Remote work is gutting downtowns • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#251

Post by TimPC » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

kodyo wrote: post #83

TimPC wrote: post #73

It’s annoying that articles repeatedly wrongly claim that reduced real estate prices lead to reduced real estate taxes. The method of computation of real estate taxes generates a mil rate which is the percentage rate that needs to be charged to generate the current budget’s revenue. This rate is computed each assessment after the property values are adjusted. The government gets the same total amount of money if prop…

That's not true, at least not everywhere. My property taxes always go up when my property values are adjusted upwards.

Usually this means your property grew in value faster than the rest of the city so you now pay for a higher total percentage of the cities budget. This has happened to me too.

Roughly speaking if the mill rate falls from 1.0% to 0.9% but your property went from $1 million to $1.2 million you now pay $10,800 instead of $10,000. But the rise in property prices still caused the mill rate to go down.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#252

Post by dickersnoodle » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

mikeryan wrote: post #84

timinou wrote: post #5

Title slightly misleading... The article makes the point that downtowns are turning from office to social centres and the $453B figure is more of an investment in repurposing offices and rethinking urban spaces for that purpose. I welcome these changes... Yes we'll need to rethink our urbanism, but if anything this switch feels like a coming back of what our urban centers are supposed to provide us. Imagine parking s…

Not sure what you read there but the roughly $500B figure is a real loss in the commercial real-estate sector as leases some off the books. It’s a slow burn. There’s an additional expense to try to repurpose these building as residential but it’s a massive one that won’t come easily. You can’t just turn modern office buildings into residential building by reworking the interior. Most wouldn’t meet residential codes (…

"Commercial real estate is going to take a massive hit the next 3-4 years and that $435B number is a real estimate in the decline in commercial real-estate value."

That doesn't really hurt my feelings that much, outside of the 401(k) and IRA holders who will lose a lot of retirement money. Hopefully the plan admins and financial people involved in those plans will start dumping commercial real estate in favor of something with more legs before that 3-4 years is up.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#253

Post by diordiderot » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:31 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #36

tootie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convert offices to apartments to alleviate the housing supply shortage.

That turns out to be surprisingly hard. Offices and housing look similar from the outside, but are quite different on the inside, and both practical and regulatory problems are quite large.

I guess it's all up to the next best alternative.

If you've got offices that can't lease, the only thing left to do is sell it at a price a developer thinks they can turn a profit

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#254

Post by muttled » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

dave78 wrote: post #108

Certified wrote: post #52

I had a long talk with a Chicago born cab driver when visiting a few years back. He explained to me that Chicago used to be a conventional city where the businesses were downtown and residential was a donut around that. Traffic was congested into downtown in the mornings and out of downtown in the evenings. As the city grew and commutes into downtown from the suburbs worsened, the businesses started moving out of dow…

I live in the Chicago area and this is just not true on a large scale at all. The commute into downtown Chicago on a weekday morning is extremely busy (especially pre-COVID), whether by car or rail. The reverse direction is nearly empty. Even as I write this at 9:15am (with rush hour ebbing), you can see this for yourself on Google Maps - the inbound lanes on all the highway arteries are all orange/red, the outbound…

I wonder what the transit modes look like on a macro scale for those who move downtown. Anecdotally, it seems common for those who move to downtown Chicago to get rid of their car as a spot in a safe area can easily run $300 a month, and with a payment, maintenance, and insurance it really adds up. Being so close to all the major train lines, I myself have switched entirely to public/shared transit.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#255

Post by muttled » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #59

robertlagrant wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what?

Someplace people want to live, work, and play. Some of the existing high-rise offices should be repurposed into housing, retail, etc.

Mixed-use high-rises are really cool. You can go to the mall, the gym, the pool, see a movie, go to the dentist, or go grocery shopping just by taking the elevator. They almost feel like resorts you can live in.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#256

Post by cudgy » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

brookst wrote: post #74

ethagknight wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large office towers just do not convert to residential very well. It can be done, it can be tolerated, it's just not a very good or competitive product, while also being very expensive to implement. One example, People walk a few blocks from the parking garage to their place of employment, but in most cities, people will not walk a few blocks from the parking garage to their home. Adding insult to injury, office towe…

> It can be done, it can be tolerated, it's just not a very good or competitive product I agree with everything you said, just want to highlight that this quote is the classic statement of a business opportunity. There is a VC pitch here: a company that acquired distressed office space at scale, from panicked sellers, and with the expertise to do these conversions in a systematic, cost-optimized way. Banks are going…

Not everything is a tech problem requiring a VC. This just seems like old fashioned real estate investing.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#257

Post by halfnormalform » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #194

brookst wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super interested in your industry! What makes conversion of office towers to housing not viable? It's easy for me to imagine a lot of objections to converting one building, but hard to imagine insurmountable difficulties in converting 1000, where you can amortize R&D and specialized equipment across a huge number of properties. So, if you don't mind humoring me, can you sketch the worst / most expensive / most techni…

If you search for it you will find a fairly recent episode of KQED "forum" that discussed this topic for a full hour.

Thank you! FYI it’s from October 6th.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#258

Post by tootie » Wed, Dec 07, 2022, 11:32 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #36

tootie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convert offices to apartments to alleviate the housing supply shortage.

That turns out to be surprisingly hard. Offices and housing look similar from the outside, but are quite different on the inside, and both practical and regulatory problems are quite large.

I'm sure it's not simple. It would have to be backed by some public policy.

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#259

Post by snapplebobapple » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

smileysteve wrote: post #235

snapplebobapple wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old were the planes that this happened on? There has definitely been a dramatic improvement over the years. I remember flying in the 90's and pretty uniformly feeling like I needed at least a good face wash, if not a shower after any flight longer than a half hour. Now this only happens when I am unlucky enough to get stuck on an old aircraft (i.e. the original westjet 737's still get me with this). I swear I saw…

These flights were in the last 2 years on a top tier (US though) carrier on domestic flights; 1 was a very regional flight, where , as you post, an older plane might expect it -- but if anything, that any planes in a top tier carrier that markets itself as Covid ready are expected to be bad is typical of how much bs this is.

https://www.iata.org/en/youandiata/travelers/health/low-risk...

Re: Remote work is gutting downtowns

#260

Post by phil21 » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

Certified wrote: post #240

phil21 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fast forward to today and the traffic patterns have reversed, with congestion out of downtown in the morning as people commute out towards the ring of businesses and into downtown in the evening where people now live. Not really true in my experience, having been around here for going on 20 years. If anything, businesses had been (pre-covid) moving suburban campuses to downtown locations over that time. The commute…

I’m really pleased to get a local rebuttal. The conversation I spoke of happened a little over a decade ago and I’ve been curious ever since if it was a momentary perspective or a longer term trend. Did you see anything around 10 years ago that would agree with my cab driver’s thesis or was he off base then as well?

Sorry I missed this. I think perhaps 30-40 years ago the cabbie would have had a point, but a weak one. If he was around back then he probably watched people and companies leaving the city.

The past 20 years have been the opposite though - suburban campuses relocating downtown, and at least on the North side of the city you saw a ton of urban renewal during that time. While Chicago saw net population loss, it saw a lot of growth elsewhere in the city.

You came across one of the more common "wives tale" tropes cabbies will tell you though. I've probably heard similar a dozen times over the years. You just nod and smile :)