@zillowtastrophes Your literal home office. $520,000 1 bd 1 ba 1,066 sqft 777 Grand Ave SUITE 204, San Rafael, CA 94901 #homeoffice #workfromhome #remotework #sanraphael #theoffice #zillowtastrophe ♬ How`s Your Day - aAp Vision
July 18, 2023
The shockingly lazy conversion of office space into a $520,000 residence.
I'm reading a Guardian article —"‘Soul-crushing’: converted Bay Area office apartment fail goes viral/Turning offices to residences is touted as a housing fix for a work-from-home era, but a $520,000 listing takes the brief too literally" — that's basically just all about this horrifying TikTok video:
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39 comments:
.....and that doesn’t mention the HOA fees!
Although she never pointed out the actual view from the windows, it looked interesting.
I looked it up and this place has been on and off the market since August 2021.
The whole point of living "downtown" was to be close to the office as well as trendy restaurants, theaters, etc.
If downtowns are dying what is the point in having an apartment there?
Maybe the point is, you can start living in it now, but do your own interior design and replace this makeshift temporary stuff we've throw in to tide you over.
I understand housing costs in California, particularly the Bay Area, are absurd and soul crushing. As for the rest, why decorate when you are trying to sale the location? Let the new owner decorate. The real problem is living in California.
To expand on what Ann said, this is kind of like a NYC loft. A big open space that you can do anything with.
I don't understand the tiny bathroom. We've lived in a 1000 sqft house for 40+ years. (plus 1000sqft basement) 3 decent bedrooms and 2 full baths in half the house. Other half is open plan liviing-dining-kitchen.
We raised 2 kids here, it's never felt small.
I kind of like this open plan appt but it needs work.
John Henry
Yikes. That's really atrocious.
Which blue word is the link to the actual video, or is my browser stopping it from appearing?
I kind of like it...it's just missing the personal touches a buyer will add...but the really objectionable thing about it is the price of just over 500K (over 4K per month) for only 1,066 square feet of space.
Downtown Portland ain’t coming back for a long time. The property values are falling.
The homo mayor doesn’t know what to do. Go figure.
Ya know......maybe roll some police cars, and crack some heads.
why not repurpose one or more units to community kitchen / restaurant self serve etc?
It's right next to - and I mean abuts - what is easily the noisiest, most traffic-congested freeway off-ramp in Marin County. That explains why it's only half a million.
".....and that doesn’t mention the HOA fees!"
Probably huge.
When I first heard about the abandonment of office buildings, and thought about people like Comrade Marvin, I came up with a similar idea.
Take an empty skyscraper. On the first floor put in a Walmart. The next floor up is mixed retail, dining. (a food court?) Then three floors converted to residential. Then a floor with more food options and a 7-11. Then more residential floors. Keep the same pattern all the way to the top. At some point have some places for Zoom calls, offices for remote work, a daycare, a gym, maybe an elementary school. Have a pool and a park on the roof.
I, for one, would immediately replace the fluorescent lighting (or LED, whatever those panels are) with UV black lights, and paint the walls, including all glass, flat black with glowing graffiti all over.
And I would do this without purchasing the place, just for fun.
[HOA fees] Probably huge.
$655/month HOA
Not sure what's included in that. Free water?
This chatter has really ramped up in the last few months given so much vacant commercial space in downtown SF. Here's the problem: there are few shops or restaurants within walking distance to many of these buildings, and those mainly cater to the 9 - 5 crowd. Once 5pm rolls around a lot of them are closed. Simple services - post office, dry cleaners, drugstore - nope. The downtown is not coming back. Street level retail is being decimated by uncontrolled theft and petty crime is on the rise. And when the SHTF and things get really sporty I don't think people want to be trapped in the middle of it.
Here's the Redfin listing with 48 photos:
https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Rafael/777-Grand-Ave-94901/unit-204/home/176155816
I've seen much worse for the money in California. This isn't a surprising property considering California's anti-growth housing policies. The first three rules of real estate are location, location, and location. Yes, it's an office with office lighting and a Japanese-style mini water system thrown in. It'd never have been zoned for housing prior to the remote work era...but what else are you going to do with a failed office complex? Tear it down? Board it up? Why spend $$$$$$$ remodeling into a traditional house when someone may indeed want to use it as a live-WORK unit in a strip mall?
Remote work has pushed commercial real estate into a Great Depression magnitude collapse, so expect a lot more of this over the next 20-30 years. When life gives you lemons make lemonade.
"Here's the problem: there are few shops or restaurants within walking distance to many of these buildings..."
Mass transit is the answer, I'm told.
[shrug] I feel as if I could make it work.
Not where it is. And the glass walls would come out IMMEDIATELY. But like whoever it was up thread, I also spent happy years in a house with 960 square feet of actual finished space and never felt cramped (only three of us and we moved when my son was a toddler - but as a couple, we could've lived there forever).
We did have a little bitty yard - so small that we used a weed whacker to "mow." But it was green and shady and I could grow things.
"why not repurpose one or more units to community kitchen / restaurant self serve etc?"
The tragedy of the commons?
This place is walking distance to Trader Joes, a bank, a gym, a few coffee places.... location wise, I could see it working for a single workaholic. Are the schools any good? That would also come into play, maybe.
Maybe the point is, you can start living in it now, but do your own interior design and replace this makeshift temporary stuff we've throw in to tide you over.
Yes. But you are living in a decaying downtown and your house/condo is a depreciating asset.
“Some people in the comments are saying it’s a good price considering the area ... "
Yes! I get all my information about making the largest investment I've ever made (except possibly what I borrowed to finance my useless college education) from the comments ...
I suggest a peek at this lovely piece of suburban residential real estate using Google Maps.
798 Grand Ave
A bargain apparently. Pay for the space and location, then fix up as you like it.
The same people complaining about the lack of affordable housing ridicule a home that is reasonably priced. Luxury is for everyone now, but it shouldn't be.
"Mass transit is the answer, I'm told."
It is.
"Here's the problem: there are few shops or restaurants within walking distance to many of these buildings..."
If enough office buildings are repurposed as apartment/condo buildings, the shops and restaurants will follow. The toniest areas of New York City today--SoHo and DUMBO, to name only two--were very recently decrepit, dark, and largely abandoned former manufacturing zones. When I first arrived in NYC, SoHo was largely deserted and definitely low-scale, inhabited by artists and musicians, with not too many amenities, though the first blush of regeneration was already evident. Within a decade of my arrival SoHo was among (if not THE) most chic areas in the city. DUMBO was even more recently such a space. I can recall going out to DUMBO about 20 years ago to visit friends who lived there. It was Thanksgiving evening and I was joining them and other of their friends for dinner. The distance from the High Street subway stop to their loft on Plymouth Street was probably 1.5 to 2 miles by foot, and I didn't see one other person on the dark streets from leaving the subway to reaching their building. Today DUMBO is SoHo on steroids, teeming with shops, bars, restaurants, and PEOPLE! (I remember going out to DUMBO even earlier, back in 1991 or so, to attend a birthday party my then-drawing teacher from the Art Students League was throwing for herself in the park under the bridge. Today, that whole area is built up as described above; then, I had to wander through barren streets trying to find the park itself, and then how to find the entrance to it. It was an industrial wasteland, seemingly absent of any inhabitants...though there were artists living there for the then-cheap loft spaces that are always desired by artists.)
The key is for young people to move in...aspiring artists and musicians and dancers and writers and so on...this will lead to small shops, chic restaurants, clubs, and art spaces opening up, which make the area "cool," and as more people move in to live in the new bohemia, landlords start raising rents and decrepit buildings are knocked down or remade into more comfortable versions of the former raw factory or office spaces. This is the story of NYC for the past many decades.
Shockingly lazy? Well that's an opinion and the writer might have done it differently. So what?
And as for those of you who ae talking about what is or is not available in downtown San Francisco--well it's a long way from downtown SFO and across the Golden Gate Bridge to get to San Rafael. As another commenter noted the place is right next to a terribly congested offramp off the (not so) freeway. I tend to think of San Rafael's businesses as mostly frontage road strip mall sorts of places. Not my cup of tea--but then converting a loft (another option in downtown places like commercial Los Angeles) isn't high on my list either. And yet--lots of people do and then you wind up with a gentrified "Arts District" that's actually a fairly liveable place if you don't have children.
Plenty of opportunity to personalize it later. That is, if you want to. And I can't see why not. Old factories have been turned into charming loft apartments.
You'd want to have all of that exterior-facing glass replaced before the shooting starts.
Soul crushing is a good way to describe.
Denver's new democrat mayor is promising free housing to all homeless.
He is inviting every homeless drug addict and drug transient to move to Denver.
Denver is already fast becoming another leftist shit hole. Glory be.
It's San Rafael. Not San Francisco, or Sausalito. It's by CA101. And regarding R Cook's remarks, it's not NYC, either. There's miles of nothing around except strip malls and car dealerships and outlet stores.
However, some places in the East Bay around Livermore have vastly blossomed in the last 20 years (that, by the way, is where Scott Adams lives) so if one is patient, one might be surprised. Very patient, though.
"And yet--lots of people do and then you wind up with a gentrified "Arts District" "
Funny thing about those Arts Districts. Eventually the artists are forced to move due to ever increasing rents. See Uptown Minneapolis, circa 1970, followed the North Loop, circa 1980, where they moved to next, now unaffordable, followed by Nordeast, circa 2000, which is now being gentrified as well, and why the artists are now moving Over North where I live.
I remember a TV show last century about a new NYC luxury condo tower. They sold most with the cheapest possible kitchen because they knew the new owner would immediately rip it out to suit.
You're buying a buildout. Finish it any way you want. The electrical, water and plumbing are just stubbed in so the new owner can do just that.
There is a lot more to changing commercial to residential than paint and plaster.
I'm especially amused at concepts for turning high rise office space to a bunch of apartments. The more stores, the funnier I find it.
Step one, map out the available utilities including plumbing. (Why do you think all the kitchen, washer, etc are jammed into a single wall/spot?)
Step two weep.
"Funny thing about those Arts Districts. Eventually the artists are forced to move due to ever increasing rents. See Uptown Minneapolis, circa 1970, followed the North Loop, circa 1980, where they moved to next, now unaffordable, followed by Nordeast, circa 2000, which is now being gentrified as well, and why the artists are now moving Over North where I live."
This is true for newer poor artists or students or others without means who might want to move in. Many of the poor artists whose habitation in desolate and abandoned city areas create the arts districts often buy their properties when they are still cheap. Those who don't, sadly, eventually will be priced out. I'm neither saluting nor condemning this repeating dynamic, just describing how desolate city areas have been made over into a desirable areas flush with desirable amenities.
The most recent neglected area of Manhattan to have become gentrified is TriBeCa--the lower part of Manhattan where City Hall and many other city offices are located, (and the former Trade Towers). I worked in that area for 33 years, (not for a city office). For the first half of that 33 years the area was essentially empty after dark, when all who worked in the area left at 5:00 pm. There were people living there, but it was not an upscale area. In the years since 9/11, the area has exploded, (no pun intended), and is now a very expensive and desirable area, with the expected influx of fancy shops and bistros, loft prices skyrocketing, etc. Unlike SoHo and DUMBO, this was not because of a sudden influx of artists into the neighborhood--though I believe some artists have always lived in the area--but is probably a result of the overall influx of money into the area after 9/11, with the building of the One World Trade Tower to replace the Trade Towers. TriBeCa's makeover has happened in essentially the same time period as the makeover of DUMBO, (post-9/11). The Brooklyn Bridge is in this part of Manhattan, and at the other end of the bridge is...DUMBO. Perhaps one can conceive of these two areas as one, divided by a river and connected by a bridge.
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