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GVas22 t1_ja88axf wrote

Reply to comment by ZweitenMal in Midtown Owners Hedge on Costly Office-to-Home Conversions by psychothumbs

Did you read the article? I don't see any of these responses as "whining".

Developers got asked why they haven't converted office buildings and the responses are:

  • Building code requires large overhauls in the buildings structure that would be costly. Especially with the large increase in interest rates, finding funding for these projects is much more difficult now.

  • Residential conversions are not something they are experienced in and would most likely need to outsource the job or sell the building.

  • And the biggest one, even if they wanted to convert they legally are not allowed to because of zoning laws and need the government to step in to rezone districts.

Giving, in my opinion, legitimate reason on why these conversion haven't happened yet is not developers crying about people not coming back to the office.

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ZweitenMal t1_ja8ddly wrote

That's pretty rich considering the real estate lobby is able to buy decisions that favor them all the time. The problem is these conversions will cost money and hurt their profits in the short term and they don't like that. They'd rather sit with easy excuses and write the temporarily money-losing properties off against their profitable ones.

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