......You didn't read anything I said did you? I literally outlined why there's zero incentive to repurpose retail or office buildings into residential buildings. Yeah building new cities would work, but repurposing office and retail into residential pretty much never works unless it's HEAVILY subsidized by the government.

As I said, the biggest problems are the plumbing (You literally have to rip out 20+ floors of plumbing and replumb the entire building based on the new floor layout), the fire codes (Because residential firecodes are infinitely more strict than office or retail fire codes since the spaces are more confined, and fires are more likely), and just general weight, since all the added walls, plumbing, peoples crap, etc.)

You can preach all you want about "the greater good", but the people with actual money that build these buildings aren't going to just spend 100s of millions, or in some cases BILLIONS, of dollars "for the greater good".

There has to be some kind of incentive for them to do this. And assuming we're all correct and the income tax is going to be a thing of the past post-cabal.... Well, there goes the last actual incentive developers have to do anything like this.

If the LIHTC (Low Income Housing Tax Credit) is done away with because the federal government no longer collects a federal income tax, then there is literally ZERO incentive for any developer to take on a project like this.

What's far more likely, is these buildings will devolve into urban rot, leading to the cities to condemn them, eventually resulting in them being torn down 40-50 years inn the future, which then would make the land plots appealing to developers again for things like residential, or whatever the current money making niche is.

That's assuming office and retail completely fails and never comes back, which also isn't true. I wasn't planning on giving this detailed of a response, but since my financial nerdery is flowing, I might as well.

The reason that so many office and retail properties are failing isn't because people aren't going back to the office (they are, in a hybrid setup if nothing else), or that people aren't going to physical stores anymore (Has actually been increasing despite things like Amazon).

The reason, is that the owners got screwed on the interest rates for their loans. Commerical real estate isn't like regular residential real estate (Single family homes). The loan terms are vastly different.

Here's the basic outline for a CE loan. 5 years at X% with an adjustable interest rate.

As a result, in most cases, commercial real estate isn't a "buy and hold" game. It's usually more of a "buy, fix/build, hold a few years, sell" kind of game. CE owners rarely pay down the principal on their loans since they intend to sell them within one or two refinance cycles. People like Trump who outright own buildings worth hundred of millions or billions of dollars are REALLY rare.

What's currently happening is simple. The owners refinanced during that period a few years ago when interest rates where 1%~. Now, a few years later, we have record high inflation and sky high interest rates. So those refinanced buildings have had their debt payments skyrocket over the course of a few years. So much so, that they now no longer produce enough income to justify owning them.

THAT is why, retail and office are failing. Residential and hospitality haven't been hit yet, since they generally speaking have higher cap rates (The way you measure your cash flow), than Retail and Office. But they'll be hit soon enough as well.

Long story short, there's no way to give a large enough financial incentive to repurpose office and retail buildings into apartments, and office/retail isn't even really dead. Companies are just getting screwed on the interest rates.