Top Office Owners Don’t Want to Own Only Office Buildings Anymore
Apartment-building acquisitions spur quick returns, require ‘minimal capital expenditure’
4 min
Many of the most prominent office developers in the U.S. are shifting gears, looking to buy or build real estate that isn’t office.
Boston Properties Inc. is planning to develop 2,000 residential units up and down the East Coast. The firm, which owns more U.S. office space than any other publicly traded company, also is developing millions of square feet of lab and life-science space.
New York office owner SL Green Realty Corp is teaming up with Caesars Entertainment Inc. in a bid to convert a Times Square office tower into a casino.
Even the companies behind some of the world’s most glamorous skyscrapers are seeking out other types of real estate. Empire State Realty Trust, owner of the Empire State Building and other office towers, late in 2021 started adding multifamily properties to its portfolio for the first time. Silverstein Properties, best known for developing the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, is raising a $1.5 billion fund for converting obsolete office buildings into apartments.
The efforts come as the Covid-19 pandemic and rise of remote work have reordered American habits around the workplace, dimming the importance of office towers that populate city business districts. Shares of publicly traded office owners have broadly declined as investors and analysts worry that the companies’ growth prospects have been hurt by the likelihood of a long-term decline in office demand.
The U.S. office vacancy rate was 12.3% at the end of the third quarter, about where it was at its peak during the global financial crisis, according to data firm CoStar Group Inc. The rates in some major metro areas—including New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco—are at the highest levels that CoStar has recorded in more than two decades of tracking this data.
Corporate tenants are flooding the sublease market with office space, the main way to reduce their footprint before their leases expire. About 211.8 million square feet of sublease space is now available, nearly double the amount available compared with the end of 2019, and the highest ever recorded for major office markets, CoStar said.
Companies are also putting off searches for new space as they brace themselves for a possible economic downturn in 2023. New business searches for office space fell in 2022 to 44% of what they were in 2018 and 2019, according to VTS, a firm that operates a data platform that tracks tenant demand.
Other real-estate sectors, especially residential, seem to offer more promise.
“Office is in a state of flux these days,” said Rich Gottlieb, president of Keystone Development + Investment, a West Conshohocken, Pa.-based developer specialising in offices that has four residential projects in the pipeline in South Florida and the Philadelphia region. “But there’s still a housing shortage out there.”
Office developers pivoting toward residential or other property types say they remain bullish on the office business. Many have predicted throughout the pandemic that businesses will return in greater numbers because, they have said, the best collaboration requires face-to-face meetings in a workspace—not over Zoom.
And more recently, office owners can point to encouraging signs, including the growing number of employers who are ordering workers back to the offices and the strong demand for space with the best facilities and locations.
But developing state-of-the art office space requires an enormous capital investment to meet workers’ desire for the highest possible air quality, energy efficiency and amenities.
The economics of the residential business are currently more compelling, said Tony Malkin, chief executive of Empire State Realty Trust. He would still buy office buildings at the right price. But apartment-building acquisitions produce an immediate return and require “minimal capital expenditure,” he added.
An office landlord known as New York City REIT, whose share price has fallen below $2 during the city’s recent office slump, said it was moving beyond a focus on New York office buildings, according to a December filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it would seek to acquire hotels and parking lots, among other non-office investments.
The shift away from new office development already is having a moderating impact on new construction. About 153 million square feet of office construction was under way in the third quarter of 2022, down from 184 million in the first quarter of 2020, according to CoStar.
Meanwhile the popularity of residential projects is having the opposite effect on the apartment pipeline. Close to 500,000 units—the most since 1986—are expected to be completed in 2023, according to a CoStar estimate. That is up from 368,000 in 2019, the firm said.
Some office developers began expanding into residential projects in the years leading up to the pandemic. AmTrust Realty Corp., which has a portfolio of about 12 million square feet of office space in Chicago, New York, Toledo, Ohio and other markets, completed its first residential development in 2020, a 270-unit project in Brooklyn.
The pandemic intensified AmTrust’s appetite to do more residential investment, said Jonathan Bennett, president of the family-controlled business. As one example, he noted that AmTrust has owned for years an office building in Tarrytown, N.Y., on a 7-acre site facing the Hudson River.
AmTrust has long considered the building a good candidate for residential conversion. Now, with the Tarrytown building’s vacancy rate high, the company is moving ahead with planning and obtaining local-government approvals for a development with scores of apartments.
“There was so much vacancy in the building, I said to my board, there will be no better time for us to put forward this plan,” Mr. Bennett said. “If this is what you want to do, this is the time to do it.”
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As housing drives wealth and policy debate, the real risk is an economy hooked on growth without productivity to sustain it.
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As housing drives wealth and policy debate, the real risk is an economy hooked on growth without productivity to sustain it.
3 minFor decades, Australia has leaned into its reputation as the lucky country. But luck, as it turns out, is not an economic strategy.
What once looked like resilience now appears increasingly fragile. Beneath the surface of rising property values and steady headline growth, the Australian economy is showing signs of strain that can no longer be ignored.
Recent data paints a sobering picture. Australia has recorded one of the largest declines in real household disposable income per capita among advanced economies.
Wages have failed to keep pace with inflation, meaning many Australians are working harder for less. On a per capita basis, income growth has stalled and, at times, reversed.
And yet, on paper, things still look relatively solid. GDP is growing. Unemployment remains low. But that growth is increasingly being driven by population expansion rather than productivity.
More people are contributing to output, but not necessarily improving living standards.
That distinction matters.
For years, Australia’s economic success rested on a powerful combination: a once-in-a-generation mining boom, a credit-fuelled housing market, strong migration and a property sector that rarely faltered. Between 1991 and 2020, the country avoided recession entirely, building enormous wealth in the process.
But much of that wealth is tied to property. Around two-thirds of household wealth sits in real estate, inflated by leverage and sustained by demand. It has worked, until now.
The problem is the supply side of the economy has not kept up.
Housing supply is falling behind population growth. Rental vacancies are near record lows.
Construction firms are collapsing at an elevated rate. At the same time, massive infrastructure pipelines are competing with residential projects for labour and materials, pushing costs higher and delaying delivery.
The result is a system under pressure from all angles.
Despite near full employment, productivity growth has stagnated for years. In simple terms, Australians are putting in more hours without generating more output per hour. The economy is running faster, butgoing nowhere.
Meanwhile, government spending continues to expand. Public debt is approaching $1 trillion, with spending now accounting for a record share of GDP.
The gap between spending and revenue has been filled by borrowing for decades, adding further pressure to an already stretched system.
This is where the uncomfortable question emerges.
Has Australia become too reliant on a model driven by rising property values, expanding credit and population growth?
As asset prices rise, households feel wealthier and borrow more. Banks lend more. Governments collect more revenue. Migration fuels demand. The cycle reinforces itself.
But when productivity stalls and debt outpaces real income, the system begins to depend on constant expansion just to stay stable.
It is not a collapse scenario. But it is not particularly stable either.
Nowhere is this more evident than in housing.
The National Housing Accord targets 1.2 million new homes over five years, yet current completion rates are well below that pace. With approvals falling and construction costs rising, the gap between supply and demand is widening, not narrowing.
Housing is also one of the largest contributors to inflation, with costs rising sharply across rents, construction and utilities. Yet the private sector, from small investors to major developers, is struggling to make projects stack up in the current environment.
This brings the policy debate into sharper focus.
Tax settings such as negative gearing and capital gains concessions have undoubtedly boosted demand over the past two decades. But they have also supported supply. Removing them may ease prices briefly, but risks deepening the supply shortage over time.
That is the paradox.
Policies designed to make housing more affordable can, in practice, make the shortage worse if they discourage development. The optics may appeal, but the economics are far less forgiving.
It is also worth remembering that most property investors are not institutional players. The majority own just one investment property. They are, in many cases, ordinary Australians using real estate as their primary wealth-building tool.
Undermining that system without replacing it with a viable alternative risks unintended consequences, from reduced supply to higher rents and increased inflation.
So where does that leave Australia?
At a crossroads.
The country can continue to rely on population growth and rising asset prices to drive economic activity. Or it can shift towards a model built on productivity, innovation and sustainable growth.
The latter is harder. It requires structural reform, long-term thinking and political discipline.
But it is also the only path that leads to genuine, lasting prosperity.
The question is no longer whether Australia has been lucky.
It is whether it can evolve before that luck runs out.
Paul Miron is the Co-Founder & Fund Manager of Msquared Capital.
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