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

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

#51

Post by joquarky »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #32
gopher_space wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing. You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own. And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a lar…

> the increased amount of sewage

How is there more than an office full of people?

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

#52

Post by bombcar »

jerlam wrote: post #46
blitzar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried going out to shops again to buy things recently - its so much harder, more expensive and time consuming than having it arrive through my letterbox the next day.

I've shifted in the opposite direction. It's hard to judge the quality or fit of items online, especially when major platforms have been easily gamed. "Anything goes" marketplaces shift the burden of choosing good products to the buyer, while showing duplicates of indistinguishable products at seemingly random price points. Shippers have become unreliable and returning things comes with a time cost.

What, you don’t like buying product from md5(u_int64(rand))?

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

#53

Post by _DeadFred_ »

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.

Weren't the feds buying these to convert into very dense ICE detention housing?

So they can support high density human habitation according to the Feds, but not normal housing according to who?

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

#54

Post by quickthrowman »

LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #32
gopher_space wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing. You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own. And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a lar…

> You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own.

Compared to installing a new domestic water pipe riser and drains in an office tower (plus pumps, pressure tanks, etc), installing a shower in each unit is essentially free.

Connect the in-unit supply lines to the tap, core drill a hole in the floor to get to the floor below and connect to the drain piping, done.

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

#55

Post by quickthrowman »

joquarky wrote: post #51
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much the owner's financial situation, but rather that it'd be cheaper to build new homes than to retrofit a ten floor+ building's plumbing. You'd also have to install a bunch of showers, which could be a significant problem on its own. And then there's the increased amount of sewage, which the building might not be able to handle - even the local sewers might not be equipped to handle the uh... Load a lar…

> the increased amount of sewage How is there more than an office full of people?

More toilets, more sinks, plus laundry. A floor of apartments will use far more water than a floor used by an office tenant. A 20k sqft office tower floor might have 6-8 toilets and 6-8 sinks that see light usage for 40 hours a week.

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

#56

Post by cucumber3732842 »

milkytron wrote: post #15
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.

For a long time, the US had the money to build things, use them, let them slowly deteriorate, and then abandon them. It was cheaper to simply let things fall into disrepair, and build shiny new buildings and developments further away from the city center. Rinse and repeat. This is why a lot of inner ring suburbs are filled with strip malls that can't maintain their parking lots, don't have the residential density to…

It wasn't cheaper for any physical reason. It was cheaper because we regulated it that way on purpose.

We've intentionally made it unconscionably expensive to bring anything not built to current standard back into service even in a limited capacity (e.g. sublet a factory into smaller space) because we have because this stuff is mostly the purview of local governments who seem to optimize for some middle-ish ground path of "what makes Karen screech least" and "what makes the professional developers who know everyone in government happiest". There's various exemptions for small residential stuff, but at scale it's all just crap that tends toward "don't allow anything that isn't a new build or a high dollar revitalization project"

Seriously, go to your local zoning board, planning board, etc public facing meetings sometime. The shit they put people who just want to spend huge sums of money to develop stuff, run businesses etc, in your city/town through is beyond the pale. And then some "professional" shows up with a BigCo packet about "here's why our toxic waste dump on the ground floor with a strip club on the top floor can go beside the school" and they can't approve it fast enough. You'll be looking for bulldozers on facebook marketplace before the meeting is half over.

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

#57

Post by cucumber3732842 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #44
milkytron wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a long time, the US had the money to build things, use them, let them slowly deteriorate, and then abandon them. It was cheaper to simply let things fall into disrepair, and build shiny new buildings and developments further away from the city center. Rinse and repeat. This is why a lot of inner ring suburbs are filled with strip malls that can't maintain their parking lots, don't have the residential density to…

Debt funded sprawl. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-pon... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt... https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2025/4/14/cities-are...

Why did it fund sprawl? Why didn't anyone choose to develop density on existing sites? We built that stuff just fine from 1870 through the 1940s. What changed? Surely it wasn't the proliferation of government regulation of the development process (and the financials thereof) that caused developers to optimize for greenfield sprawl crap that could most cheaply check the boxes, get the cheap money, get the approvals, be compliant, etc, etc.

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

#58

Post by toomuchtodo »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #57
toomuchtodo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debt funded sprawl. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-8-28-the-growth-pon... https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020-5-14-americas-growt... https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2025/4/14/cities-are...

Why did it fund sprawl? Why didn't anyone choose to develop density on existing sites? We built that stuff just fine from 1870 through the 1940s. What changed? Surely it wasn't the proliferation of government regulation of the development process (and the financials thereof) that caused developers to optimize for greenfield sprawl crap that could most cheaply check the boxes, get the cheap money, get the approvals, b…

> Surely it wasn't the proliferation of government regulation of the development process (and the financials thereof) that caused developers to optimize for greenfield sprawl crap that could most cheaply check the boxes, get the cheap money, get the approvals, be compliant, etc, etc.

I'm sure white flight was a component, as well as subsidizing the auto manufacturing industry and a car centric planning model with federally funded highways.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

https://nlihc.org/resource/myth-white-suburb-and-suburban-in...

https://www.governance.fyi/i/191825260/the-money-problem-is-...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-end-of-suburban-white...

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

#59

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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 - notably, plumbing is not designed for smaller units and can't be retrofitted

I still haven't seen numbers that show this is a physics problem versus zoning problem. Worst case, make some things (e.g. washers and dryers, maybe even showers) communal.

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

#60

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nitwit005 wrote: post #29
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.

> Look into US retail space per capita

Recommend a source?

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