There are expensive challenges with converting office buildings to apartments that historically made it non-cost effective, since commercial demand was always high enough that building owners could always make a bigger profit leasing to commercial tenants versus converting their buildings to residential.

But if remote work has permanently emptied SF’s downtown office buildings, pushing commercial demand to near zero, but demand for housing in the Bay Area is still red-hot, perhaps large-scale conversions will become cost-effective as commercial leases begin to expire, since the alternative for building owners is to just let them rot empty.