We’ve heard lots of talk about a housing shortage over the past four years and it only seems to be getting worse. But it appears we’ve stumbled onto a solution: converting office buildings to affordable housing.
Here’s Five Fast Facts About Office Conversions:
- 📈 High Shortage - The number of vacant offices sits at a 30-year high at roughly 20% nationwide. At the same time, we’re short 3.2 million homes.
- 🏗️ Knocked Down - It’s led cities, municipalities, local governments and even developers to begin tearing down those offices and replacing them with residential buildings or even renovating and retrofitting them to create apartments.
- 🏢 Trendsetter - It’s not a new phenomenon, however. New York state and city changed their laws in the 90s that allow office-to-apartment conversions in Manhattan.
- 📊 Up and Running - There are currently 119 office conversion projects under construction as you read this, the most since 2016. They could result in 44,000 new housing units.
- ☀️ Sunny? - Urban and metropolitan environments have their drawbacks. Office buildings are still very expensive as is the cost of demolishing or retrofitting them. Worse, since office buildings are cube farms, there is a lack of windows. And that’s not a fun place to live or work.
🔥Bottom line: At least they’re doing something, right? Whether or not these projects result in affordable living is yet to be seen, but steps are being taken.
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