D.C. has banked its comeback plan on luring more residents to its struggling downtown. The number of increasingly obsolete office properties with the potential to be converted to apartments or condos should provide ample opportunity.
Commercial real estate services firm Avison Young released data last month showing the prospects for residential conversions in 14 major markets. It found up to a third of the 26,000 office buildings it surveyed could be prime for conversion — 9,000 across the country. That includes an estimated 322 in D.C. alone, accounting for nearly 40% of the city’s stock of buildings larger than 25,000 square feet, plus another 244 in Northern Virginia.
The buildings Avison Young selected are all pre-1990 construction with 15,000-square-foot floor plates — and where its analysis showed there could be a payoff for redevelopment. As the city continues to see the value of its older properties sink, more projects could be feasible that perhaps weren’t before, according to experts.
