Office-to-residential conversions have been discussed for years, but the conversion era is now real for one reason: policy has started to match the economics.  Conversions are not a feel-good reuse story. They’re a feasibility puzzle: building physics, zoning permissions, and financing terms must all line up. When they do, conversions can deliver housing faster than ground-up construction in constrained markets. 5 Times Square . Photo by Michael Young. New York City’s 467-m program is one of...

For more than a decade, cheap bank debt did most of the work. Sponsors underwrote deals to a low-cost senior loan, layered in modest equity, and let cap-rate compression do the rest. That era is over. Higher policy rates and tighter credit standards have pushed commercial real estate borrowing and lending sharply lower, with 2023 volumes dropping as higher interest costs and asset repricing froze large parts of the market.    Bank CRE loan growth has slowed to its weakest pace in over a...

Zoning used to feel local: a planning commission calendar, a few community meetings, a long entitlement runway. In 2026, zoning is increasingly macro . Not because every city adopted the same rules, but because the market has learned something simple: the fastest, broadest way to change a city’s investment map is not a megaproject—it’s a text amendment.  When a city rewrites baseline assumptions (parking, height, floor-area rules, conversions, mixed-use permissions), the repricing is...