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Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

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Re: Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

#61

Post by xsmasher »

jltsiren wrote: post #58
thechao wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to imagine how you refit plumbing and elevators on a commercial building. The office building we have at work has 6 toilets per floor , and each floor is probably 50,000 sqft. If you replaced that with residential, you'd end up with, like, 70 toilets per floor, plus 50 showers, 70+ sinks, ... I mean holy crap. There's only three elevators. That'd probably work? Maybe? Plenty of parking, though.

My impression is that modern office buildings are basically stacks of exhibition halls. You can repurpose them easily and build the infrastructure you need. The biggest obstacle to converting them to residential is not plumbing or elevators but the lack of windows near the core. Of course, it's not the modern centrally located office buildings that are vacant but the older ones at more remote locations. Converting th…

A guest on a KQED mentioned this a month or two ago; SF building code requires a certain amount of natural light for bedrooms and other rooms (Kitchen, home office, media rooms excepted.)

Many of the older office spaces in SF might be impossible to convert under current standards; the city may have to exempt conversions from those rules or something. They might do if if the moneyed interests lobby for it.

Re: Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

#62

Post by jonathankoren »

zeusk wrote: post #53
jonathankoren wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that own their empty offices (e.g. the FAANGs) are definitely going want them full because of sunk costs, and then hope all the other smaller companies cargo cult them. It probably will work. A better world is possible, and it's actively sabotaged by entrenched interests.

FAANG is actually changing faster than you'd believe. I've been at Microsoft and now Amazon; they're both extremely remote friendly. Offices have been largely empty so they've not renewed most of the expiring leases. Some functions still need to be performed in-person so they'll have some space but no longer the everyone comes to office to put on noise cancelling headphones to work individually mostly. And even that…

Google, Apple, and Facebook have spent literally billions on now empty office space.

Re: Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

#64

Post by vinyl7 »

zeusk wrote: post #30
vinyl7 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe WFH will last as long as people think it will

I don't believe assigned, mandatory offices and commute will last as long as people think it will

Requiring back to office will be a popular method of cutting labor once this recession goes full tilt

Re: Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

#65

Post by zeusk »

vinyl7 wrote: post #64
zeusk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe assigned, mandatory offices and commute will last as long as people think it will

Requiring back to office will be a popular method of cutting labor once this recession goes full tilt

And also, a popular method of losing your top talent.

Re: Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

#66

Post by b112 »

ghaff wrote: post #56
b112 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real point of opportunity. Is it though? If you take away the offices, and offices close, why do people need to live there? Where will they work? And if it is 100% remote, why not live where the cost of living, and housing, is 1/2 the cost already?

Some people do choose to live in cities even though there's no work-related reason to do so--and even put up with incremental inconvenience to commute out to a suburban office park. But, still, when tallying up the pros and cons, taking easier commute off the plate certainly doesn't help the urban apartment side of the ledger.

I wonder for a place like SanFran.

There are many smaller cities, and cities without as many issues as SanFran too. So with remote, there is also the choice of "better managed city".

I wonder if it will empty, or become some apocalyptic landscape, with endless abandoned empty office buildings, and the homeless living in them, and everyone else just gone.

It seems, from the comments here, that SanFran is very poorly run. The robberies, the homeless, the filth on the street, and now, emptiness and presumably maybe budget problems soon.

For example, what if some of the older office buildings are just cut+run? Property management corp X goes bankrupt, or, just decides that it's not worth paying property tax any more.

Sure, the city can seize and sell off property for back tax reclamation, but what if no one even wants to buy? What if eventually 1/2 the office space is just owned by the city, decaying, no property tax, unmaintained?

It could become Detroit, but worse.

Re: Office Vacancy Rate in San Francisco Just Hit a New High

#67

Post by glomgril »

mortenjorck wrote: post #27

Much as I would like the opposite to be true, it's good to see the reality check at the bottom: > And once again, while tempting to see or promote an opportunity to convert all the vacant office space into housing in a response to San Francisco’s housing woes, the conversion of existing office space to residential use currently makes no economic sense for the vast majority of downtown San Francisco buildings, due to…

What about instead of turning a floor of an office building into a handful of luxury apartments, turn it into several dozen SROs? (genuine question -- I am curious if the same economic unfeasibility concern would apply equally for very small SRO-style units)
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