ELI5: USians, why not buy/rent an office, instead of a home at this point?
I'm not from the US, but I've heard about the housing shortage crisis as well as the commercial real-estate vacancy crisis. I'm pretty sure the US government will bail out the rich folks again.
Honestly, people need a cheap place to live, right? Why not just buy a commercial property about as big as an ideally small home and call it a day? Isn't that a win-win situation? Or are there laws that make it illegal?
It isn’t zoned for residential use, so you’d have legal issues;
You’d likely be in an area that isn’t good for residential usage; a lack of grocery stores and schools etc. — it might be doable for a single person but not a family.
Office buildings are not designed as homes so there’s likely a high cost to do the conversion; bathrooms and kitchens
— also access. buildings would need to be set up for 24/7 access so people can come and go
and the landlord is constantly having people in your commercial space for legit reasons like pest control, hazard tests, fire department requirement checks, showing the space to potential purchasers. It isn't like renting a house where you have privacy rights protecting you, commercial landlords show up knocking all the time and living there is going to violate your lease.
Unless you manage upon some magical remote landlord arrangement a scheme such as this only lasts as long as you can fly under the radar.
Many buildings would be extremely expensive to convert into usable space for living. Rooms without windows cannot legally be bedrooms, bathrooms might exist but the plumbing may not be usable for a kitchen or shower, electrical panels might not be wired to accommodate household use, heating and cooling might be significantly more expensive.
A more efficient use might be to convert existing commercial real estate into a multipurpose use (grocery / entertainment / medical / etc) and then build apartments surrounding it.
Commercial property isn't zoned for use as housing, which can be a legal issue if you try to use it as your primary residence for some documentation.
In addition, the building codes for residential and commercial properties are different, I believe commercial properties don't have to be as well insulated as residential and I'm sure there's some other annoying tidbits that would rear their head as you tried to live in an office.
Edit: I don't think living in a commercial property would be, like, the worst, but I'm remembering trying to fix an electrical issue at work and seeing the breaker box didn't have any 40 Amp breakers. That'd make installing a fridge and other kitchen appliances tricky... but you could probably make do with a decent mini fridge and an induction hot plate.
Assuming that you're talking about the US (I won't speak for anywhere else), there is exactly 1 circuit in my kitchen with 240v/40a- the range. Everything else is 120v/15a. Current code requires a number of dedicated circuits, but they're all 120v. Most are 15a, with a few 20a. The fridge, dishwasher, microwave, and any countertop appliances are all fine with 15a (1500 Watts continuous).
Most offices have tons of circuits run to any given area, because (by code) you can only connect so many devices. Googling wasn't immediately clear how many, but it's between 8 and 15. That's only a few cubicles per circuit, so there should be no shortage of wiring.
When you're talking about zoning, do you mean dividing a floor into multiple sections? I'm not sure I understand this, but I saw a video not that long ago, about a school being turned into an apartment. Wouldn't it be ideal for people to come together to create a CHS, plan out the sections and then convert it into a apartment?
Never had insulation in my mind, because we don't have that issue over here lol. The cold can be quite dangerous, it does make sense now. But as you move more towards the southern territories, that doesn't hold valid, right?
Basically, municipalities create law to designate land use. This prevents someone from, say, building an industrial park next to a kindergarten, or restricts just how much commercial property can be built in an area. The other commenter makes a point about how living in a commercial property would give you poor access to services generally desired by residential properties, like schools and grocery stores. This is a consequence of zoning laws.
Zoning laws play a part in the housing crisis in a variety of ways!
I'm not sure if warmer climates solve all the issues with using commercial properties as residential as now you have to consider cooling as well.