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windows or no windows?
good question,what is it like to live in a place with no window?
I guess if the price is right,some will just go outside to library or coffee shop to enjoy outdoor.
Housing shortage in London is so bad,homeowners will buy one or two units and park them in their small backyard, it has one room with pullman kitchen and bathroom,and rent for good money,if you have 2,you could end up with an extra GBP 1000 per month,not bad for homeowners who need extra income.
I don't know what is legal in London, but in the US it is not legal to live in a building with no windows. A bedroom must have a window that both lets in natural light and allows egress (escape) in case of a fire or other disaster.
windows or no windows?
good question,what is it like to live in a place with no window?
I guess if the price is right,some will just go outside to library or coffee shop to enjoy outdoor.
Housing shortage in London is so bad,homeowners will buy one or two units and park them in their small backyard, it has one room with pullman kitchen and bathroom,and rent for good money,if you have 2,you could end up with an extra GBP 1000 per month,not bad for homeowners who need extra income.
what is it like to live in a place with no window?
Worked at Police Plaza..............No windows...................
No sense of time. Drop in serotonin and vitamin D levels.
It screws with your Circadian rhythm causing body to create more melatonin..........
It's was enough for me change my location..................
I don't know what is legal in London, but in the US it is not legal to live in a building with no windows. A bedroom must have a window that both lets in natural light and allows egress (escape) in case of a fire or other disaster.
Yep, a residence must have windows, and a room can't count as a bedroom without a window.
I've been inside some of conversions before and they run a gamut of pretty awkward layouts to fairly well thought-out ones. They have all been invariably on the luxury side of things which makes since office space generally commands much higher prices than residential in the CBDs where these tend to be. The aforementioned requirement for windows combined with the pricing differential of office vs residential and newer class A office space versus older below class A office space are also reasons why the usual targets are older buildings with smaller floorplates since those don't then have as massive interior spaces where there are no windows. The 160 Water Street conversion is notable in that it's a relatively recent building being from the 1970s, and a good part of what it's targeted is probably because it's on a weird mini-block where it's a fairly small floor plate since it splits that mini-block with another building and it faces the street on three sides of the building.
Office to residential conversions (apartments, loan, home)
Why would anyone want to live in a pile of concrete?
Worked over on 40 Wall in the 70's.
Could not help notice how little sunlight reaches you. All one could
do was wait for High noon and pray for no clouds else work
and walk in the shadows of tombstones all day long.......
Couldn't wait to get the heck out of there.
No Thanks....
Smith Barney was there in 1980's and 1990's IIRC.
Zoning requirements for commercial and residential buildings are different regarding how deep they can be without natural sunlight (windows). This is one big reason why so many commercial buildings are not converted.
The process of conversions are extremely expensive in NYC. Doubly so in Manhattan. The issue is not whether there are projects for investors to work on. He issue is whether investors can hit the ROI they need/want.
The lack of conversions over the years should tell one everything they need to know. In the vast majority of cases, it'd be cheaper to demolish and build anew.
This talk of mass conversions of NYC commercial space is pushed by morons who don't understand the economics.
Zoning requirements for commercial and residential buildings are different regarding how deep they can be without natural sunlight (windows). This is one big reason why so many commercial buildings are not converted.
Well, an even bigger reason has been that office space in downtown and midtown have generally commanded much higher prices than residential has. That's part of what's made it worthwhile to slowly cobble up multiple pieces of property on smaller lots in order to make a large contiguous piece to build large high-rises with massive floorplates. Those really big parcels and buildings aren't going to be very good for conversion to residential both because of those massive floorplates which means a lot of that space is far from a window, but also that these are usually more recent buildings (as in within the last 50 years) so are more likely to be class A office space which still supposedly would command a price above residential. So with that, what we're usually seeing is older and often not class A office space being converted room office to residential buildings and with a lot of these having some kind of historic value or even landmarked.
An interesting part of this is that despite the vacancies, NYC still has quite a lot of class A office space under construction and I'd imagine that would put even further pressure on non class A office space. I guess it's still possible that a good number of these projects even if under construction could still stall for a while, but the pipeline as it is now is pretty wide.
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