looking for? My partner and I bought in Boston in 2019 while making a fraction of that income.

you'd be surprised how much the market has moved my brother & his wife are expecting a kid and were looking at houses within 30min of Boston

the last place they lost a bidding war on was $600K.. for a 3bed/1bath 1000 sq foot.. well outside the city, went for 20% over ask.. crazy stuff

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#352

Post by steveBK123 »

bregma wrote: post #310
RC_ITR wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would be easier to knock the building down and start anew. Idk where this meme started but it’s very far from reality. We as a species have only ever voluntarily demolished like 30 or so building above 35 stories because it’s insanely expensive to do so (most buildings were knocked down to make significantly larger ones in their place). In no world is it ever cheaper to tear down a high rise and start over. http…

> We as a species have only ever voluntarily demolished like 30 or so building above 35 stories because it’s insanely expensive to do so The designed lifetime of yer typical neopostmodernist glass box office tower is about 25 years. Many of them are 50 years old at this point. They get torn down and replaced all the time.

I think you are confusing wood frame homes with concrete, steel and glass.

One is far more durable than the other.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#353

Post by itairall »

aperson_hello wrote: post #191
steveBK123 wrote: post #7

There 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 und…

Undesirable apartments sound like code for low income/affordable housing to me... Add a few light pipes out to the outside walls and you can even get a bit of outside light inside!

[dead]

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#354

Post by RC_ITR »

xg15 wrote: post #279
RC_ITR wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's against narrative, but this is one of the ways SF's downtown is actually extremely well positioned, assuming the trend of office conversions actually takes off. SF floorplates are usually tiny due to historic biases of our Planning Commission (the dog whistle used to be 'we don't want a skyline of cereal boxes'). In fact, looking at the data [0] most of SF's residential tower floorplates are bigger than SF's off…

> (the dog whistle used to be 'we don't want a skyline of cereal boxes') Out of curiosity, what was the actual reason behind the dog whistle? "Segregate black people by... having smaller floorplates"? That doesn't make much sense to me.

Anti-development.

One way SF planners made it hard/less economical to build towers was to force the higher floors to be smaller than lower floors (Transamerica pyramid being the near-satirical example).

That has contributed significantly to SF's inability to build enough housing for the people that live there.

Also a dog-whistle is any statement that sounds palatable to the mainstream, but has an underlying meaning to a politically motivated group. It doesn't only apply to today's American right.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#355

Post by smolder »

spacephysics wrote: post #89
caditinpiscinam wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I lived in Boston I used the subway a lot and though it was ok. What makes you say it's broken? Has it gotten worse recently?

Red line and blue line don’t connect. You need to take a bus to “connect” them

Or the green line, or the orange line...

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#356

Post by steveBK123 »

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #347
steveBK123 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) You can't take national vacancy rates, RE is extremely local, as is homelessness. 2) Is it easier for unhoused to gain housing when vacancy is 1%/5%/10%/20% ? For example, Manhattan has 2% vacancy. Even in peak covid dread it never got much above 4%. And you know what - pricing updated very quickly to get those units filled. Lots of tales of people getting crazy deals, including people I know. Of course when the w…

1) can you explain why I can't take national vacancy rates, as it was a hypothetical in response to an unrealistic hypothetical? Surely national averages are better than looking at Manhattan of all places? I don't know how to have a reasonable conversation about this global problem using Manhattan as the point of interest. 2) at a certain point squatting sets in. I believe the answer to your question depends on how m…

You can't take national vacancy rates because housing is extremely local.

There's areas of the country with out-migration, lack of jobs, but tons of housing. Post industrial cities in the midwest are like this.

There's areas of the country with high paying jobs, but no housing being built. Areas of NY & CA are like this. It is then no surprise that we have 60k homeless in NYC when even people working for banks or tech can barely afford to live there.

There's also areas of the country with decent paying jobs, but lots of housing.. with lots of in-migration. Sunbelt is like this.

All three of these types of areas have vastly different vacancy rates and homeless rates. Taking national averages confuses the matter.

Quick googling points to vacancy rates of: Manhattan 2%, Boston 3%, SF 7%, Detroit (12% owner vacancy / 7% rental vacancy), Miami (3% owner / 7% rental), Austin (1% owner / 6% rental) etc.

FRED has some good charts you can see state by state the levels and even shapes are totally different in terms of trends and averages. Expensive northeast- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NJRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CTRVAC

Midwest https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MIRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MNRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ILRVAC

Sunbelt https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GARVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FLRVAC

Northwest https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ORRVAC https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WARVAC

Basically everywhere thats expensive has vacancies around 4% or less while areas that have been building its closer to 8%..

> why do you assume a wealthy family will only buy one house, or could be outbid by a poor family? I was responding to this post that seemed to assume all new housing will be bought by the rich as like extra homes..

People underestimate how much "trickle down" kind of is real in RE. In the absence of nice new construction (which seemingly always gets called "luxury"), people with money will move further and further down the market, to buy & renovate. So the option is build more homes to increase supply, or see the dollars chase existing supply & raise its value (and cost).

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#357

Post by soupfordummies »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #210
hedora wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main advantage of living in a converted factory (there are a lot of these in the rust belt) is that you end up with an absolutely enormous space made out of cool materials. I was finding it hard to imagine that there are inner-city office buildings (high rises) that have floors so large that they couldn't be cut into, say 1/4'ths, with four residences on each floor, and each unit having 50% windows along its peri…

Due to fire code, to divide a high-rise into 4 corner units, you need to take up almost ~50% of the space for elevators, stairs and hallways. So you'd probably end up with close to 5k square foot condos - which isn't too ridiculous. You'd probably do 4 corner units and 4 non-corner units for a total of eight, and end up with each being between 2000 and 2500. The problem is, they'd be ridiculously expensive for a numb…

As for expensive-ness, IDK. You’d THINK “the longer it sits, the cheaper it gets.”

I know of several big, high-rise office buildings that are 75% empty since the pandemic. We’re talking a few years now!

But then again, greed is real. My current office building is getting more and more empty by the day. And they refused to budge on the rent for my company even so.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#358

Post by ghaff »

xyzelement wrote: post #317

I don't totally understand what drives people to project demand for urban residential when urban office is in decline and is being removed. Historically people moved to the cities because that's where the work was. What will drive people to cities when that's no longer true? Granted some people really enjoy "density" but I suspect most people prefer more space / a yard / etc if the lack of commute enables then to spr…

A lot of (especially younger) people project their own urban living preferences--even if the absence of a need to go into an urban office--onto the population as a whole. But a net migration to cities isn't a law of nature. To the current example, there was a net outflow of population from Boston until the late nineties and most of the large computer industry companies were out in the suburbs/exurbs.

Of course, these things are also self-reinforcing cycles. If people move out, housing prices come down but a lot of the amenities that lead many people to live in the city in the first plce may go away as well.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#359

Post by Nasrudith »

spjwebster wrote: post #298
rexf wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT article does a really good job explaining the difference between converting a prewar and a modern building. Also, TIL about loss factor: > As offices, these buildings can also rent 100 percent (or even more) of their total square footage, according to the quirky math of commercial real estate. https://therealdeal.com/magazine/new-york-february-2014/lies...

A well-known UK startup, renting an old building just outside of London, is (or was, as of a few years ago) paying square footage cost for an entire floor that doesn't exist. The previous occupants - a government department - had the floor removed to make for higher, grander internal ceiling heights.

Sounds a bit quirky but makes some sense as a reckoning if 'footage' assumes a standard height.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#360

Post by Projectiboga »

hedora wrote: post #183
steveBK123 wrote: post #7

There 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 und…

The main advantage of living in a converted factory (there are a lot of these in the rust belt) is that you end up with an absolutely enormous space made out of cool materials. I was finding it hard to imagine that there are inner-city office buildings (high rises) that have floors so large that they couldn't be cut into, say 1/4'ths, with four residences on each floor, and each unit having 50% windows along its peri…

Very few whole block buildings in NYC. The street block length is ~250', with about 50' cross street & sidewalk. Avenue to avenue is closer to 1,000. A big building is usually 100×125. Even the Empire State Building isn't a full block.

Area of Site: 79,288 square feet (7,240m) or about two acres. East to west, 424 feet (129m), north to south, 187 feet (56.9m). Height: The base of building rises five floors above the street. The entrance is four floors high.

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