Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings • Hacker News Board

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#361

Post by ghaff » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

doctoboggan wrote: post #91

bee_rider wrote: post #78

How is Boston doing nowadays, overall? As an Masshole, but not a city one, I’ve always kinda admired the job they do in Boston. At least, you don’t get the big dramatic narratives about it crumbling, like California cities, and NYC seems to be a bit boom-bust. Boston seems to always be doing fine. The Big Dig was a ripoff but that was ages ago, and the T smells like piss but that’s par for the course, right?

I lived in Cambridge/Somerville from 2013 - 2019 and always had the feeling that downtown was only for office workers during business hours. There never seemed to be anything to do after hours as all the workers left downtown at 5pm. If this proposal takes off it would be really nice to see a lively downtown on the evenings and weekends.

Personally I'd live in Cambridge over Boston but, outside of the Financial District (which is pretty dead at night like it is in many cities), there's plenty of activity in the evenings. As another commenter said, it's not Manhattan but I worked downtown for about a year and lots to do.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#362

Post by eliasmacpherson » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:37 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #356

eliasmacpherson wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tec…

You were content to talk about a hypothetical where there were 10 houses and 12 families. Now you are discontent unless I discuss luxury accommodation in specific property markets within the US. It's worth noting how close each of the metro averages you give is to 5.8%.

All newly build luxury housing will by definition be bought be the rich. There is no assumption about that. The discussion was whether they decide to hoard, rent out or sell their old residence. The trend (global) is clear, e.g. NY, CA, SF and further beyond. https://old.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/14zdsia/housing_pr...

The decider onto luxury housing being a benefit is whether the poor can in aggregate afford what the rich want for their old accommodation, increasingly, they cannot.

It's not some sort of conspiracy that nice new construction is called 'luxury', whereas less nice new construction is called 'affordable'.

I don't feel I have anything more to contribute.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#363

Post by brewdad » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC

TheBigSalad wrote: post #216

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…

At 10k square feet you can safely drop the Mc.

Picturing an old Bed Bath and Beyond with faux Greek columns.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#364

Post by skyyler » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

TheBigSalad wrote: post #216

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…

At 10k square feet you can safely drop the Mc.

McMansion is about taste, not size.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#365

Post by acchow » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

aperson_hello wrote: post #321

acchow wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there are two different requirements for residential: 1 is egress (fire regulations), and the other is natural light requirements for each room.

You're not going to egress out of a 60th floor window...

No, the natural light requirement is not a fire regulation. It's not about egress.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#366

Post by xyzelement » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #340

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…

People aren't "projecting" demand, the demand is being driven by the market. Downtown apartments (in good condition) are expensive because they are in high demand while office space is getting harder and harder to fill. If you own a bunch of downtown commercial real estate, you don't need to be a business guru to see that you could be making a lot more money if you could rent that space out as apartments.

// Downtown apartments (in good condition) are expensive because they are in high demand

Yup, my question is - do we expect this to hold when downtown is no longer the place to be for work.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#367

Post by danans » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #178

kibwen wrote: post #26

There's a very good NYT article with great visualizations on the process of and obstacles to converting office buildings to residential: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office...

I find it interesting people converted factories and workshops and such into housing (lofts etc) but developing places built for humans is somehow harder. I feel like most of this is FUD for redevelopment subsidies by developers. A good friend is a Gehry apprenticed professor of architecture that specialized in sky scrapers, residential and commercial, and he thinks it’s technically not a challenge. They are built wi…

> A good friend is a Gehry apprenticed professor of architecture that specialized in sky scrapers, residential and commercial, and he thinks it’s technically not a challenge.

It's not a technical challenge, it's an economic challenge. For the large floorplate postwar buildings, the cost of the conversion usually doesn't make sense unless the rents or prices the units can fetch is very high, often higher than local wages can support.

> Most offer floor to ceiling windows around a core of elevator banks so the “no windows” thing is on the surface absurd.

A floor to ceiling window isn't operable. Many of those would have to be replaced with Windows that are operable.

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#368

Post by loco5niner » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

SantalBlush wrote: post #219

loco5niner wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not exactly a thoughtful and interesting commentary, regardless of correctness.

I'll take correctness over thoughtful or interesting. Maybe I don't fit in here.

Oh, I like correctness too. Are you correct? I don't know; you just said something rude and didn't back up your assertion.

As far as fitting in here, have you read the guidelines? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>In Comments

>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

>When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#369

Post by lovich » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

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.

Somerville around Sullivan square. Was paying 3200 a month all in on a 1200 sq ft townhouse. Looked at a few of the homes around our street and they were selling for 700k-1million and off market in a few days after posting. This was all a few months before covid.

We found some places we could afford but they either made our commute fairly long(>1 hour each way), would stretch our budget to have zero tolerance for emergencies, or both

Re: Boston mayor announces residential conversion program for office buildings

#370

Post by steveBK123 » Fri, Jul 14, 2023, 6:15 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #369

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Somerville around Sullivan square. Was paying 3200 a month all in on a 1200 sq ft townhouse. Looked at a few of the homes around our street and they were selling for 700k-1million and off market in a few days after posting. This was all a few months before covid. We found some places we could afford but they either made our commute fairly long(>1 hour each way), would stretch our budget to have zero tolerance for eme…

This describes my brothers situation pretty much.

People also have a lot of received wisdom of how they were brought up in the burbs and just assume you HAVE TO buy.

There's plenty of markets where prices/rent are upside down and you might as well rent indefinitely.

People forget you are either renting housing or renting money to "own" housing. If you are disciplined enough to save the difference, renting can be better in some markets. Mostly its HCOL coastal cities where people are accepting ridiculously low rental yield because they are banking on price appreciation.

If you don't know if you want to be in X location for the next 5.. probably more like 10 years, there's not always a solid reason to buy.