Real Estate Crash thread

RE: converting empty high rise office towers to residential. Was just talking to a big developer/architect that recently looked into doing that in Seattle for one of their buildings- they said it made more financial sense for them to sit on a totally empty building for 5years and bet on office work coming back than it would for them to try and convert large portions of it to residential. So, it doesnt sound like residential renovations will be catching on in the near future. 10-20 years down the road, maybe?

The Next Crisis Will Start With Empty Office Buildings

Commercial real estate is losing value fast.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ffices/674310/

some landlords are threatening to “give the keys back to the bank.” Over the past few months, the property giants RXR, Columbia Property Trust, Brookfield Asset Management, and others have collectively defaulted on billions in commercial-property loans. Such defaults are partly an indication of real struggles and partly a game of chicken. Most commercial loans were issued before the pandemic, when offices were full and interest rates were low.

The current landscape is drastically different: high vacancy rates, doubled interest rates, and nearly $1.5 trillion in loans due for repayment by 2025. By defaulting now, landlords leverage their remaining influence to advocate for loan extensions or a bailout. As John Maynard Keynes observed, when you owe your banker $1,000, you are at his mercy, but when you owe him $1 million, “the position is reversed.”

Property taxes underpin city budgets. In New York City, such taxes generate approximately 40 percent of revenue. Commercial property—mostly offices—contributes about 40 percent of these taxes, or 16 percent of the city’s total tax revenue.

It will be interesting to see the fallout from CRE.

I'd be willing to bet there will be a government bailout.

Back in 2012 we were barely able to con a mortgage company into giving us a loan to buy our present home for a ridiculously low price. Not long after I was doing some work in the house of the owner to the company I was then working for, old guy, very successful. We got to talking and he asked how the family was and I told him about buying the house and he was genuinely excited for us and we started chatting about real estate. At one point I made the comment that someone with cash could make a lot of money in residential real estate at that time and his eyes grew big and he nodded "ohhh yeah".

I wonder if it's going to be like that for commercial RE in a couple few years. My wife says no. I say yes.

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Originally Posted by I Skied Bandini Mountain

I wonder if it's going to be like that for commercial RE in a couple few years. My wife says no. I say yes.

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Martha says "yes": https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/06/busin...ork/index.html

Martha is so gilfy.

Martha definitely still fucks.

I mean, she's an ex-ibanker, of course she's horny for the office. Can't illegally collude on things via recorded mediums.

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Originally Posted by I Skied Bandini Mountain

Back in 2012 we were barely able to con a mortgage company into giving us a loan to buy our present home for a ridiculously low price. Not long after I was doing some work in the house of the owner to the company I was then working for, old guy, very successful. We got to talking and he asked how the family was and I told him about buying the house and he was genuinely excited for us and we started chatting about real estate. At one point I made the comment that someone with cash could make a lot of money in residential real estate at that time and his eyes grew big and he nodded "ohhh yeah".

I wonder if it's going to be like that for commercial RE in a couple few years. My wife says no. I say yes.

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A couple new comm projects here are gonna be in trouble unless they plan to float vacant places for a while. On the other hand median residential is back to gong show multiple offers. I don't have a crystal ball but there was plenty of data to support this happening. A couple of my savvy buyers picked up stuff late 2022 and early the first 1/4 of this year. Stuff with high DOM there were opportunities to put the screws to a desperate seller and get a good price. More buyers have waited though and depending on the price point they are starting to regret that decision.

I truly wonder if she and Snoop ever got super high, and just said "hey, wanna fuck?"

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Originally Posted by rideit

This heart-warming story has it all.
Kind of broke, attractive redhead? Check
Resourceful, tasteful renovation? Check
Gig worker, including Online Dominatrix? Check


https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/03/36-y...ream-home.html

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For home or work?
Attachment 461205

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Originally Posted by californiagrown

RE: converting empty high rise office towers to residential. Was just talking to a big developer/architect that recently looked into doing that in Seattle for one of their buildings- they said it made more financial sense for them to sit on a totally empty building for 5years and bet on office work coming back than it would for them to try and convert large portions of it to residential. So, it doesnt sound like residential renovations will be catching on in the near future. 10-20 years down the road, maybe?

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and you just summarized the value-add of developers

At some point declining office valuations make the conversation numbers work.

The problem is the pool of potential downtown residents decreases as many are no longer tied to a downtown office 5 days a week.

Add in downtown multifamily development has been going bonkers for a decade and there’s going to less demand for additional downtown residential.


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So govt takeover the empty high rises and turn them into low/no-income housing with Wesley snipes as building manager?

i think it’s greedy as fuck and should be taxed to hell.

the point is we are not lacking land or buildings, just a common goal. so change the players or process.

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Originally Posted by Skistack

The problem is the pool of potential downtown residents decreases as many are no longer tied to a downtown office 5 days a week.

Add in downtown multifamily development has been going bonkers for a decade and there’s going to less demand for additional downtown residential.

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I know it is hard for TGR bro bra, who only lives in car centric suburb or Jackson, to imagine, but some people like living downtown even if they don't work there. In places like Seattle there is demand for housing no matter where you put it. And it makes sense to continue to concentrate growth even if we are sitting on our couch in our underwear working from home for the rest of time.

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Originally Posted by altasnob

I know it is hard for TGR bro bra, who only lives in car centric suburb or Jackson, to imagine, but some people like living downtown even if they don't work there. In places like Seattle there is demand for housing no matter where you put it. And it makes sense to continue to concentrate growth even if we are sitting on our couch in our underwear working from home for the rest of time.

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Hey Bro Brah, I actually work in multifamily, so go fuck yourself. What is it that you do exactly?

Guess what? It’s really fucking expensive to develop downtown multifamily, but high rents and more importantly, future rent growth projections, make the numbers work for investors. Alot of markets have hit peak rents, people just do not have the ability to pay anything higher. So flat rent growth = flat valuations = less investment. Sure you can find markets that will continue to see growth but most will be flat for a while.

Add in new construction already in the pipeline, and most markets will struggle to absorb new units coming online in the next couple of years. (I’m in Denver and can count a dozen cranes, mostly MF projects, just in the RiNo neighborhood.) So more new units that the market can absorb = decreasing rents = lower valuations = less investment.

So yeah, you could find an empty office building in a market that’s still projecting strong rent growth and proforma a conversion project that’ll attract investment. But that’s really going to be an anomaly at least for the foreseeable future.


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Originally Posted by altasnob

I know it is hard for TGR bro bra, who only lives in car centric suburb or Jackson, to imagine, but some people like living downtown even if they don't work there.

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I’m glad about that. I just wish there were more. A lot more.

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Originally Posted by Skistack

Add in new construction already in the pipeline, and most markets will struggle to absorb new units coming online in the next couple of years. (I’m in Denver and can count a dozen cranes, mostly MF projects, just in the RiNo neighborhood.) So more new units that the market can absorb = decreasing rents = lower valuations = less investment.

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I'll believe it when I see it. In my lifetime living in the West, I have never seen a time where we had too much housing. I've also never seen a time when rents go down other than momentary blips and then they just rebound back to where they were and then some. Maybe the greedy developer who wants to make bank thinks there is too much housing becuase their return isn't what they would like. But no markets here struggle to absorb new units. If you build it, they will come. The population in this country is still increasing and they are still moving in droves to places like Seattle and Denver.

I don't dispute it costs a lot to convert commercial to residential, but lack of demand is not the problem. The problem is the real estate industry in the West has been drunk on profits for the last 40+ years and they may finally have to come back to reality.

I’d just like to see dense housing allowed to be built, and with less hoops and lower hurdles to clear. Then if there’s enough demand to cover building costs it gets built.

My guess is there’s a lot of demand in a lot of areas.

The cost to renovate and repurpose office buildings is astronomical. My aunt who worked for some major CRE developers said it is really complicated to just redo the plumbing, electrical for an office building. Let alone all the structural changes that are necessary. Take into account the financing right now is stupid expensive.

This is just one example of what's going on right now. Tip of the iceberg IMO.

https://sfstandard.com/business/real...ncisco-hotels/

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Park Hotels and Resorts, a Virginia-based real estate investment firm, said Monday that it had stopped paying back a $725 million loan on its main San Francisco properties and is likely to give two of the largest hotels in the city back to its lender.
Reay said he’s concerned that the Park Hotels decision could be among the first in a line of dominos to fall in San Francisco’s hotel market.

He pointed to other signs of trouble, such as the distressed sale of the Huntington Hotel in Nob Hill and financial troubles at the nearby Stanford Court Hotel, which is having trouble paying back its loan.

In 2016, Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55 San Francisco were appraised at $1.6 billion, according to CMBS loan documents. Reay said the rubber could meet the road when a lender takes control of the properties and sells them off at a substantial discount.

“If you have a 50% reduction in value since 2016, if you start to take that across the board on other hotel assets, that’s going to be a major problem,” Reay said, noting that the properties most at risk are larger hotels that cater to business travelers.

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What about redoing codes to make it not so prohibitive?

This no-office downtown-flight low-urban-core-demand is not going to sit well with the portion of political/government/planner/philosopher/academic types who want everyone to move out of their sfh/spacious dwellings in rural/suburbs and into new density/apartments in urban cores so they can give up their cars.

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Originally Posted by Toadman

The cost to renovate and repurpose office buildings is astronomical.

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How does that compare with building a new structure?

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Originally Posted by summit

This no-office downtown-flight low-urban-core-demand is not going to sit well with the portion of political/government/planner/philosopher/academic types who want everyone to move out of their sfh/spacious dwellings in rural/suburbs and into new density/apartments in urban cores so they can give up their cars.

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That's totally true. But when the downtown urban core decays and so does the tax revenue that comes with it there aren't going to be any roads or services for all the people living out in the sprawling suburbs. You're able to exist in Summit County because of those people living and working in downtown Denver supporting you.

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Originally Posted by altasnob

That's totally true. But when the downtown urban core decays and so does the tax revenue that comes with it there aren't going to be any roads or services for all the people living out in the sprawling suburbs. You're able to exist in Summit County because of those people living and working in downtown Denver supporting you.

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The tax revenue isn't going away. It is just going outside the downtown core. Those jobs and companies are still around, they just don't need downtown Denver offices. Some of them even moved here which has plusses and minuses.

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Originally Posted by summit

The tax revenue isn't going away. It is just going outside the downtown core. Those jobs and companies are still around, they just don't need downtown Denver offices.

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No civilization in earth's history has excelled without thriving urban cores. The reason companies move to a place like Seattle is because of things like a large airport and port that allows getting people and stuff from Asia easier, a world class public computer science program (UW), a high concentration of tech companies making poaching talent easy. I don't think America can thrive and be competitive with the rest of the world if we are all sitting in our underwear on our couch in Jackson.

Well on the bright side there sure are a lot of used converted sprinter vans and the like hitting the market. Three with for sale signs in my neighborhood, plus two of them for sale across from the post office. Makes me smile.

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Originally Posted by californiagrown

So govt takeover the empty high rises and turn them into low/no-income housing with Wesley snipes as building manager?

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Lol!

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Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper

How does that compare with building a new structure?

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Where's the land in urban downtown to build that new structure?

Somehow Canada is managing to turn vacant office towers into residential. Then again they’ve been able to figure out universal health care and gun regulations.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...tial-1.6816052

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Originally Posted by altasnob

. I don't think America can thrive and be competitive with the rest of the world if we are all sitting in our underwear on our couch in Jackson.

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I feel attacked.

:the_finge

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Originally Posted by summit

What about redoing codes to make it not so prohibitive?

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Seem like a lot more just general logistics than code making it difficult. Like going from one bathroom/kitchen per floor to four or five, different power and lighting, etc.

Sure you could maybe skimp on fire codes or something, but do you really want to burn a place to the ground to save 2% in the costs? (Ok developers would definitely do that…)

The only way converting office bldg to condo/apt bldg pencils out is if you get state/federal funds to subsidize it. And of course the tax bill goes to those that actually pay taxes. If the goal is just to provide more affordable housing, converting office towers to apts. is not the answer.

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Originally Posted by Jax

Well on the bright side there sure are a lot of used converted sprinter vans and the like hitting the market. Three with for sale signs in my neighborhood, plus two of them for sale across from the post office. Makes me smile.

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Lots of HELOCs with resetting rates are ruining the can life dream.

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Originally Posted by Flounder

Somehow Canada is managing to turn vacant office towers into residential. Then again they’ve been able to figure out universal health care and gun regulations.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...tial-1.6816052

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But then you would have to live in Calgary.

Office towers might not be easily converted to residential, but I would think large downtown hotels that formerly catered to business travelers would be a much easier conversion.

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Originally Posted by AdironRider

Lots of HELOCs with resetting rates are ruining the can life dream.

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Can't say I know what the "can life" is... but color me intrigued.

:D

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Originally Posted by yeahman

Office towers might not be easily converted to residential, but I would think large downtown hotels that formerly catered to business travelers would be a much easier conversion.

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Multiple hotels in ski country are being converted into housing... which is both weird when you could restrict STRs instead, but also this is what the market seems to want.

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Originally Posted by skaredshtles

Can't say I know what the "can life" is... but color me intrigued.

:D

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“Kush”

Attachment 461299

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Originally Posted by summit

Multiple hotels in ski country are being converted into housing... which is both weird when you could restrict STRs instead, but also this is what the market seems to want.

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AirBnB turning into an absolute dumpster fire for renters is going to fuck with ski town STRs hard. I refuse to use them anymore because of how bad it's gotten.