A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off • Hacker News Board

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#21

Post by mothballed » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #19

mono442 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it also the fact the almost no one wants to live like that? The expectations has changed and there's probably little demand for such type of housing.

People rent bedrooms in single-family homes all the time. The only difference between that and dorm-style housing is the size of the building.

Yes and there is fierce competition for that in many larger cities, with sky-high prices to rent out a room. But they can't be offered at scale commercially because you'll never get the permits, and the only reason why you can rent these is usually because they're either operating completely under the table or via some carveouts that let property owner rent to 1 or 2 persons.

The pent up demand for this is obvious to anyone who's tried to secure a room only to have a gazillion people competing with them to pay $1000+ to rent an oversized closet to sleep in.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#22

Post by postalrat » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #20

postalrat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Widespread affordable housing shortage. There is an abundance of unaffordable housing. he proposed solution, brand new housing, will never solve this.

I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania. Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivio…

I'd like to see what kind of house you built for 60k. My assumption is its some small maybe 300 sqft box with no sewer you spent many hours yourself building. Not something something most people would do and while cheap in dollars certainly isn't affordable if you are putting a lot of work into it.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#23

Post by mothballed » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

postalrat wrote: post #22

mothballed wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania. Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivio…

I'd like to see what kind of house you built for 60k. My assumption is its some small maybe 300 sqft box with no sewer you spent many hours yourself building. Not something something most people would do and while cheap in dollars certainly isn't affordable if you are putting a lot of work into it.

It's basically looks like a glorified rectangular shed but it does have sewage, electric, water, and hvac. Not very impressive but every single person I've had over who's lived in an apartment has expressed interest in learning how to do the same over paying rent out the ass for a similarly sized uninspiring shit-box and ending up with no equity.

The only people that have been over that have been unimpressed are people already living in an actual house, but that's not really the target audience for this kind of thing.

---- re: below [my account is throttled] ------

I speculated on an old well share that turned out to be good, so got a well for basically nothing. If you don't have such luck you can haul water.

I use septic, which in some counties (mine) no requirement you be licensed to build. It can be built with only a shovel and some pipes and concrete if you are on an extreme budget, although helps a lot more if you can get ahold of an excavator.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#24

Post by mono442 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #19

mono442 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it also the fact the almost no one wants to live like that? The expectations has changed and there's probably little demand for such type of housing.

People rent bedrooms in single-family homes all the time. The only difference between that and dorm-style housing is the size of the building.

Studio apartments seem like a better option. Also, from a property manager’s perspective, you generally want to minimize shared spaces because they’re a pain and annoying to deal with.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#25

Post by gopher_space » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #5

hedora wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet there is still a widespread housing shortage.

Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing - notably, plumbing is not designed for smaller units and can't be retrofitted.

Commercial buildings can't be easily converted into housing that provides the same return. Once the current owners have gone out of business it'll be profitable to turn them into flats.

The arguments against conversion assume you care about the current owner's financial situation.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#26

Post by nitwit005 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

mono442 wrote: post #8

The AI is going to replace most of the office workers in the next few years, the office buildings are going to be worth as much as the land they are built on is minus the cost of demolition.

AI was already supposed to have replaced all of us.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#27

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #20

postalrat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Widespread affordable housing shortage. There is an abundance of unaffordable housing. he proposed solution, brand new housing, will never solve this.

I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania. Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivio…

If I understood you correctly, land that has no building on it is not eligible for a mortgage, and is therefore cheaper to buy? With the downside that you have to pay cash, because you can't get a mortgage either?

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#28

Post by evklein » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #13

evklein wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this goes against American individualism on every front. Americans really only fit one sort of mold in terms of what they want: single family home, owned outright (usually mortgaged though). You can extrapolate that out to cities as well: young urban professionals pine for polished condos or lofts with nice views and located in trendy neighborhoods, but their "unit" is still theirs totally, with no shared prim…

This is historically incomplete. American cities were replete with dorm room style housing. These were especially popular with new migrants to the city. An incredibly large percentage of apartments in cities like NYC are used as multi family housing with several housemates sharing them to save on rent. The reality is that the reason such housing doesn’t exist/isn’t more widespread is because cities have passed laws e…

It's easy to live in shareable spaces when you're young and unattached - it becomes a lot more difficult as you age and want to grow a family. I'm not sure I want the kind of life where I have to share a kitchen or a bathroom, spaces I consider very private, with people I'm not related to. Maybe this is a uniquely midwestern/American sentiment, I'm not sure. But I am confident that there are more people like me than there aren't. The picture of the American dream is familiar, it's a house with a car in the driveway. I feel that may just be who we are now, regardless of any way we used to be.

Edit cause I had more thoughts: Honestly, probably one of the biggest mistakes we've made as a country have been not putting up enough resistance to RTO. The single family home is, I believe, probably one of the nicest standards of living in the world. Plenty of space for hobbies and activities, privacy, usually some community among neighbors. The only problem is that it's hard to square the circle when it comes to single family living and living close to an economic hub. To afford this standard you have to live close enough to a hub that you can afford one of the well-paying jobs that exist there, but not so far that your commute significantly eats into your life. With RTO, I think we lost a pretty good opportunity to weaken our dependency on the geographic economic hub. We could have had a diaspora of knowledge workers which gave people the opportunity to pursue a better life at a lower cost, and we sorta just threw all of that away.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#29

Post by nitwit005 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

When I travel around the US, vacant storefronts and empty commercial buildings are a constant, not just office buildings, and not just in certain places.

Look into US retail space per capita. It has far exceeded other nations for some time. Some retail store CEOs have directly discussed too much supply.

Re: A fire sale has U.S. office buildings going for 90% off

#30

Post by mothballed » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27

mothballed wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally just built a house for ~$60k a couple years ago. A burned out trailer even in a rural shithole with no jobs in my state is about $100k+. An actual functional house, $250k+. This is counter-intuitive but it makes sense in context of the recent COVID 0 real interest mania. Meanwhile all the shithole land with no "dwelling" on it was never eligible for mortgages so people weren't able to bid it up to oblivio…

If I understood you correctly, land that has no building on it is not eligible for a mortgage, and is therefore cheaper to buy? With the downside that you have to pay cash, because you can't get a mortgage either?

Yes the land value is so insanely cheaper on un-mortgagable properties in my state, it's off the charts.

I have developed land in my county so I'm familiar with the costs to develop, buy land, place utilities etc. (I did not become a land developer on purpose, only because I realized this absolutely crazy arbitrage)

It would cost you about $200-$250k to buy a rural small acreage land with a manufactured home on it. If you pay cash for the land and drop the exact same manufactured home on it, it would only cost you about $150k, and you would get a brand new house instead of a "used" one.

There is huge pent up demand for someone to just buy a huge swath of small acreage properties and just drop the cheapest manufactured home you could on it as the non-luxury starter home market is currently not being met. You could pretty much double your money. I'm not sure why this isn't being done en masse although a few private actors seem to be doing it and making a killing.