https://fortune.com/2023/05/25/office-space-crash-harder-than-expected-remote-work-economy-cre-crash/
“The key takeaway from our analysis is that remote work is shaping up to massively disrupt the value of commercial office real estate in the short and medium term,” the authors wrote.
:sicko-hexbear:
The authors found that higher quality buildings, a.k.a. buildings with higher rents that were built more recently, “appear to be faring better,” which they claim is consistent with the notion that companies have to improve office quality for workers to want to come back.
:porky-scared-flipped:
Oh no! What could we possibly do with millions of square meters of empty and well-connected city real estate in the midst of a housing crisis?!
:cap-think: I guess we could convert them into prisons...
There's probably some think tank schmuck in Raytheon acres wracking his brain at the local mission bbq who would be gutted knowing he didn't come up with that first.
He'd still pretend like he did.
College dorms with no windows, great thinking! :porky-happy:
One- and two-bedroom luxury condominiums that are used almost exclusively for money laundering and/or AirBnB rentals.
:same-picture:
I know what you’re implying, but then the problem is that in order for the conversions to be economically feasible, a lot of the new apartments would probably have to be windowless.
Hear me out, apartments and hallway are arranged on the outside like a rectangular donut. Inside of the donut, space for activities:
It can go like that on repeat.
And the best part- communal bathrooms for each floor. Having your own private bathroom within your apartment is reserved for management.
That still doesn’t fix the plumbing issue :/
They aren’t built in a way that that works. Refitting the plumbing is nearly as expensive as building a whole new building. And that’s if you can solve the “apartments need to have windows” problem
Let people do a lot of that work on their own time and dime and it will be done. Plenty of squats converted office buildings.