Study: ATL emerges as national leader for office-to-home conversions

Metro Atlanta’s growing trend of remaking dated office buildings and office parks into places more suitable for around-the-clock habitation is gaining national attention. 

The Atlanta region has climbed to the eighth biggest market for future office-to-residential conversions in the nation, with a bump of 18 percent over the past year, according to a new analysis by national apartment search website RentCafe.com.

The development tactic—while often expensive and time-consuming—is part of a broader national trend to sop up excess office space and activate underused property following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ten office-to-apartment conversion projects are in the metro Atlanta pipeline right now, accounting for an expected 2,642 residential units, per the analysis. 

But unlike other markets where adaptive-reuse activity is concentrated in the downtown core (where the planned conversion of 51-story Georgia-Pacific Center is), Atlanta is seeing its office-to-apartment conversions tap underused office parks and business districts. 

As a result, per the study, office conversions now make up 61 percent of adaptive-reuse activity across the metro. 

One example cited is the Render Tucker office-park conversion planned on Northlake Parkway that calls for more than 300 apartments near Northlake Mall. 

Numerous other examples of office-park conversions are in various phases of development from Sandy Springs (the massive Embassy Row project) and Brookhaven (the $605-million Northbend proposal) to Alpharetta (Portman’s Brookside Village, among others) and beyond. 

Across the metro, just 11 percent of the Atlanta market’s total office space is qualified for residential conversions. That’s the second lowest share among markets studied—but that slice adds up to nearly 27 million square feet, good for 15th nationally for conversion potential, per RentCafe’s findings. 

The analysis, which relied on Yardi Matrix data, included only properties with 50 or more residential units. (Other property types being converted but not included in the study are hotels, industrial properties, schools, healthcare facilities, retail spaces, and government buildings.)

Nationally, the study found the number of office-to-apartment conversions has swelled 28 percent year-over-year to 90,300 units—or nearly four times larger than the freshly post-COVID days of 2022. 

No surprise the New York City metro area is far and away the national leader (16,358 conversion units in the works), followed by Washington D.C. (8,479), and Chicago (4,360).

Analysts noted this year has seen three newcomers in the office-to-apartment conversion top 10: Denver (No. 6), Philadelphia (No. 7), and Cleveland (No. 9), respectively.

...

Follow us on social media: 

Twitter / Facebook/and now: Instagram  

• Analysis: How far $400K stretches in Atlanta vs. other cities right now (Urbanize Atlanta)