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What It Really Takes to Convert an Office Building to Apartments | Odd Lots

Bloomberg Podcasts · 5K views · 2023-07-06 · 47:33

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Overview

An Odd Lots podcast episode on why converting empty office buildings into apartments is hard. A managing director at Vanbarton Group walks through the zoning, financing and construction obstacles, mostly in New York.

On Hacker News

HN links it whenever office-to-residential conversion comes up, as a good deep dive into why the idea is not simple.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2023–2026

Topics

Transit, cities & urban planningCivil engineering & constructionBusiness & economics (other)
Search by tags
real estatezoninghousingoffice vacancyconstruction

What people said

mooreds · 2026-01 · Recommendation

This podcast is about the NYC market, but a good deep dive into why this is not a simple proposition. [VIDEO]

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cduzz · 2024-05 · Recommendation

There's a good "odd lots" podcast about this[1]. There's another of their podcasts about how apartment zoning rules make it hard to make "family" apartments[2]. Basically you need two egress points, windows that can open, windows in kitches and bedrooms. All of these are directly in contradiction to modern office buildings with open floor plans, fixed windows, shared mechanical systems. So it may be possible to convert offices into apartments, but it's very expensive and you end up losing a bunch of floor space. [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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mooreds · 2023-12 · Recommendation

Here are two of my favorite odd lots episodes. How banking worked before computers: [LINK] What it takes to convert commercial buildings to residential buildings: [VIDEO] Sharing YouTube links because they don't have paywall free podcast pages, though the podcast is free to subscribe to (with ads).

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Sources

Video by Bloomberg Podcasts, played through YouTube.

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