How to Convert Empty Offices Into Luxury Apartments | WSJ 

''we don't want a residential building, this is an office district, we want to preserve jobs...'' What jobs are you preserving in an empty building?

The lack of light and air in "modern" offices is also part of why a lot of people don't enjoy working inside them.

Local governments should also be realistic and be open to change zoning codes in their cities. Cities need a mix use area wherein people can live, work and have quality life within 20 mins of walking. Wouldn't it be nicer if workers can just walk or have shorter commute to and from work?

600 units that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. That’s great, hopefully we do more conversions in the future and decrease their cost. An empty office building helps no one. And housing can revitalize an area.

Man I worked on this deal quite a bit. The boys at vanbarton know what they are doing. But the real reason this works is because they are working with Nathan Berman who happens to own the sister mirror building, 180 water st so it’s a much easier “copy paste” conversation than it would be otherwise. (Easier not easy)

Glad to see lots of innovation in this area! I remember seeing a lot of naysayers insist that office-to-residential conversions were impossible/prohibitively expensive, but I think building light shafts/wells is an interesting solution.

Appreciated the explanation of converting older vs newer buildings. Going forward all office buildings should be designed with conversion in mind because housing is going to remain a big issue. We have the design software so let's use it properly.

Remote workers finally got a break from outrageous cost of housing plus exhausting commutes.

business is wild they're like: there's not enough air and light to live here but please still come into the office and spend 40+ hours a week in the space anyways.

The opening lines of this piece highlight the problem with housing in this country. We are short on housing, yet developers only want to build luxury housing. We don't need anymorw luxury housing! Hardly anyone can afford it!

There's actually a fairly simple solution to areas in the middle of the building that don't receive light and air: turn them into public storage space. In most cases, you DON'T want light and air in those places. You also kill two birds with one stone wrt access control, and dealing with running plumbing. And because of the way that people tend to use storage units, you won't have heavy foot traffic from non-tenants. This might not apply much to NYC, which lives in its own reality distortion field, but in other places, it would solve a lot of the problems associated with trying to make every single square foot liveable.

Wow. The buildings are actually being coverted after 20 years of talk. Impressive.

All Americans have it wrong. We don’t need “affordable housing”. We just need more housing. Doesn’t matter if it’s luxury. The key is more supply. This will reduce costs long term.

I hope they do this to more places, but make the apartments regular and not "luxury" (which really means nothing nowadays).

sounds like since pre-war buildings are better for conversions nyc is more primed than most of the west coast (like SF)

It’s funny how removing square footage actually helps some of these conversions.

Great news. There are so many people needing luxury appartements nowadays.

I live in an apartment that faces only an interior courtyard. I get minimal sunlight. Bad for mental health. ESP. In nyc.

HEY NEW YORK THIS IS A MSG FROM THE SECOND MOST EXPENSIVE CITY IN THE WORLD VANCOUVER CANADA. Surprisingly enough our housing crisis are quite similar as it seems like multi million rental corporations and slumlords are now controlling most to all rental housing stock. New apartments are labelled “LUXURY RENTALS” or “STARTING FROM LOW 700,000 CONDOS”. What’s funny is both our cities government are quite Democratic for you folks or Liberal in Canadian terminology. The developers get incentives in Vancouver to build affordable homes but they come with so many segregated systems built in place. Separate doors or as Vancouver calls it “Poor Doors” for the regular folk renting and Luxury entrances for the rich and elitists. Condo units are shrinking and prices are now at or close to the Million dollar mark with nothing seeming to give way. I know many friends and family members I grew up with who have moved further out taking long commutes on the Metro Skytrain system to get to work. It’s a shame both our cities are heading in this downward spiral where the elite win and the working class are shoved aside. The housing market is bound to burst at some point. We just gotta hold on until then!

But is 600sqft for $3500/mo affordable?? What about making a bigger courtyard or larger units that are able to fit a family?

This is a puff piece, the building next to this one was converted from office to housing back in 2009.

You could also make something bigger than 600ft studio/1bd apartments. 1500ft apartments could probably manage rooms and windows well enough still without carving out the center. And of course elevators and main hallways should be in the center too. You can also make the building mixed use, at least the first floor be retail as is common.

That's cool and all ... but, doesn't explain why there is so much empty office space in the first place. What happens when businesses decide to move back into Manhattan?

Hilarious. The revolutionary idea that enabled this conversion - adding light wells - is just an old innovation repackaged. I live in a 1910s building that was built before widespread electric lights and fire safety. There were several apartments in the middle of the building that had no exterior windows, but they each had access to an interior light well.

Thanks for sharing ❤

Excellent video, thank you

Luxury has become one of those words like communist or diversity or conservative, a word that has no meaning anymore. But NYC has no shortage of "luxury" apartments - there's tons of empty units. Theres a massive shortage of affordable units that regular working people could afford.

Maybe all the rooms in the apartment don’t have to be connected? You could put living spaces on the outside of the building and with the same key access private offices and media rooms inside.

Really hoping the window well isn’t their only window 🤞🏻

Glad they're adding housing. Can we PLEASE stop misusing the word "affordable" though? Call it what it is... subsidized.

Light shafts come way short of a courtyard building such as you have uptown. It is meant to allow for air circulation and some dim lighting , at best. Now, if you have a core shafted building with a large floor plate ( a typical floor plan in a large corporate tenancy type of building ) , you can even parse your units throughout the building perimeter, by keeping the elevator hallways in a concentric inner ring shape and scatter your units throughout the outer perimeter of the building. On the video they explain how a C- Plate would be impractical for these type of projects. For the neophytes here, a C-plate is a floor plan that has three out of four exposed perimeters with office windows , whereas the fourth leg of the perimeter is only used to the stairwell , elevator shafts. Using a corporate lease tenancy building , this is the range of 2,000 to 4,600 sf. A core shafted floor plate has a larger floor footage , usually around 5,000 plus sf , and elevators , stairwell , and no hallways ( except for a cut through at the elevators , if that many ) , all fit into the center core of the building. In both cases , on office usage , the riser cables , heavy duty plumbing ( including fire ) is around the shaft.

Obviously we just need more dynamic zoning laws

Thank you for sharing.

$300-500 Per Square foot Just for the Hard Cost, Excluding the price of Land, Rezoning, Permitting, Financing, Architectural Plans, etc..etc.. Here in San Antonio Brand New Construction on Multifamily Class A is at most $120 Per Square Foot. Building it out of ICF Concrete Walls and Steel Everywehere instead of Wood Frame still puts you at $145-150 PSF. Can't imagine many are going to go for it with interst rates where they are now and the average person making $60-90k per year.

3:27 Who'd want to live there? I'd say just about ANYBODY living on the street would rather live in the middle of a building with no windows than in freezing winter temperatures above a manhole.. 🤦‍♂

Just what the world needs - more high end apartments !!! Don't worry about the 99% of people that can't afford housing.

Kinda funny to carve out a well in the middle of a building - I dunno if I'd want that window anymore. 😅 Tho the charm of the pre-1900s buildings are undeniable. I really hope those can be converted

We don’t need more “luxury” apartments. We need more affordable housing in NYC!!! Rent is out of control and is only getting worse. You could build an entire community in these buildings, not just a place for the rich and elite

Glad to see that MSM and local politicians are now past the acceptance stage of remote work. No, I am not spending 1 or 2 hours on a commute so some CEO can talk about their "team culture" on a private resort after their golf tournament (I mean customer prospecting)

Nice concept.

Zoning laws in general are a huge issue. They should be completely abolished. Minimize the regulatory gridlock. Also, affordable housing is a problem too.

Cities need AFFORDABLE housing, not more posh condos. Without affordable housing, none of the waiters, cleaning staff or other services the posh condo dwellers expect to have on hand will be there.

This is not cheap but at least the office is being used. People need to realize that as things get more expensive in NYC, more people have to move.

This type of re-development will never be easy. Tried them in the early 2010s. Very high construction costs, price to acquire the office buildings are way too high and due to the overal costs the price of the apartments are sky high. Basically a very risky venture

This is so interesting.

love reuse of buildings. Courtyard creation seems a lot like a chimney that could really escalate fires. I think on interior cabins of cruise ships they have tv screen that shows the video of outside, somehow think would be so much cooler to be living on 3rd floor facing a brick wall but have faux window that lets you have penthouse view continually.

Apartments in the business district. ... oh nooo. Can't have people being able to walk to work. Why not have mixed use with apartments on the outside of retail in the core.

Yes thank you WSJ, New York was really running short on high end over-priced real estate.

Homelessness goes high rise.

Really interesting show. Maybe office real estate is not dead after all. Thanks

this is cool, I hope it continues, and that previously business heavy districts become more inhabited and liveable

I wish they would do this in Boston

It makes sense, with the advance of technology and the lockdowns, more jobs are finally available at home. With the issue of being behind of providing enough homes, this is a great alternative. The country also probably still needs small commercial buildings for shops and restaurants, so hopefully that is kept in mind of these designs too. The issue with the American planning in these infrastructures is that they largely separate and divide regions that has backfired in planning some of these cities. It’s one thing if there is zoning for a quiet neighborhood, but not everyone has a family and are wanting to have an easier community to certain areas. From the office’s perspective it might be cheaper to have employees work from home than to rent out big spaces with bills for electric and other utilities.

What’s the total cost for renovation of the building? What are they projecting rents to be?

This is good, but rent prices from $3500 is not in the affordable range. They need to get the price down to $1000 to be remotely considered affordable...

Cool video! Id like to add that there are other investment options in businesses like cannafarm ltd as well.

What program can be used to do an animation as in 2:45?

I wonder if you could use them to make giant shelters because the main bathrooms would be communal in the center and you’d have tons of space to put wrap around services.

people would live in a center box area with no windows as long as it is cheap, so just make them cheap for rental.

Corporations and the government don't want things to quick and efficient so that they can get more money.

I really don’t see affordable housing in some areas where there are empty office space.

Well , maybe as people move into converted office buildings , the apts they previously lived in will be bulldozed in favor of constructing similarly larger apt buildings ?

Why not just reserve the windowless sections for office space instead of making the entire building a residential one.

I’d love to live in one of these flats, for a couple 3.5k sounds reasonable. And the sale price is about 650k, also not a crazy sum for the financial district.

We ran the business case for this in Japan but offices are strangely enough so much higher valued it doesn't make any sense money wise.

I hate buildings with windows that don't open. I avoid them like the plague.

Still wouldn't want to have an issue by renting there in the first place if they can raise rates in at any time. What is an issue is that if all services workers need or are automated. You then get serfs and not clients.

Office conversion “not simple or cheap” but still cheaper than tear down a large building, and rebuild a brand new building…

To allow more office-to-residential conversions. Why don't they do a partial conversion? If a property is too deep to give the interior light, why don't they convert the outer areas towards the windows to residential and then make the inner areas commercial? All commercial offices don't need windows, especially if the offices are more affordable. Then, more buildings will qualify for conversion, and it might even be cheaper than hollowing out the inside of a skyscraper or doing other drastic measures.

they've been converting malls into apartments, too. It's really interesting

Stop throwing the term luxury in every apartment building!!! They’re not luxurious, and do not demand a luxury price tag.

Why is the audio for the guest speakers so muffled???

How about regular old affordable housing

If Cities could increase the supply of quality affordable living spaces for office employees, it might incentivize more of them to return to working and living in the city. I bet many workers who moved out of cities into stand-alone homes are finding suburban and rural home ownership to have its own set of expensive burdens, especially if they were one of the panic buyers who bought some old money pit.

What about making it difficult or impossible for domestic and foreign investors to buy up these new apartments and then just sit on them?

this might be the answer but with banks not lending how are building owners going to finance this retrofit???? Still a long way to go

Sound isolation might be nonexistent with these types of solutions.

There'll be a point where they balance the return on residential property with the tax write-off of the loss of the building. We're not talking about conventional individual landlords here.

Мне кажется, что в середине можно не дырку сверлить, а сделать общественные пространства: где-то магазин, где-то спорт-зал, салон.

Need of the day

So make the apartments deeper in the newer buildings.

Kommunalkas can be easily made from office space, with shared bathrooms and kitchens. And pictures of comrade Stalin.

Can we convert malls?

I think we are forgetting more supply with equal demand means cheaper prices

The hope is to really make the housing affordable but even having so called "luxury" apartments at overpriced rates will play a part in decreasing the cost of living collectively, because it will lower demand with more options for living.

Most of the office buildings in places like New York cannot be converted to apartments. It’s simply not feasible.

Luxury housing?! We need affordable housing, not another real estate bubble! 😡

Why do we need another Luxury Rental Building in NYC

Try making them a decent size. 600sqft is tiny.

being out of touch. like manhattan needs more luxury apartments. might as well turn office space into more office space.

sure, its more housing in a city, but lets face it.. these kinds of projects aren't going to be affordable apartments in downtown Manhattan for every day people, they are going to be pricey luxury apartments that the everyday person who just needs a place to live. not exactly solving the housing crisis.

i like the idea but i wish we stopped converting spaces into luxury housing. so few of new yorks population can afford to rent in those places.

Does this mean there will not be any significant increase in demand for office space in the near future, even after considering back-to-office shifts happening?

And who would want to live in a studio which looks out to the light shaft? Especially on lower floors…

There is no alternative towards solving the housing crisis other than mixed zoning. "Mixed Zoning" is the only way forward for housing.

How would you like to pay $7,500/mo just to live next to an "affordable housing" (Section 8) tenant?

still far away from affordable housing, but it is what it is...

The average price per square foot of DC housing is $530. Remember that these people and companies that built these buildings usually have an ROI of 5 years so the offices that are there now are already paid down and all income the used to get from the office tenants went to operations and maintenance and the rest was profit. So these building owners can and should take on additional costs to update them because they shouldn't have the rights to just rake in pure profits on assets already paid off. And before you go all "service economy" argument on me, that isn't how housing should work. Housing shouldn't be a service because at the end of the day everyone needs a home.

Why doesn’t the city incentivize developers to make even more affordable units?

Lol, what the heck is a 600sq ft apt?! 3:43